Garrett-Dwellers

1972

When I was a teenage art student, drawing continuous ink studies of a solitary rock, trying to get the textures right, friends would joke that my future home would be a garret and I would slowly starve to death on day-old bread.  It was already an old cliché then, and yet it still remains a common public perception of the wannabe writers, actors, poets and artists, which almost forces them to live that lifestyle.  Even the artist has taken it up, with the elitist attitude that an artist must suffer for the art.

These two very similar, but very different, attitudes are like the question of the chicken and the egg -- which came first?  I reason that the public attitude came first.  To many a public mind, the artist, unlike the accountant, has no sense of propriety, living not with a place for everything and everything in its place, but dwelling instead in a squalor of discarded wine bottles and unused razor blades.  It follows that a respectable youth would not choose to enter the arts and a young artist would not be a respectable youth.  (This is an attitude applied to the young struggling artist.  Older established artist, who make money, are pronounced eminently respectable.  Norman Mailer is now eminently respectable.)

Of course, a youth may dabble in the arts, as a hobby or a time-killer, as long as he is engaged in a “serious” career as well.  “it really gets to be a drag,” a young actor named Michael**  once told me, “when people ask, ‘yes, but what do you really want to do?’”

Since the artist is without respect and considered an unstable person by the public, it is extremely difficult to find a job that feeds his body while art feeds his soul.  Michael noted his most recent job interview when he was told he “didn’t really want a job”.

“Look, lady, he said, “I’m starving to death.  I want this job.”

He was given the job “against [her] better judgment.  [He’d] probably quit after two weeks.” this lady told him.

I have heard the same words myself.  It must be from this public suspicion that the attitude of artistic dignity sprang.

Is this artistic attitude one of determination, discipline, honesty or sweat of brow?   No, although these are attitudes a true artist must have and sustain to realize his art.  The attitude we note here is how the struggling artist approaches the job obtained for his stomach’s sake.  As his youth sinks into the quicksand of age, seriousness settles in like a low branch to grasp.  The struggling artist doesn’t quit the job in two weeks.  he holds on it for dear life.  He holds as much for art’s sake as for the sake of his stomach, too.  If a serious artist is to continue eating, he cannot feed the ravenous appetite of some public prejudice.

“I do the best I can,” said Michael the struggling thespian, “for I always think another actor may be in my spot sometime and if I foul up they will say, ‘Well, he’s an actor’.”

This is where we find those often branded “garret-dwellers”.  The public may prefer dwelling in an attic of musty prejudice, but the struggling artist must dwell in a watchtower behind the fortress of his attitude until his private war is won.

**  Michael is a friend.  He is an actor married to an actress (Maureen).  They live in an eighty-dollar a month room in Philadelphia, which is almost a garret.  Bathroom in the hall.  His neighboring tenants are all homosexuals.  “The landlord didn’t want to rent to us.  She feels homosexuals keep a place up.  But we convinced her we were nice people, so she gave in and here we are.”

(Note: in the photo they are at my "pad", not their "garrett".)