A few weeks ago, a friend’s link to a rant about a rant about the Hype Machine, a music blog aggre­ga­tor, got me think­ing about the issue of whether it’s bet­ter to do art full time or part time. The short answer to that ques­tion, of course, has to do with what bet­ter means to you. But I still think there are mean­ing­ful dis­tinc­tions that can be made between the kinds of art that get made in either situation.

The ques­tion of bet­ter can be addressed to a large extent using eco­nomic sce­nar­ios, though not by rely­ing on clas­si­cal eco­nom­ics. Basic eco­nomic the­ory would say that the more reward you get for your work, the more devoted you will be to it, hence ensur­ing value. Also, we would expect the best artists to receive the most money because their work is in the high­est demand. So full-time artists, by this def­i­n­i­tion, should always be bet­ter artists. Con­tinue read­ing “The Starv­ing Artist: Full Time ver­sus Part Time” »

Recently I read both Goethe’s and Marlowe’s Faust plays–the Faust leg­end has been a major influ­ence on many gen­er­a­tions of com­posers and authors. I found them exceed­ingly dull, except that the Mar­lowe made me think about chang­ing Eng­lish syn­tax in rela­tion to the other ger­manic lan­guages. And in the case of Goethe, I was curi­ous about the psy­chol­ogy that would lead some­one to tor­ment over this story for one’s entire career.

What they made me real­ize though, is that ideas of the value and endurance of art are tied to our world views. Con­tinue read­ing “Faust and Sub-Prime Mortgages” »

So today I read in the Globe and Mail that sci­en­tists are increas­ingly find­ing bio­log­i­cal and genetic sup­port for the age-old adages of love (Siri Agrell, “Sluts and Ver­min”, The Globe and Mail, 26 Apr 2007, http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​R​T​G​A​M​.​2​0​0​7​0​4​2​6​.​w​x​l​s​e​x​s​t​u​d​i​e​s​2​6​/​B​N​S​t​o​r​y​/​l​i​f​e​F​a​m​i​l​y​/​h​ome).

For exam­ple, female mice who play hard to get tend to inspire faith­ful­ness in their mates, as opposed to those who put out right away. There seems to be a bio­log­i­cal rea­son why women that are unavail­able are more desir­able, and this builds faith­ful­ness in men. Inter­est­ing. Con­tinue read­ing “Love, Free Will, and the Use­less­ness of Art” »