Kelly Lagor's Lagoraphobia

There’s been a lot of talk going around on Twitter in the past few days about #FuckPlanB. For those not familiar, it’s meant to be an inspiring call to arms for struggling and would-be artists to cast off the shackles of their day jobs to plunge head first into their respective art (in the truest “Damn the torpedos” sense). While admirable in its intentions, I feel compelled as someone who has, in essence, Fucked her Plan B to throw in my two cents.

The first thing I want to address is the fact that this particular essay will deal with people wanting to pursue some sort of art as their Plan A. Folks that are debating a career change or going back to school are going to have a wholly different set of demons they’ll need to exorcise. While there are similarities, art is different because art is subjective and there is no template for success – no list of milestones that will let you know when you’ve made it, no clear path leading to a financially sustainable career, no guarantee that one success will mean future successes will follow. That’s not to say that there is a guarantee that if you quit your job to go to law school that you’ll find a great job after you graduate, but chances are you’ll find something related to what you want to do and there are always avenues to move deeper into the field once you’ve got your foot in the door. Art is more ephemeral. Once you’re in the door, you can be kicked out at any time for no better reason than personal whimsy.

Like anything that stirs up so much dander, there are things the #FuckPlanB sentiment gets wrong, things it gets right, and in the end where you stand should come down to making a deeply personal decision that should be based on much careful thought and deliberation.

What the #FuckPlanB sentiment gets wrong:

1. The biggest assumption is this: the ONLY way to “make it” is to go all in; that failure in any sense is not an option. This makes the stakes incredibly high, but that’s the point: that the fear of losing the roof over your head or the food in your mouth will be enough to motivate anyone to make their art day in and day out.  Which brings me to my second point:

2. It trivializes the consequences of that failure. First off, what about all of those years you have to spend failing at your art and learning from your mistakes? Ideally you take a job that gives you enough time and energy away from work to be able to dedicate to your art, while simultaneously not becoming invested in that day job – this is staying true to the ideal of #FuckPlanB. But what about the consideration behind WHICH job you take? This is art we’re talking about: the ultimate folly. Success depends on things which are ethereal at best. Let’s say you are one of those people with endless dedication but no one is biting and no matter how much your throw yourself into it, you’re just not able to make it happen. What then? It’s a pretty picture to say that if you work hard enough, things will work out, but working out 100% of the time? It is possible to work a day job that you DON’T hate, that gives you lines to put on a resume so that if you do take the #FuckPlanB plunge and it doesn’t work out so you aren’t stuck in an unskilled job for the rest of your life, or worse in the unemployment line. Acquiring marketable skills is not a sin. And last I checked, the point of art is to act as a reflection of humanity and to illuminate that which we did not know resided within ourselves – to connect us through a common experience. If you’re ignoring common experiences that a large portion of your potential audience has, what are you going to sell them (because after all, you ARE trying to build a business out of this thing you love)? Envy?

3. It can breed a sense of entitlement. I skirted this one in the previous points. Say you do go all in and quit your job to dedicate yourself full time to your art. You’ve put in the hours, taken the knocks and you’ve gotten to a point where you have enough confidence (based, of course, on input from your carefully calibrated and fully rational internal barometer as well as trusted, impartial external sources of high esteem in your field of interest) to take the plunge. You’ve lived your life by the motto that hard work and dedication equals success and you’ve got the tough skin from your previous rejections that you can take a few rounds of failure. But what about complete failure? That’s what contingency plans are for, correct? To have something to save you from hitting the pavement at full speed when your life stalls. To assume that isn’t a possibility is to assume your dedication will equal success. What will your rationalizations be if you are a complete failure? Will it be because you didn’t do enough? Or will be it because you’re misunderstood and everyone else is a philistine because you’re obviously not the problem? Which one is a more adaptable stance?

4. It sidelines people who don’t have the luxury to throw caution to the wind. I would love to be able to be one of those people that can make their art full time. I dream of becoming a full time writer. But I have a student loan balance that precludes me from making under a certain amount of money a month if I want a roof over my head and food to eat. It makes me jealous of the people with the means to do so (be it through their own efforts or through their own privilege). This is something that I can work hard in a day job to erase. But I also have a chronic medical condition: asthma. Even if I work so hard that I manage to save enough money to live on for two years solely pursuing Plan A, what if I need to go to the emergency room because of an asthma attack? I am someone who has a high degree of privilege who, in a year or two, could theoretically say #FuckPlanB, but I’m still wary because being able to breathe is one of the things I can’t take for granted.

What the #FuckPlanB sentiment gets right:

1. It makes the stakes too high.  A lot of people make excuses why they’re not creating – why doing it later would me more ideal than doing it now. If you don’t have a safety net, you’re going to try really fucking hard not to fall, even when you don’t want to. There’s a lot to be said for this. But if you lack the motivation or self-control to dedicate yourself to your art EVEN WHEN you’re working in another job, quitting your job does not mean you’re going to create because time does not equal self-control. But if you’ve got the self-control and dedication, but you’re afraid of taking the NEXT step, taking a sabbatical can be just what you need to really get to the place you need to get to to become self-sustaining. Because in the end, Yoda was right: Do or do not. There is no try.

2. It gives you the time to do the other things that will increase your chances of success. If you want to be a professional artist, you’re essentially starting your own business, and running a business requires a lot more of you than just making your art. There are promotions, booking shows or readings, meetings, administrative tasks, etc. I have a friend who is well on her way to becoming an outstanding professional photographer. But she still has a day job so she can afford to get equipment and pay her rent. Now she’s running into the problem that there literally aren’t enough hours in the day for her to take care of post-processing, invoicing, seeking out new clients, marketing herself, maintaining her website, and all of the other random administrative tasks she has to take care of ALONG WITH the actual appointments for taking the oustanding pictures. She’s a perfect candidate for saying #FuckPlanB because dedicating all her time to her photo business would let her break through that wall so she can actually grow her business.

3. It takes away the fear of future regret. This is a big one. I was just talking with someone the other day who used the phrase, “If I could do it all over again…” I never want those words to cross my lips. Many people who want to make art for a living don’t want to utter them either. Taking time away from all of the normal bullshit in your life to dedicate yourself completely to something you’re passionate about can be the difference between saying those words and not EVEN IF things don’t work out. This is an ultimate win for #FuckPlanB because the kind of people it appeals two are the kind of people who share this same neurosis.

In the end, everyone is going to be different. For some, #FuckPlanB is the greatest decision of their life. For others, it could be an unmitigated disaster. For everyone else, it’s going to be a gray area. I spent a lot of time working towards a Plan B. I spent ten years in school for my Plan B before I worked up enough nerve to say “Fuck It.” But I didn’t say, “Fuck It” completely – that Plan B led me to a Plan Q career that I actually enjoy (some of the time) and wouldn’t mind doing should my Plan A never get to a point where it’s self-sustainable. And for a writer, even if you’re phenomenal, that’s not a guarantee. There’s nothing wrong with being sensible. And if having a Plan B you’re happy with is enough to get you to make excuses for not making art, you didn’t have the stuff to make a #FuckPlanB approach work out anyway.

I’m a big fan of having a Plan B for all of the reasons why saying #FuckPlanB is a bad idea. I’m also a big fan of saying #FuckPlanB for all the reasons that it’s a good idea. There’s no reason why you can’t be pragmatic AND a great artist.

So technically I’m now a published author. Actually, it would be more apt to say that I’m now a published technical author. Ahem.

So there’s that.

It’s a strange thing, seeing this thing in the world. It’s an extension of the research I did as an undergraduate and I have to say that as the time dragged on (and on and on) I honestly didn’t believe that I would stay so high in the authorship. One of my figures made it into the final paper (and a bit of the data I generated with some plate assays and plant measurements).

For those not familiar, authorship on scientific papers goes something like this:

Person who wrote the thing, second person who either helped write it or did a lot of the experiments, did some experiments, did an experiment or two, did one experiment, guy who gets the money for the experiments (i.e. the primary investigator or PI as they’re known)

In this case, this work was done in two labs between two PI’s so they’re double billed at the end (with Dr. Fromm having been the one to do the bulk of the PI’ing on this particular paper and Dr. Turano, who was my boss).

Fascinating, I know.

There is now officially a record of my career as a scientist. I’m a bit chuffed about it, I have to say. While I didn’t get a single publication out of my graduate work*, this numbs the sting a bit. After all, this paper represents the only high point of my life as a scientist – when I was still excited about it. And not just excited about the IDEA of becoming A SCIENTIST, but also enthusiastic about the PROCESS of science. I didn’t mind the long days because I loved so deeply. I lived in the lab the entire last year of college. Right up until I left DC for good.

It still makes me sad to think of that me, crying that last day in lab as I gathered everything from my bench into my notebook, sitting in front of the ancient Mac that was possessed by the spirit of John Ritter. Sad then because I was leaving the first place I ever felt really at home. Sad now because I realize that was the last time I was happy as a scientist.

I wanted to change the world.

I wanted to change the fucking world.

It’s funny how small a life becomes as we get older – the things that fall out of focus. I made a comment in jest in an e-mail to a friend earlier today about how time seems to be speeding up as we get older. I said, “I’m convinced it has to do with the weight of a lifetime of memories causing a warp in spacetime around me.”

The weight of memories can compress a thing. It can compress all of a life into these moments where we can see ourselves now and ourselves then and twist it all around until we’re so wrung out from the friction between the two that we can become broken.

But there’s always a light. Even black holes – the densest of things, let a little light shine through from time to time.

*That’s not to say I didn’t WRITE a paper. Or two. Just that they haven’t been published. Yet.

It’s getting on towards sunset and I’ve spent the last few hours putzing around the office or my apartment watching Amanda Palmer, Ben Folds, Damian Kulash and Neil Gaiman putz around a studio making music live.

For the Rethink Music conference today, they decided it would be more interesting if instead of standing around talking about music all day and eating thai food, they would take eight hours to write eight songs, record them and release the album the following day for free on Bandcamp (details about it can be found at Amanda’s blog here).

As someone who has always wanted to write music, but never really understood where to start, watching these four pros pull song ideas from twitter with Neil scrawling lyrics and Amanda, Ben and Damian crafting songs from them has been illuminating.

Now you would think that the songs that would come out of this forced creativity are no good, but listening to them as they come together, they’re not. They’re far from it. Personally, I can’t wait until tomorrow so I can download them and spend the afternoon writing e-mails and listening to them in a loop (albeit a shorter loop than they originally intended, as they’re two hours away from the deadline and they’ve only got two songs done).

It’s impossible to sit here now and think of all of the different things I could be doing with my time as they argue about arrangement or melody or word usage. And how much of that time I waste for one reason or another (and they’re rarely good reasons).

Seeing a song come together like this, it’s apparent how important it is to be proficient at whatever instrument it is you’re trying to write with. It’s hard to follow the train of a melody with chords if you can hear the chord in your head, but don’t know how to make your fingers play it. It’s apparent how in order to have one song sound like the next, style-wise, you need to write songs a lot, so the habits take hold, so that when you go from a sad song to an upbeat one to a trance-based piano song about a dead squirrel in a bathtub, it still has the things you like in it – the things that comprise a voice. And it’s apparent that in collaboration, you can sometimes find that thing that you kept trying to hear, but couldn’t (because your thoughts or too loud or you’re stumbling over the wrong choice of words or your hung up on how much the chord progression you wrote inadvertently sounds like a Creedence song), because other people are talking louder than the noise inside your head.

This exercise, this enterprise, this exhibitionism – whatever you want to call it – is nothing more than the single most valuable workshop on songwriting I have ever seen. It tears away the egg-foam crate-covered walls of the studio and lets people – sometimes desperate, always passionate people – who struggle to do the thing they want to do see one way that it could be done. A process to imitate and to emulate and to deviate from as it’s discovered what works for them and what doesn’t: it’s an illustration of the art of making art.

B(en). A(manda). N(eil). D(amian). Did so much more than make a record today. They showed others a place to start.

Now where did I leave my banjo?