This is from a response I wrote yesterday, with adaptations, to a comment I received from—with apologies Mame—a compassionate soul and struggling artist:

I wholeheartedly wish you and everyone struggling with the frightful prospect of earning a living in our callous blinkered world the very best.

For my part, as I’ve said, long ago I took to trucking.

Had I tried to make a living writing long before I knew what I had to say or came anywhere near the place where I could say it I would surely have crashed and burned. Had I the need today to earn a living on my jottings the probability is high the results would be the same.

Thank goodness I took another path. It’s not just the precariousness of earning that living and the prospect of destitution I count as perils, it’s the niggling doubt and darkness of outlook that can dog an aspirant to artistic creativity I have wished to avoid, not to mention the despair and consequent bitterness that can slowly elbow out every ray of light that would dare penetrate the engulfing gloom.

And the thing is all too frequently those doubts and darknesses of outlook, those despairs and bitternesses insinuate themselves into the works of the legion of struggling artists. What’s more on occasion the artist experiences success, renown and financial reward for airing his or her demons! An unbalanced sick community sees reflected back in the mirror of an artistic work symptoms of its own festering illnesses and hails the ‘artist’ as a genius!

How warped and self-fulfilling is that?!

No. That’s not for me.

“Live an integral Life!” has been my catchword. Seek out community and leave any thought of ‘popular’ or acknowledged creation to others.

I’m not sure these are the times for genuine artists to stand up and shine. For me it is a time for community building on a new simplified foundation, quietly, away from the Madding Crowd. Recently I’ve been rereading Durant’s volumes on the decline of Rome and rise of Christianity. The gathering of at first handfuls of citizens of all walks and means to hear a new message interests me. How they formed tiny rudimentary communities that looked after one another, rediscovered the courage to believe and returned to a sense of communal compassion and thus renewed their lost faith in Life fascinates to me.

That, to me, is what the future holds. And that is at the heart of my serving of coffee and tea here at the Omphalos Cafe.

It won’t be a popular movement, at least at first, for there is too much noise and distraction and yes, hardship lying ahead. It will take place behind the scenes, modestly, simply and very gradually.

That’s my belief at any rate.

Good luck, have faith, and find a modest manner of ‘earning a living’ that sits well with your values.

And above all avoid ‘fighting the system!’

Win with a smile and joy in your heart!