Ten Ways to Be a Better Patron of the Arts and to be More Like Chickie

His given name was Clarence Carroll

I turn to Medium when I need to compose a diary entry and I can’t find my journal. With my readership starting in 2012 at very low and gradually dwindling since then, spewing my thoughts here seems safe. If I ever kill someone and need to confess, it’s good to know Medium will be there for me.

So, I’m writing about what it’s like to perform music these days, now that music is being performed again, here and there. I’m also writing about being a visual artist in an era where everyone expects everything for free.

And I’m writing about Chickie.

My uncle Chickie, who was not actually my uncle but my grandfather’s little brother, played music seriously for almost the entire span of his career as an accountant. Instead of being bitter about the music business and his inability to make a living from it, he treated each piece of music he heard with reverence. To block out all other distractions, he’d sit in a chair, elbows on knees, eyes on the floor. And he’d listen.

If you sent Chickie something you’d written, it would take him a while to reply — because he was reading it twice and then crafting a thorough critique that accentuated the positive. The envelope he sent back might have a $20 bill in it.

My musical partner, William, and I are very lucky. We get paid gigs, mostly at a winery and a brewpub or two in North Georgia. I don’t think the winery guy who books us — the owner’s son who looks like a young Tom Jones — particularly cares for the music we play. Nor does he seem to hate it. I wish he would choose a side. While singing “Dock of the Bay” or “To Love Somebody,” I’ll sometimes catch Eric hastily passing by and shooting me the obligatory thumbs up, which I believe is supposed to grant me the inspiration to keep going, which I do.

While William is relatively new to the winery circuit, he’s been playing live perhaps twenty years longer than I have, and with a virtuosity of which I can only dream. It seems each time we talk he reveals another band he once was a member of. Each had a neat name and released one or two albums to limited acclaim. By Athens (Georgia) music standards, William actually has done pretty well: He’s not destitute, hasn’t killed himself or died of cirrhosis. He’s got a regular job at the university — replete with benefits and a retirement plan — that’s making him comfortably miserable. We’re huge music fans. Both of us gaga still over the Beatles, we email each other Beatle-related YouTube videos and watch them alone late at night while getting quietly plastered as our wives sleep.

I get up in the morning, undeservedly hangover-free and sometimes refreshed, and go off to my job painting houses — unless there’s no work that day, in which case I retreat to my basement studio and make paintings and drawings of rural scenes, usually of this area. Years ago I was an up-and-coming star in the regional visual art scene, which was nothing to sneeze at in the ’80s and ’90s but now would make a younger reader of this piece, of which there will be none, laugh suddenly and explosively enough to shoot several Ramen noodles up her nose, necessitating a succession of good, hard sneezes to get them out. During my artistic heyday, I was still married to my first wife and had a regular job with the university, some degree of misery, two kids and an MFA. I’d supplement my salary with a not-to-be-scoffed — or, yes — sneezed-at annual sum of ten to fifteen thousand dollars, mostly from sales at galleries and local shows at restaurants and hair salons. These were the salad days.

All the while I was banging away at my guitar and writing songs, unveiling them only at drunken parties near surprised listeners. Back then, before the ubiquity of music everywhere, singing a song for people involved some risk, because it was a kind of unique event. It seemed like we operated under a universally understood agreement, a sort of performing-for-approval scheme. Though I’d been performing and writing songs as long as I’d been making pictures, I was scared of taking an actual stage, and had never found the right people behind whom I could hide while I sang publicly.

It’s either a shame — because I may have become something when such a thing was possible in the music world — or a relief, because I may have ended up sad like my friend William, whose vast instrumental and improvisational skills would guarantee him fame and fortune in a just world, or the scores of underappreciated musicians who have taken their own lives. Instead, in this peculiar world, it guarantees him a subscription to disappointment, doled out in the form of an IV drip of indifferent “listeners” who were absent the day decency was taught in first grade.

At this point of the essay (or diary entry, really), I should be steering the focus to the new paradigm in recording industry brought on by digital downloads and the Great Recession, but I’m a dullard when it comes to technology or economics, so I’ll sidestep those undoubtedly important factors and focus instead on the benign assholes I so often face during performances and on Facebook.

I’m not talking (writing) about hecklers or bottle-throwers. (I’d actually prefer either to what I usually get.) I’m talking (writing) about the people who somehow have attained the ability to sit there, unmoved toward any emotional direction, like a smug boulder, by music being competently, even passionately, rendered by musicians only a few feet away from them.

I wish I could make the excuse for them that they’d come to the venue unaware there would be someone singing songs; but these venues are known for hosting music. So I can’t make that excuse for them. And for that I’m glad, because I’m angry at them.

I’m angry because they make me feel like Bugs Bunny in the Looney Tunes episode where he’s being used for an experiment where his brain is exchanged for that of a chicken. Because there is a grandstand full of doctors that encompasses the “stage” completely, he mistakes the experiment for a performance starring himself. To stone-faced audience indifference, he tells jokes, does impressions, sings songs — all to no avail. Finally, Bugs goes all out, scatting his way through an intense jazz tune at breakneck speed. “Heep-bop beep-bop bop-pa-doe!” he begins. “Heep-bob peep-bop bop-po-day!” And so on.

Finally, someone knocks him out cold and the experiment begins.

At our gigs, there is no such mercy. To give you a rare perspective from the stage or makeshift performing area: A song — let’s say, “And I Love Her” — ends, and as the last, surprising major chord rings out, no acknowledgement is made by anyone within earshot. The gaping aural space is filled by guitar noodling, some murmuring between the musicians, maybe a little tuning, a gulp of beer. A tumbleweed seems to tumble across the audience. Thirteen years into my musical odyssey, I’m still surprised and a little crushed by this dearth of response.

I’m not saying my singing is never appreciated. I’ve had some very enthusiastic compliments, offers to play at weddings, great tips thrown into the jar — but all too often I’m belting out a song — “What’s So Funny (‘Bout Peace Love and Understanding),” for example — that ends with a kind of uncomfortable vacuum of acknowledgement. Maybe no one wants to break the spell, whatever spell it is — because if it’s a spell it sure is a lame one — or step out there on the precipice and take a stand, to clap one’s hands together as if to say, “I have heard this, and this was good, or at least adequate.” It could be that’s too grand a statement to expect someone to make.

Heep-bop peep-pop bop po-dee!

I know this: once a precedent of no clapping is set, there is very little likelihood of clapping occurring at any point thereafter. Unless there’s a black sorority reunion going on.

It’s hard airing grievance about this kind of thing. It leaves me open to ridicule or at least crushing dismissal; in my head I can hear Bill Maher, an important voice yet somehow a big believer in meritocracy even in these times, admonishing, “Maybe you’re just not very good.”

It’s possible. I mean, I know I’m not great, at least not consistently. But I do know I perform good songs, hit all the notes, and convey some emotion, usually appropriately. That counts for something — even in a culture that seems to disdain music while exalting musical stars. In the land of “free thinking,” being ignored never gets old. It kinda stings. The kind of indifference I so often face onstage I never witness as a member of an audience…and that’s because I applaud. So there’s someone applauding. It seems rude, even malicious, not to do so.

I wish I could pin the indifference on something as benign as basic rudeness, but I think it’s more ingrained than that. It’s as if we as a culture have decided we’re not going to encourage self-absorption, at least not in the form of some random guy singing a song in front of people. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve heard that, we’re sick of it, we won’t reward it, enough already. We each want to hear exactly the song we each want to hear at the instant we think of it.”

I deposited two checks into my account today, both from gigs I performed over the weekend. The act seemed perfunctory, mechanical. I guess that’s what it’s become.

Heep-bop beep-bop pop po-dah!

I Complain About My Painting Career

As a painter with a career, I wouldn’t mind depositing more checks, even perfunctorily. In the art world, applause is way more common than actual recompense. Some people, when seeing images of my work I post on Facebook (my only gallery these days), applaud so vigorously they sometimes even inquire about price. This month, fourteen people have made such inquiries. Several gave enthusiastic thumbs-ups when I complied. Exactly two have resulted in an actual purchase. I’ve likened the experience to having a trout nibbling idly at my worm; I’ve seemingly lost the ability to yank my rod at the right time.

It’s highly likely that some people, after a few drinks, like to feel magnanimous and help some poor artist out. “Want!” they’ll type, and I supply the info they request. “Great,” they’ll reply, somewhat enigmatically. Or, worse: “Very reasonable — let me check my funds.” Then, I’m guessing they wake up the next morning with a case of almost-buyer’s remorse. A curious vanishing act occurs then; it’s as if they never existed at all. To complete the metaphor, most of them “ghost” me thereafter, and stop “liking” my posts.

Hodle daydle day, hodle daydle day!

If I could just get a little more of the applause shifted over to the music realm, and more of the payment slid to the visual art side of my business, maybe I’d have something. But as it stands I’m a housepainter well into middle age whose retirement plan involves falling off a ladder and applying for disability or cremation.

A few days ago I lamented about all this in a Facebook post I allowed only myself to see. (I didn’t want to come off as bitter, or worse, entitled. That could hurt my sales.) But now I’m posting to Dear Medium! Where my secrets are safe. Here’s the bitter, entitled entry:

“After two days during which I performed a total of seven hours of songs to the passive-aggressive indifference of what must have been hundreds of contrarian sheep (save for two tables worth of wonderful ladies from a black sorority reuniting at a winery 25 years after graduation), I awoke from a dream during which I was shunned (after what I knew for certain were funny jokes) by people I loved, ultimately causing me to leave a ‘friendly’ card game. Mere coincidence?

These were paid gigs; my partner and I were compensated well. Yet I would rather have played for free for people possessing what we once called common decency. Seems it’s commonly decent nowadays to treat music as something useless, ubiquitous and unremarkable. To me it seems almost savage.

‘What the hell’s wrong with people, anyway?’

— Sally Struthers, early April 2021"

To which I commented: “To add to my creative misanthropy, no less than twelve people have approached me online in the past month about buying my landscapes. Each time, I duly responded with details about the art. Most responded by ghosting me. A occasional trout I managed to keep on the line. Two followed through by actually purchasing something.”

It felt good, tattling on people, even if only to myself.

I Complain About My Writing Career

Did I mention I’ve written two novels? After the second one failed to get itself published, I wrote a song called “Timing.”

At the risk of losing the two or three readers this piece has enticed, here are the lyrics:

“Well I started singing songs just after people stopped listening,

Wrote a book when they’d stopped reading;

Painted pictures wide and tall when there was no space on the wall,

Gave in when you’d stopped pleading.

It seems it’s all about timing…”

…hodle daydle day…

Because I sense reader interest in the song is waning, I’ll spare you the second and third verses, wherein I hammer in the point until it’s passed completely through the wood.

I’m writing this piece only because I’ve searched online for something like it and have come up (mostly) empty. I say (mostly) because they do exist — but are poorly written. When I do actually make it through a bitter lament from an underappreciated songwriter or novelist or painter, I react the way you probably are right now: Oh, here we go, another talentless would-be artist looking in vain for his free ride through life and trying to make us all suffer for his bad choices.

Then the decent impulses inside me beat down the savage ones, and I experience something called “empathy.” That’s what I was taught to do. Not to be sanctimonious. Even though I now realize the two people who read this will think I’m being just that. (Sanctimonious.)

Guilty as charged! But better we be besieged by those who charge we’re not doing enough, rather than those who demand we continue depriving those who need help of our help. Better we err in generosity than in austerity. Right? Err on the side of being human? Right? Can I get an “amen?” Can I?

When I see, while driving across this tortured landscape, all the recently-made cars bought for sums well over $20,000, and all the enormous houses bought for sums my small brain cannot fathom, I raise my skeptical eyebrow (the left one) at claims of poverty when those who consume artistic products, then claim they’re unable to pay for them. I know they’re not. And that hurts — as it should hurt anyone who performs or paints for free. It makes that person feel expendable, replaceable, and disposable. “Well, they should know they’re not talented,” chime the folks who lavishly shower acts like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Katie Perry with their hard-earned cash. All the while priding themselves on not being sheep.

If you’ve made it this far, you probably want to know what the Ten Ways are. Remember — the title? Of this piece? The title I chose because people are more likely to read lists than essays?

1. Put yourself in the artist’s shoes. Even if they’re weird or have holes in them.
2. If you are seated near a performance and you realize you are an asshole, move to a more distant seat. Preferably a driver’s seat. Start the car and drive away.
3. If you are happy and are aware of it, clap your hands.
4. Read one of my novels. They’re on Amazon.
5. If you are well-off financially and you know it, allot some money each month for the arts, to, you know, keep the culture going and shit.
6. If you are not (well-off financially), you can admit it. It’s fine. Just let the artist know that you would if you could.
7. Buy a piece of my art. I’ll discount it just for you.

8. Read anyone’s novel. It’s good for the collective brain.

9. If you are a woman and can’t say something nice or leave a tip, do a little sexy dance move as you pass the performer(s) on the way to the bathroom. I can’t express how much that sort of thing means to us.

10. Ask me if I have any CDs to sell. I’ll probably do what most recording artists do: just give you one.

11. (Bonus) If someone gives you a CD, listen to it. Please don’t behave as if someone has given you an assignment. Listening to music is not work.

One thing Chickie never complained about was having to make a living as an accountant in spite of his talents as a violinist and writer. So, when I wear my Be Like Chickie T-shirt, it’s a reminder to myself as well as others.

If you want to be like Chickie, or at least tell others to do so, you can contact me via email: bensongbenson@gmail.com

…hodle daydle day…