What is up with artists being criticized for promoting themselves? What’s with artists being ashamed to promote their work, their brand and themselves. You spent years dues paying and honing your craft. If you don’t think your work is one of a kind, why should anybody else? Besides, the marketplace is constantly advertising less than stellar work and folks pay to see it because they know about it from advertising.This whole press assault on Melissa Leo paying for ads to promote her Oscar win is some serious bullshit. She’s an actress of a certain age who’s been toiling away for pennies for the last 30 years. In a business where network execs, managers and agents are demanding that 30 year old women get botox or else…Where women are shunned unless they starve to weigh 100lbs and child sized hips. There is so much pressure, that an actress needs an Oscar to keep working past her 30th birthday. This is real. Melissa Leo publicized her brillant performance and won! What’s the difference between her paying for her press as opposed to letting a studio or record company demand that a star pose half naked on magazine covers? The difference is that in shaping her PR, she got to control the vision of herself and her work that she felt was important and representative. S crew the industry and all their criticism, she won the Oscar without having to humiliate herself on silly press junkets devised by the studio. And screw all the press that’s mad because a woman acted on her own behalf…there’s some insidious control mechanism at work and quite frankly, no one can represent me the artist as well as I can and neither Melissa Leo or Monique had to get naked to do it…I applaud them….We need to reframe the thinking that we’re being selfish or self serving by promoting our work. That is fear and insecurity at work disguised as humility. With social media, we have a chance (for the first time in history) to replace complaining about the work we’re offered with creating a following for the kind of stories we’re all dying to see. Often complaining is a substitute for inventive thinking and creating another business model. The day I realized this, I got so busy reinventing myself and my work that I had zero time for worrying about what someone else was doing. I have 15 years of experience and a 6 digit education under my belt and I think what I have to say is worth hearing. Ain’t shit wrong with relentless self promotion if your product is exceptional. Get to it, people and make something happen for yourselves and for us, your audience. We’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival. Don’t leave us hanging.
What is up with artists being criticized for promoting themselves? What’s with artists being ashamed to promote their work, their brand and themselves. You spent years dues paying and honing your craft. If you don’t think your work is one of a kind, why should anybody else? Besides, the marketplace is constantly advertising less than stellar work and folks pay to see it because they know about it from advertising.This whole press assault on Melissa Leo paying for ads to promote her Oscar win is some serious bullshit. She’s an actress of a certain age who’s been toiling away for pennies for the last 30 years. In a business where network execs, managers and agents are demanding that 30 year old women get botox or else…Where women are shunned unless they starve to weigh 100lbs and child sized hips. There is so much pressure, that an actress needs an Oscar to keep working past her 30th birthday. This is real. Melissa Leo publicized her brillant performance and won! What’s the difference between her paying for her press as opposed to letting a studio or record company demand that a star pose half naked on magazine covers? The difference is that in shaping her PR, she got to control the vision of herself and her work that she felt was important and representative. S crew the industry and all their criticism, she won the Oscar without having to humiliate herself on silly press junkets devised by the studio. And screw all the press that’s mad because a woman acted on her own behalf…there’s some insidious control mechanism at work and quite frankly, no one can represent me the artist as well as I can and neither Melissa Leo or Monique had to get naked to do it…I applaud them….We need to reframe the thinking that we’re being selfish or self serving by promoting our work. That is fear and insecurity at work disguised as humility. With social media, we have a chance (for the first time in history) to replace complaining about the work we’re offered with creating a following for the kind of stories we’re all dying to see. Often complaining is a substitute for inventive thinking and creating another business model. The day I realized this, I got so busy reinventing myself and my work that I had zero time for worrying about what someone else was doing. I have 15 years of experience and a 6 digit education under my belt and I think what I have to say is worth hearing. Ain’t shit wrong with relentless self promotion if your product is exceptional. Get to it, people and make something happen for yourselves and for us, your audience. We’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival. Don’t leave us hanging.
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