Jorge Drexler is living proof scientists make incredible creatives.
This is a hill I’ve been willing to die on for some time. Having creative hobbies and also being someone who enjoys and is reasonably good at technical and scientific pursuits is often met with disdain from the “pure creatives” of the world. It’s a bizarre little pocket of culture clash. I don’t run into it often, but every time I do, it baffles me.
In my limited experience, conversations with career creatives usually go around in the same unproductive circles. I’ll mention that I have creative hobbies, including painting, knitting, and writing, to a peer whose career is more explicitly in the creative space. It’s almost always met with some measure of dismissive “well that’s good for you that you have your little hobbies” and then a treatise about how difficult it is to truly be a creative and how their skills are so undervalued.
I wish I knew what the name is for this sort of conversational trap. It’s sort of like a thought-terminating cliche, I guess. Because of course, I don’t disagree. It’s undeniable that creative fields are routinely underpaid and undervalued. Not to mention that people who make music and art for a living and rely on it for their income often have a hellish time trying to make ends meet. That is a problem that should trouble anyone with a conscience. Art is what we stay alive for, and it should not be as difficult as it is for artists to make a living.
I just wonder why it often seems like me considering myself a creative even though my career is technical seems to take away from that for some reason. It feels petty and unnecessary to dismiss creative hobbies as “little”, or to diminish creative hobbies at all because they do not make the creative person money. I find this uncomfortable feeling I have often gets swept away under the leftist guise of “well artists should be paid for their work”, leaving the implication open that if you are not paid for your art then….you aren’t an artist, somehow?
I often find myself troubled that my fellow leftists are so willing to let ourselves be swept away by nuance-free dogmatic statements when that is precisely the habit that led to the rise of the most dangerous, anti-progress right-wing we’ve seen in our lifetimes, but that’s another hairy subject entirely. And, as nuance-free statements go, I suppose “artists should be paid for their work” is pretty harmless.
Part of why this type of sentiment, that you’re only truly an artist if it’s your livelihood, troubles me is the principle of the thing. The endlessly monetized internet makes creative people feel like they have to make money off their art, and that pressure can discourage creative people from putting their work into the world. I have a problem with that. The best artistic economies and communities I have been a part of are ones where works are freely given and traded and received for no money. This encourages tons of people to get involved, who may not otherwise put their work into the world for fear of no one wanting to pay for it. Giving and receiving art without expectation of payment is a pretty profound experience, and the reciprocal nature of it is part of why it works.
The other reason I dislike the gatekeeping sentiments I see around art so often is because you just never know where someone’s “silly little creative hobby” may lead them. It could be in a Cinderella type path of suddenly finding fame and riches. It could be a fulfilling outlet that never makes the artist a single red penny. We have no way of knowing. What does it profit us to decide who is and is not an artist?
Jorge Drexler is one of my favorite musicians of all time. He’s a gifted, hardworking, Oscar-winning singer/songwriter from Uruguay. He won the Oscar for the song “Al Otro Lado del Rio” from The Motorcycle Diaries. He’s also a doctor by training, though he appears to have exclusively been a musician since 1995.
I see his scientific influence in so much of his music. Particularly, if in perhaps a bit of a basic way, in his song Todo se transforma. The lyrics to the chorus, typed first in Spanish (the original language) and then my own rough translation, have been an anchor for me in turbulent times.
cada uno da lo que recibe
y luego recibe lo que da
nada es mas simple
no hay otra norma
nada se pierde
todo se transforma
everyone gives what they receive
and then receives what they give
nothing is more simple
there is no other rule
nothing is lost, everything is transformed
Now, my science-degree-having-ass immediately listened to this song and went, “holy shit! A song about the first law of thermodynamics!”
Of course, as with any art, the meaning stretches beyond its scientific roots. The verses paint a picture of a suspended, interconnected moment in time that represents the infinite interconnectedness of all living things. It’s a moving meditation on the (cliche, but accurate) truth that science tends to reveal over and over again: None of us are islands. Everything is connected and cyclical.
Is Jorge Drexler any less of an artist because part of his career was scientific? Would he lose his talent and gift if he chose to go back to the sciences and music became his hobby instead of his career? I don’t think so.
I think it’s as simple as this:
Artists should be free to self-identify as such with no gatekeeping. Some artists may find a stage and payment for their work. Others will not find either of those things, either because they don’t want to or they are unsuccessful in doing so. Finding success on any scale at all is not a prerequisite to considering yourself an artist.
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If you’re inspired to check out Jorge Drexler, might I recommend his album Eco? It’s one of my top 5 albums of all time.
I may not get to posting next week—it’s the 4th of July and I’ll be traveling. Maybe see you next week, but if not, then the week after that.