E9. Lou Reed's Nephew on Art and Business
“The artist does what he wants. The businessman does what the market wants. You are in danger of doing neither.”
“This thing you are doing, is it an art or a business?” Lou Reed’s Nephew asked. He waved his hand lazily, indicating he had no idea what I did. This was the first time he had expressed any interest. I secretly hoped he had woken up to how hard it was to make a living and was seeking my advice.
I shouldn’t have gotten carried away.
“A bit of both” I said. I sometimes wondered myself.
“Impossible,” he said. “Would you mind answering a few questions?”
“No,” I lied.
“First: This thing that you are doing, would you do it if no one was interested in the end product?”
I considered the database of places and events that Ulugbek and I were assembling: all the rows representing the places and all the tables representing the events that happened at the places and all the misspellings and variations that constantly needed to be tracked down and corrected to avoid mistakes and duplications, compounded every time we integrated a new database and the process started over again.
“I don’t think so, no.”
“You don’t think so?” Lou Reed’s Nephew was alarmed. “Let me put it another way. This thing you are doing, does it meet a need that someone has?”
“Well, I certainly hope so,” I said.
People needed things to do. Obviously they would go to a database where they could find everything happening at every place where things happened. Seemed like a no-brainer, though at night I worried that people were already finding things to do , in a world where this database did not yet exist. I saw them every night. They were everywhere—alone or in pairs and packs—on their way to places to do things. The idea that they didn’t need what Ulugbek and I were making haunted me.
“Now we know the answer.”
“Share it, please,” I said.
“You don’t think you are involved in art but hope you are involved in business.”
“You’ve summarized it perfectly,” I said.
“I’m afraid this means you will fail at both.”
“I hope you are wrong.” I experienced a sinking feeling that suggested he was not wrong.
“The artist does what he wants. The businessman does what the market wants. You are in danger of doing neither.”
The feeling sank further.
“But what about the person who finds out that the market wants what he wants?” I asked. “Is that person an artist or a businessman?”
“That’s the saddest case of all,” he said. “The artist who is treated like a businessman.”