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The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

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Re: The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

#11

Post by mmooss »

vatys wrote: post #3

> “I could manage quite well working as few as twenty to twenty-five hours a week—in other words, three full days or five half days. Even after I returned from Paris or India in the late 1960s and well into the 1970s, I could take care of my family by working no more than three or four days a week.” Would today's youth, even if equally gifted and ambitious, have the same opportunity? I think now there is such a great…

IME, my impression, is that far more people today are in 'survival' mode - the fight/fligh/freeze response: not trying to create, build, and self-actualize but to survive, and ridiculing - as people in that mode do - art, humanities (and humanitarianism), knowledge, etc. Advocating the value in those things is now transgressive, IME. 'That's all pointless!' they say - and yes it's pointless if your only goal is to survive a week or maybe a year, and make nothing better of the world.

Re: The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

#12

Post by antognini »

John Adams wrote in his memoir about trying something similar around the same time, but with less success. When he moved out to the Bay Area he ended up taking a job as a longshoreman at the port. He wrote that he had this Marxist fantasy of laboring with the proletariat during the day and composing avant-garde music during the night.

But the job left him so exhausted when he got home that he could barely read a few pages of a book let alone compose any new music.

He didn't really pick up composing again until he happened to get a job teaching music in SF.

Re: The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

#13

Post by mettamage »

It's inspiring for sure, and I think this post will have some impact on my life. Giving me a stronger/better attitude basically.

But I'd like to take a moment for people who live lives like Philip Glass but don't have that famous composer label attached to them. There are so many anonymous people going through such a crazy amount of work that they do and we never hear of them.

I suppose that at least I think of them now.

Re: The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

#14

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

rvense wrote: post #2

I read once that a passenger in his cab told him "You have the same name as a very famous composer."

I once had Wolfgang Pauli's cousin use my checkstand at the grocery store. I noticed his last name because he wrote a check. When I asked if was "Pauli like the exclusion principle?" he got very excited and hung around for an hour just to chat.

I don't miss checks, but that was pretty cool.

Re: The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

#15

Post by financltravsty »

medion wrote: post #8
TrackerFF wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you could move out to rural nowhere, where housing costs next to nothing. Find some part time job, and live your life. I'm from a place like that, and a bunch of my old classmates from HS have lived like that their entire adult lives working part time. They work 2-3-4 days a week. Of course, you'll be sacrificing lots of materialistic things, but that's a given.

100% - but people don’t want to make those sacrifices. They want to live and do what they’ve always done. It has and likely always will be possible to pick up stumps and move somewhere very cheap and get on with a personal creative endeavour - not many have the courage though.

Your creativity is a composition of all the novel stimuli you experience.

Going out into the sticks, while calming and healing for the soul, is artistic suicide.

Re: The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

#16

Post by pclmulqdq »

ilamont wrote: post #4

Many of my cultural heroes were ignored by academia Ignored, or the jobs just weren't there? A department head once told me that she couldn't hire any new tenure-track faculty. Turnover at the school is so rare, and when a position does open up, there are literally hundreds of highly qualified applicants. It's been that way for decades, particularly in the humanities and arts. She noted that among the existing facult…

In the art world, I'm convinced ignored is correct. Academics often have very different goals and produce very different art than those outside academia.

Re: The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

#17

Post by ZoomerCretin »

His experiences are completely alien now and not reproducible today.

How is it possible to get any blue collar job at all without extensive training and certifications on your own time and with your own money in that very specific field?

How is it possible to not only be able to support your family on 3 working days per week, but to find a boss willing to hire you as a part time worker for what seems like a high wage?

How was he able to seemingly be unaffected by frequent job hopping and employment gaps that today seem to be as disadvantageous as having face tattoos?

My own grandfather told me stories of lying about knowing how to drive a tractor-trailer, and learning on the job. Now we have licensing, background checks, reference checks, and all manner of ladder-pulling that is leaving the younger generation without the same opportunities.

Another factor that is overlooked is the tradeoff between interest rates and employment. The Federal Reserve, by law, must target maximum employment first, and then 3% inflation second. It flagrantly disobeys this law with zero consequences. For the first time since the 70s or 90s, we had a job market that favored employees, and all levels of government treated it like a policy emergency to stop immediately. https://x.com/mucha_carlos/status/1791621965343560152

Re: The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

#18

Post by _acco »

medion wrote: post #8
TrackerFF wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you could move out to rural nowhere, where housing costs next to nothing. Find some part time job, and live your life. I'm from a place like that, and a bunch of my old classmates from HS have lived like that their entire adult lives working part time. They work 2-3-4 days a week. Of course, you'll be sacrificing lots of materialistic things, but that's a given.

100% - but people don’t want to make those sacrifices. They want to live and do what they’ve always done. It has and likely always will be possible to pick up stumps and move somewhere very cheap and get on with a personal creative endeavour - not many have the courage though.

You can’t participate in performance arts remotely.

Not to say anything about networking, which is critical for most arts.

Re: The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

#19

Post by l33tbro »

financltravsty wrote: post #15
medion wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% - but people don’t want to make those sacrifices. They want to live and do what they’ve always done. It has and likely always will be possible to pick up stumps and move somewhere very cheap and get on with a personal creative endeavour - not many have the courage though.

Your creativity is a composition of all the novel stimuli you experience. Going out into the sticks, while calming and healing for the soul, is artistic suicide.

Cormac McCarthy? Georgia O'Keeffe? Robert Johnson? Plenty of artists excel beyond the urban fringe.

Re: The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass

#20

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

baerrie wrote: post #7
vatys wrote: post #3

> “I could manage quite well working as few as twenty to twenty-five hours a week—in other words, three full days or five half days. Even after I returned from Paris or India in the late 1960s and well into the 1970s, I could take care of my family by working no more than three or four days a week.” Would today's youth, even if equally gifted and ambitious, have the same opportunity? I think now there is such a great…

In New York particularly this could maybe work. They have strong blue collar unions so benefits and pay would be actually livable. Plumbing anywhere is pretty viable. Faulkner worked in construction and did a similar thing. I am working in tech to fund my creative pursuits, an industry on its way to being blue collar

Not at all. Do you know what it actually takes to get in to those blue collar unions in NYC? It's not at all a "I can just show up, with no experience, and convince a business owner to give me a job" like Glass did.
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