So, banks. We all use them, right? I guess some people don’t. Some people probably don’t trust banks, and keep their cash in neat little stacks under the mattress (doesn’t that get uncomfortable?), but a lot of us use banks. They’re a necessary evil. And I’ve never met someone who was enthusiastically supportive of their bank. No one has ever said to me, “Yes! I LOVE my bank! They make things easy for me and they give me cake and whisky when I’ve been especially good at managing my money!” No one has ever even said to me, “Oh yeah, my bank, they’re pretty helpful, actually.”

People have often, however, indicated how terrible/horrible/painful/stressful the experience of using a bank is. They say things like, “Wow! It would be easier to saw my own left leg off with a butter knife than access my account online!” and, “Oh yeah! Last time I went into a bank, I waited seven weeks to talk to someone. It was really boring, but at least I finally got to see what I’d look like with a beard.”

My life is quadruply stressful, because I have a bank in the USA and a bank in the UK. Do you know how many things can go wrong when you have TWO banks to deal with? Especially two banks that can’t interact with each other, because there’s a magic force field halfway across the Atlantic which prevents transatlantic transactions?

Here are just a few of my favorite bank-related memories:

- That time I wanted to wire some of my own money from my bank account in the USA to my bank account in the UK. My UK bank was like, “Sure! We can do that, no problem! Just fork over a 50% fee, wait four weeks, and you’ll be on your way!” And my US bank was like, “Um, you want to send money WHERE? To ENGLAND? I think I’ve heard of it, didn’t we beat them in a war once?” And then, after a lot of hemming and hawing and looking up of obscure codes, they were like, “Ohhhh yeahhhh, THAT place. No problem. Just fork over a 50% fee, wait another four weeks, and you’ll be on your way!” Unfortunately there was no money left to send myself after I’d paid all the fees.

- That time I wanted to access my account online. In fact, every time I have ever wanted to access my account online. In order to do this, I need a pointless little keypad that I stick my card into to produce a code. Which means I obviously also need my card. But! That’s not enough! I ALSO need a special (very lengthy) code that’s written on a laminated piece of paper they once sent me in the post. These things allow me to successfully log in about 80% of the time. The remaining 20% of the time I get a little red error message that says, “Sorry! We’re unable to log you in because WE’RE IDIOTS you recently used the back button on your browser.” Yes, yes I did use the back button on my browser, once, in 2004. SORRY.

- That time my card got eaten up by the cash point outside my local Tesco. I asked an important-looking Tesco employee if he could help, but of course he couldn’t help, because the cash points attached to his store are nothing to do with him. He pointed out that a lot of people had lost their cards in those machines lately. “Maybe you should ring your bank!” he said. So I rang my bank. At first all they could say was, “Um, I dunno, we can’t really help you, have you talked to the store manager?” But finally they suggested I go into a branch the next day. As the next day was Sunday, I went in the following Monday, and was seen by a very friendly representative who could see that some unusual activity had been flagged up on my account, but who couldn’t understand what that unusual activity was, because the person who had flagged it up hadn’t put anything in the notes. Finally he looked through all my recent transactions and decided that it was probably because I had withdrawn some cash in Wales last weekend. He lifted the restriction on my account, and ordered me a new card, which arrived promptly three weeks later.

- That time my US bank cancelled my debit card. Luckily, I was in the US at the time, so I went into a branch and asked the lady at the counter, above which was hung a sign that said, “We’re here to help!”, if she could help me.
“Oh no,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly help you. You’ll have to call that number, see, on the back of your card? They can help you.”
So I called the number. I sat on hold for a day, maybe two, and presently I was put through to a chirpy woman who was able to identify the problem immediately.
“You went abroad without telling us,” she admonished. I felt like a child who has been caught doing something he knows he shouldn’t do but can’t help doing, like eating ice cream before dinner.
“But I live abroad!” I said. “You know this. You regularly send mail to my address in the UK.”
“No,” said the chirpy lady. “We have no record of any address abroad.”
“But you send mail to my address in the UK!”
“No,” said the chirpy lady. “We have an address in California.”

So now, every time I move an inch, I feel like I should call both of my banks and assure them that IT’S OKAY! IT’S JUST ME! SHIFTING POSITION A LITTLE, BECAUSE MY FOOT HAS FALLEN ASLEEP!

But if I’m honest, some of my aggression towards banks – maybe most of it – can be accounted for by the fact that banks are all about money, and money stresses me out, even at the best of times. Banks stand there, on high streets and in strip malls, like living monuments to mortgages, loans, debt, wealth, capitalism, materialism, social (im)mobility, long work weeks, the American dream, the credit crunch. They represent what we have but also what we don’t, what we can never, have. And they add unnecessary complication to an already complicated thing.

Maybe I’d be willing to live with a lumpy mattress after all.

❧

I’m about to be a part of something really cool.  Next month, I’m going to New York with Xander and Ben for a sort of tour 2.0-type thing.  We’re calling it Man (hat on).  There’s even a logo (and the likelihood of t-shirts).  No, I’m not a musician.  My misguided adolescent foray into the world of string instruments is likely as far as I’ll ever go, musically.  But it doesn’t matter.  Because–although there will be music involved (provided mainly by Ben, obviously), this is really a tour about freedom, and doing what you like, and creating things.

We’re playing with this idea of “sustainable creativity”, you see.  It’s about using communities and ideas to sustain yourself, so that you’re able to do what you love doing.  It’s simple, on paper: if you’re a writer, you find a way to write.  If you’re a musician, you find the support you need to play gigs and write songs.  If you’re someone without a clearly defined path, someone who just likes to play with ideas—it means finding a way to do that.

It sounds easy, but it isn’t.  Creative output takes a lot of time, energy, love, and support, not only from the creator, but also from his or her community.  The problem is that many of us are saddled with a lot of extra baggage.  We have bills to pay and debts to pay off.  We have social and professional obligations that rigidly divide our days. Very likely we’re burdened with a “real job”—which we may find intellectually dull and emotionally empty, but necessary nonetheless (I mostly babysit photocopiers and answer telephones grumpily, for instance).

And in an era where time is money, how do you justify spending a few hours every day on your craft?  How do you find a few hours every day?  It’s impossible to underestimate the negative power of financial constraints.  If you constantly spend your time thinking, I should be making money, not fucking around, you quickly become creatively impotent.

So suppose we make things easier for ourselves.  Suppose, to start, we surround ourselves with other, similarly minded, creatively charged people, and become a kind of micro-community based on the idea of mutual inspiration.  This removes a number of barriers, and in their places, provides us with a number of opportunities.  It gives us an automatic audience, a built-in sounding-board, a kind of creativity support group.  It allows for collaborative effort and means that even an ordinary trip to the pub can result in a great idea.  In a way, it combines the social aspect of our lives with the creative aspect, thus gaining us time as well as emotional backing.

Well, that’s good.  That’s a source of motivation and stimulation.  But we’re still stuck with that bland job, those pesky bills, all the worries that get us down.  Even if we have a micro-community of like-minded creatives, we’re still not going anywhere. Not yet.

The next thing to do, then, is to give up the rock star dream.  Forget, for a moment, that you want to be the next superstar of the rock n’ roll, or literary, or art, or whatever world.  And remember why you started singing, or writing, or drawing, or playing with ideas, in the first place.  Innovative solo bass player Steve Lawson writes prolifically, and very well, about this: “I no longer need to pretend to be a rock-star.  The mythology of rock ‘n’ roll is nowhere near as interesting as the reality of creativity.”  And, Steve adds, “The 80s dream of everyone becoming Stadium rock stars has faded, and more and more musicians are looking at fun ways to get to play music in a financially sustainable way.”  And what we’re trying to say is: not just musicians.  Anyone who wants to make anything should be listening to Steve on this point.

It sounds cheesy, but this is an idea about survival and satisfaction, not about making a profit, not about constantly striving, clawing your way up the celebrity hierarchy.  This is an idea about how you can do what you love doing—what you would be doing anyway–and earn enough from it to justify doing it as something more than a hobby.  To earn enough from it to recoup your costs, eat a meal or two.  Eventually, to earn enough from it to pay all those bills, to live comfortably, to buy a new pair of boots (or the male equivalent) when you need to.  But to start, it’s only about getting by.

Luckily, that built-in creative community—even if it’s just a group of two or three people—is the key.  Gone are the days when any artist can continue to cling to the alcoholic outcast myth and hope that her lonely genius will be discovered.  There’s just too much stuff out there for that to be a viable tactic.  There are literally thousands of other musicians writing songs and putting them up on the Internet.  Thousands of other filmmakers uploading clips to YouTube.  Thousands of other writers with blogs.  Thousands of other painters with thousands of canvases stacked up in their basement.  And every single one of them can publicize themselves, advertise themselves, with the click of a button.  Passivity and sheer luck may work for some; but the only way to guarantee a sustainable, creative life is to actively seek one out.

So you start with a tiny community.  A few friends.  Maybe you start at the pub, where ideas can flow unchecked by the ordinariness of daily life.  And you realize that actually, there’s a lot of overlooked potential in the world.  You buy some tickets to New York.  You decide that you’re going to prove this theory by living it.

So we are three people, with different skills and ambitions but a common goal of creating things and doing cool stuff, taking a week off work.  We’re going to pack up our guitars, our laptops, our brains, and head across the Atlantic, where we’re going to do what what love, and what we’re good at, and find a way to survive.  We’re going to stay cheaply (with friends, on couches).  We’re going to earn just enough to recoup our travel expenses, and hopefully have enough left over for a few beers at the end of the day.

There are, of course, one or two things that anybody sensible might want to ask.  Or maybe not.  Anyway, there are some things that I had to ask myself as I wrote this all down:

But isn’t hunger/poverty/whatever a good creative motivator?

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t (see my post on this here).  But this isn’t about “making it” as an artist, necessarily (though it certainly could be); it’s about literally surviving off your own work.  It’s not about becoming great whilst (or even as a result of) stealing bread and sleeping on the street, but about using whatever greatness you already possess to buy bread, pay your rent, and get by.  It’s simply meant to be proof that you can, if that’s what you want to do.

Okay.  But by making it as much about money as the creative output itself, aren’t you somehow tainting your work?  Aren’t you basically selling out, on a minute scale?

This is really where the word “sustainability” comes in.  This whole idea is fundamentally about sustaining yourself, as a creative-type, so that you can create more.  Ultimately it’s always about the creative output, and the act of creating, not about the money; the money is simply what allows that process of creation to occur unfettered.

This is all very theoretical.  What’s the end result?

The end result is whatever you want it to be.  In theory this is a limitless idea.  That’s the beauty of it.  In practice, it may have more limitations than I currently anticipate.  But we’re going to find out, and we’re going to let you know.  In the meantime, please check out the Man (hat on) site, and follow our progress, and be a participant in this crazy idea.

❧

I woke up on Saturday, and I was depressed.  A friend of mine recently posted a quote on her blog from Breakfast at Tiffany’s:”The blues are because you’re getting fat or because it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?”  Which is exactly what happened to me.  Not  a latent, lazy sort of sadness, a seasonal affliction, perhaps, but an active force, something come over you suddenly and without warning, and possessing every atom of your body.

Being in Dublin didn’t help; it made everything worse.  I suppose I came here hoping to claim immunity from trivial worries and the sadness of shorter days; but of course the trouble is always that travel is not escape (Alain de Botton writes brilliantly about this, about “how little the place in which I stood had the power to influence what travelled through my mind”).  We always hope this when we go somewhere new: either that the unpleasantness and banalities of everyday life won’t follow us, or that we’ll become someone different in the context of a different space.  But travel is not some magical process of transformation.  At best it’s a state of mind, a way of revising our views of the world and ourselves, of exploring and watching; but it’s never the answer to all of our problems, never a method of erasing anxieties, and to a certain extent this will always be a disappointment.

What I forget, in times of minor woe, is that it’s actually freeing to know all this.  I sat in a Dublin café with the man.  I sipped my tea listlessly; I picked at my omelette; I listened to the children at the table next to us, who shouted and screamed and cried and laughed and dropped their toast on the floor and hugged their fathers and smiled at us and ran circles round the entire place.  I told the man I felt unhappy today, but that I didn’t know why–was it to do with my continual battle with my anti-anxiety medication, my desperation at being stuck in a job that a monkey could do, and do better?  Probably not, I concluded.  It was really all about money, which depressed me even more, that such a stupid thing–a philosophical construct–could make me stare so glumly at my empty plate.

It’s not a good city to worry about money in, Dublin.  Things are expensive here.  You can’t even drown your sorrows without taking out a small loan.  And the trouble with me is that once I start worrying, it’s nearly impossible to make me stop.  Even paying the small lunch bill caused a tremor of pain in my mind.

I could easily have wallowed all day.  We walked through St. Stephen’s Green, along the autumnal edges, where leaves were falling most heavily and we could avoid the stink of the pond.  A trio of teenage boys sat playing their guitars; a pregnant woman passed, with flowers in one hand and a man’s arm around her.  Lots of infants ran rampant, with parents trailing behind in helpless pursuit.  A few other lovers held hands.  I felt unoriginal and uninspired; and then I felt the whole world to be unoriginal and uninspired.

We went down Grafton Street, watched a man sculpt a sleeping dog out of sand, listened to Irish bagpipes and Beatles songs.  Past Trinity College and Temple Bar, we crossed the Liffey at O’Connell Street, into the great expanse of boulevard.  Like an abandoned Oxford Street, it sits with its handsome buildings, cheap storefronts, its absurd width and pockets of shoppers.  Gaggles of spotty teenagers in unfortunate clothing (sweatpants and faux-leather jackets, athletic shorts over leopard-print leggings with pop socks and sneakers) chased each other in zig-zags, shouted after one another, spilled their soda, lit cheeky cigarettes.  It was a glorious sun-brightened day and everything looked grey.

We went and sat at a converted church, now a café, bar, restaurant, and nightclub, overlooking an empty concrete square, a few gravestones stacked up on the fringe.  I sipped more tea.  I wanted to wallow–this is the thing.  There’s something delicious about a good wallow, most of us know this, but I was in danger of slipping from healthy wallowing into the realm of desperation.  I played with my spoon.  I said to the man: maybe you should go to the film without me.  I could sit and get some writing done. I could sit and feel sorry for myself.  He said, don’t be ridiculous.  But he said it so convincingly, and probably in a few more words, that I loosened my stranglehold on unhappiness, briefly allowed myself to consider the possibility that this was just a passing phase, and agreed to meet some Dublin friends for the afternoon showing of Zombieland.

I should mention a few things now.  The most important is that I don’t like zombie films.  I don’t like horror films of any kind.  The gorier they are, the more they make me cringe; so although it’s a comedy, and I knew, going in, that it would be funny, the title “Zombieland” didn’t bode well.  Also, I hadn”t been to the cinema in over a year.  I’d forgotten how overwhelming the endless dark corridors, the escalators, the giant bags of popcorn, the bad carpets and the flashing lights are.  I’d forgotten the thrill of anticipation; the movie-theatre smell; the crunching of bags and sipping of soda.  I’d forgotten how much I like to see the previews!  I’d mostly forgotten how huge those big screens really are.  The first few moments of splattering zombies were very, very intense.

Then something strange happened.  I started…what was this feeling?…to enjoy myself.  Really?  Yes.  I laughed at the jokes and started to feel affection (of a certain kind) for the characters.  I forgot how funny I myself was feeling; how unreasonably low, how inexcusably self-indulgent.  I had wanted to sit around like the ghost of some bleak, damned writer; to mope over coffee, to shiver outside in pursuit of quality people-watching, to envy everyone that walked by their freedom and their carefree smiles.  I thought I needed that; but what I actually needed was something else entirely (it always is, isn’t it)–in this case, some good company and a zombie comedy.  We came out into the city; we smiled, we laughed, we ate an impromptu dinner, and the evening turned to night and even if it wasn’t something I couldn’t have done at home (or maybe it was, maybe that’s the point of all this, that the travel state of mind was somehow both responsible for my mood and necessary to lift the cloud), I was grateful for the power of it.

❧

I’ve been back at work for three hours.  I think that’s enough, really, don’t you?

It’s such a rude re-introduction to the real world.  Hulking black PCs, lists and lists of menial tasks.  I can’t see the surface of my desk for the piles of shit on it.  Mostly it feels like an interruption of happy routine.  I like being able to read at midday, work on my book after lunch, write a blog post whenever I feel like it (so I’m writing this now just to spite the working world).

The funny thing about a really good holiday is the depression that sets in after.  This morning I threatened to avoid it altogether by nearly sleeping through all my alarms.  Now I’m staring with some chagrin at the huge map of Oxford across from my desk, thinking I probably should have slept through all my alarms, and thinking also that I’m nostalgic for something which is barely over.  The freedom.  The blue skies.  The delicious meals.  The cider.

On a more positive note, I’ve returned from holiday feeling spiritually refreshed (please contain your derisive snorts), and oddly empowered.  I have this niggling sense that I am, after all, in control of my future, and if I don’t want that future to necessarily include being paid to stare at a wall and occasionally file things, I may actually be able to do something about it.  It’s a good start, anyway, and until we can all move to a commune off the East Devon coast and sustain ourselves on creative endeavors and home-grown vegetables, it gives me incentive to keep going.

The other nice thing about coming back from a vacation is the lingering effect of “tourist eyes”.  When you go away–even if it’s just a few hours south of your usual haunt–your vision (both literally and metaphorically) is temporarily altered, and there’s a precious period of a few days after your return when you haven’t quite readjusted and you’re still seeing things in a holiday-way.  So I’m enjoying wandering through Oxford.  I’d forgotten quite how much I take it for granted.  Xander and I even dipped into the Natural History Museum on Saturday–just because we could–and spent a blissful half hour feeling like 19th century explorers.  (There is something, we find, irrevocably Victorian about a Natural History Museum).  We just don’t get that in our natural state of being.  It takes a trip–a big one, a small one, a physical one, an emotional or mental one–to make us remember our surroundings.

❧

Just as I was finishing up yesterday’s post, the Man came upstairs into the study and said, “I want to read you something that will make you feel much better about our finances.”  He then sat down on the bed and read me this article, from the Guardian Saturday magazine.  It’s a long and excruciating tale of financial and personal meltdown, and I won’t go into great detail (yet), but the idea is this: Edmund Andrews, experienced economics reporter for the New York Times, finds himself, at the age of 48, in a bit, but not much, of a pickle.  Recently divorced, and engaged to Patty, another divorcee, he’s paying his ex-wife $4000 a month in alimony and child support, leaving him, he says “just $2,777 a month to live on.”

The Man and I exchanged a glance–if either of us had close to $3000 a month to live on we’d be beyond thrilled, but then again, we don’t have kids or years of living comfortably already behind us–and then he carried on.  Patty is a mother of four, and Andrews gets his two children at weekends, so they decide that in spite of Andrews own doubts about his financial situation and Patty’s current unemployment, they should…buy a house!  Because that’s what adults in these situations do, apparently.  Look at the price tag ($480,000, in this case), realise they’ll never be able to afford it, and then go ahead and buy it anyway.  In Andrews’ case, buying the house involved a mortgage loan officer and a few interesting snags–carrying too much debt in spite of his $130,00 salary because of a second mortgage, under his name though his ex-wife was responsible for the payments–and the assumption that Andrews would be able to refinance because the value of his house would be higher in five years.

So there he is, digging this hole.  A few months later he goes to the ATM and discovers he’s got just $196 (his allegation that “we didn’t have enough cash to cover more than a week’s worth of shopping” did puzzle the Man and I for some time–even for a family of four it seems a little extravagent to drop $200 a week on groceries), and thus begins a long few years where he and Patty spiral into debt, maxing out every credit card they can get their paws on until they owe $50,000 “in credit card debt alone.”

And so here they are, now.  Still struggling along–”I have no idea when I might be able to get credit again,” writes Andrews, “much less retire.”  He claims it hasn’t been a total loss, that having the house was good for his family, that he and Patty are as close as ever.  And at least he’s got a book out of it, which will presumably appeal to millions of credit-starved hole-diggers and victims of economic downturn alike.  And as an economics reporter he has a better handle on the situation in its wider context than most.

But I can’t help but feel a little sick reading the story.  The Man was right, at least: it did make me feel better about our own, often precarious financial situation.  Student loans aside, neither of us is in deep debt, and I berate myself when I go more than £10 into overdraft on any given month–say, £20 into overdraft.  Recently I found myself mired in credit card debt, which my parents were thankfully able to help me out of.  But I didn’t borrow the $15,000 that Andrews had to from his family–my bill was for $600.  Andrews would probably laugh at us, and our pathetic little money worries.

So I have to suppose it’s about scale: someone used to earning upwards of $100,000 a year has a completely different idea of how things work than someone who literally lives paycheck to paycheck.  The middle-aged high earner has lost all sense of what it’s like to really economize.  It’s been so long since things were stripped down to their essence, since it was survival and not luxury which mattered, that it’s impossible to revert to that primitive way of life.  Or maybe the kinds of people who find themselves $50,000 in debt at the age of 50 never lived paycheck to paycheck.  Maybe that’s the problem.  Maybe it’s the downside to landing yourself a solid and dependable job straight out of college.  If all you’ve ever known is security, how can you make yourself think differently?

Make no mistake, the Man and I are not in an enviable financial position, but there are things about the way we comport ourselves during these lean years that make me think it’s a temporary position, and that, in fact, our having struggled as we do will ultimately turn out to be a good thing.

Because I’d like to think that even if we find ourselves struggling, twenty or thirty years down the line, with kids and needs that extend beyond eating, drinking, sleeping, and being together, we’d know when–and, more importantly, how–to stop.  Living on the edge of financial ruin–and surviving–has been an enormous experience for me.  I grew up in the lap of relative luxury.  I never thought, let alone worried, about money.  (Especially as a university student, that classically tight time, when I was earning an income from part-time jobs in addition to the allowance my parents gave me, and didn’t pay a single bill.)  But it’s been good for me to find myself where I am now, and the Man and I have mostly been alright.  I have a hard time imagining that should we come up against serious financial hardship later in life, we wouldn’t be able to sacrifice everything, just as we have now, in order to avoid descending into that dark place that Andrews and his wife find themselves now.

Or maybe that’s just my youth speaking.  In any case, the article did exactly what the Man promised it would, and as I spent the next few hours reviewing my own finances, I found myself laughing a little.  We’re all allowed some smugness, aren’t we?

❧