#expressitmonth2016 - Captive

I am privileged to be in a comfortable sort of captivity - spending days in a windowless room alone, but unable to make a living doing my own work. Both types of work are consumed, but only one gets paid in cash. The other gets paid in spirit. The thing is, life costs so much more spirit than it does money. Maybe if we, as individuals, felt more valuable even in our meaningless work (rather than just tossed a few token dollars our way), the demand for spirit wouldn't be so damn high, and maybe I wouldn't have to assign a dollar amount to my artistic validity. Maybe I wouldn't be hand-slicing tomatoes for an hour wishing I could be even this valuable as an artist. I get $11/hour to cut tomatoes. I made 200+ videos for youtube for $1.50/month in theoretical unpaid dollars. Youtube is kind of a lottery.

So I stick to cutting tomatoes, like everyone else. It's captivity, but of the nicest sort. At least somebody will come around to change the newspapers every once in a while. Keep swimming, friends.

I'll spare us the links for today.