Tom Guarriello explores the tension between artistic integrity and making money, arguing both matter. He warns that rejecting commerce alienates audiences while chasing only profit erodes authenticity. Creator Digital Soul faced this directly when deciding whether to accept 15-minute pre-roll ads, risking the goose that lays golden eggs.
Well, Joseph, hi, it's Tom Guarriello. Just watched two of your videos and wanted to, of course, comment on the theme that's running through them both. I watched your dilemma video and I watched your business of art video, which has been up for a while, and I've been putting it over on the side waiting for the right moment to watch it, and I watched it this morning. So I want to try to crisply, if I can, address the issues that you raised in those two videos because they're, you know, to me very important in terms of both personally the evolution of my thinking over time about the relationship of money and creativity, and also I think in the evolution of this community. The tension that exists between creativity and commerce is an ancient one. Going back into the history of art, you know, patronage came about because artists needed to be supported while they were producing their art. And the relationship between the patron and the artist has always been a relationship of ambivalence, and I think reflecting the ambivalence that artists experience in regard to art, and that many of us who are involved in creative endeavors feel in regard to the relationship between money and what we produce. But that tension is at the heart of human creativity. I think it's at the heart of modern human creativity. The idea that, that we create for others— you mentioned this in one of your videos— that it's impossible to think about being an artist without thinking about others. And as soon as we talk about others, we talk about the, um, uh, the factor of desire. And that others want things, that we want things, and that we are willing to, in our pursuit of those things, to spend money in order to get them. And the capitalist system has created a mechanism for us to value the work of others and for that value to accrue back to the creator of those things. Now, that tension, the tension between commerce and creativity, I think needs to live within the artist. What do I mean? Uh, when, when we, when we think of tension, we always— we often think about resolving the tension. But I think this is a tension, and many tensions I think are like this, This is a tension that, if resolved, creates huge problems for the artist. Let me tell you what I mean. If we resolve the tension between creativity and commerce on either side of the dialectic, on either pole of the, the tension, then the work loses something essential. If we resolve the tension and say, I am not going to create anything that could possibly have financial value in the marketplace because I am opposed to creating, um, and having money be attached to my creative work, then I've distorted my work in a way that makes it inaccessible for people who would want to pay. For that work. On the other hand, if I resolve the tension in the favor— in favor of commerce and say I am going to produce work that has commercial benefit to the market, then I'm losing that, that spirit that you described so well when you talked about the authenticity, originality, honesty, truth of the work of art that we find most compelling and desirable about works of art. So living in the tension rather than resolving the tension, I think, is the challenge to the creative person, and it's a lifelong endeavor. There will be times in our lives when we will be closer to one or the other of the poles of that tension, of that dialectic. And there will be times when we feel ourselves being pulled very strongly towards the commerce end, times when we feel ourselves being pulled very strongly towards the creativity end. And I think the work— a part of the work is to develop what Twilight Tharp talks about as the habit of creativity. So that the momentum of being creative continues to drive us forward and not to force us to resolve the tension towards either of those two sides. Now, Digital Soul is experiencing that tension pretty vividly now as he's been asked to accept 15-minute pre-roll ads in his videos. And you can see that, you know, here's a fella who's on the horns of the dilemma that you describe. He's living the tension and feeling the tension and feeling the discomfort of taking money for what he does. And what will that do to my work? And will it alienate my viewers? All the right questions. All the right questions. No one can answer that question for him. He's put out the call for viewers to respond. But in the— at the end, he has to make that call, and he has to then be able to live his creativity in a way that demonstrates that he has not resolved the tension so strongly on the side of the commerce, uh, poll that he's lost the essence of what it was on the creativity poll that made him popular in the first place. You know, the The fable of the goose that lays the golden egg, I think, is one of those things that we have to keep in mind. That creativity does produce golden eggs, but if we try to force the goose to lay golden eggs by resolving the tension on the side of, of commerce, then we end up killing the goose, and in this case, killing the creativity. I'm trying to stay brief with this. That's as brief as I could have been with it. So thanks very much for listening, and I look forward to more conversation among us all about this issue because this is not going to go away. What's happened here is that $1.65 billion was paid for this service by Google to YouTube in order to develop a powerful advertising medium. We are the heart of that advertising medium. Yes, the big studios are going to be here, and yes, there are going to be a lot of made-for-YouTube product by the commercial— by commercial people in the entertainment industry, but we continue to be the heart of YouTube, and we're going to have to figure out where we fit in the world that's evolving here. So, a couple more minutes of jabber. Thanks, take care, bye-bye.
