I tell each artist they have to grow toward a revenue stream.
One of my aims was to be paid as well as a plumber. Plumber was better-paid than any performance artist who was always doing this for free. It is so important to make a good living from art. You know, John Cage, until he was 60, he couldn't pay electricity.
I wish that the arts were better supported, and you can't say that enough times, but I also believe that whatever happens, artists will keep going.
If we don't reach out to make theatre affordable to the young generation, we will lose them all.
I always wanted to be a fiction writer, but I couldn't figure out how you could be a novelist and make any money, which continues to be a problem for novelists the world over.
As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them.
I doubt I'll be singing forever, because at some point people aren't going to want to hear my music, and I hope that I'll still get the opportunity to write songs.
We should not have a tin cup out for something as important as the arts in this country, the richest in the world. Creative artists are always begging, but always being used when it's time to show us at our best.
As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I'd eventually run out of steam on that, and that would've been the end of it.
We were interested in making a long career out of this, rather than being 'Canada's Newest Hitmakers.' It seems to work, and it trickles down to every aspect of the band.
The truth is, we haven't really figured out yet how artists are going to thrive in modern mass societies. We're all experiments.
I'm constantly thinking about what I'll do next. I never count on music being a career of longevity. I mean, longevity is key, and I hope that it lasts, but you just don't know, because it's not in your hands, you don't make the decision.
It's hard to make a living doing documentaries. Frankly, if it takes you five years to do a film, and that's the only film you're doing, you're in trouble.
I never planned to be a professional artist - I just want to be a sustainable artist. I guess they're the same thing if you look at them from a different angle.
Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic, there's a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can't exist without it.
