These half-baked thoughts have been prompted by a recent episode of Junior Apprentice, where the candidates had to choose artists and sell their work to art lovers. The candidates went out and met some artists. Some artists had (say) metre square canvasses that they were asking £80 for (say) and some other artists were charging £2500 (say) for something the same size. I have done a very lazy internet search and have found out that most of the factors (the medium used, size of canvass, where the work is being sold etc) that govern the prices an artist can charge are “subjective”. I guess I have to simply accept this – but my question is not really about “art”.
If I am not mistaken, “art” is a sub-set of “The Arts”, right? Well, music is another sub-set. In music, the “artist” gets paid based on how many copies of a song get sold and how many times it gets played on the radio. There seems to be a whole lot less about recording music that seems to be subjective.
As a result of my confusion about the value of art, I have decided I am going to attribute each of my songs a subjective street value.
My 1997 composition “Substitute Real Life” has a pleasing set of chords in its verse but lacks a chorus. Its lyrics are good, but dated, since they refer specifically to the nineties, so I therefore value it at, say, £10. “Rebecca” is a catchy pop gem that was played on Radio 1 “back in the day” so I think I’ll pluck...ooh, let’s think...um...£500 for that one. “Fish Boy”, originally composed in 1992, has had almost 1000 hits on YouTube so this must be worth £8000. Oh – wait – hang on...but...too many people have heard it now, so it has lost its exclusivity and therefore it is surely only worth £0.03 now, right?
Since only three people in the world have heard them, surely the entire twelve songs on our 2011 album “Keep Going On” are currently valued (at least) in the tens of thousands each, right?! Even better, the songs I am going to write in 2012 are currently “priceless”. So, if anyone out there wants to buy the stuff I haven’t written yet, they are welcome, but I only need to hear from an Oil Sheik or Bill Gates. Actually I’d quite like to hear my 2012 songs. I think I’ll start saving.
On a more serious note, I should add that you can buy any of our “released” songs. So far they come in collections that we call “albums” that we sell for a massive loss at about £2-5 per unit. And when I say we sell them, I should point out we sell hardly any because we are not massively popular. And yet that hugely popular picture of the fit tennis player scratching her backside that used to be in those Athena shops probably has a street value of £1.99. Oh, wait, maybe that doesn’t qualify as art.
Is blogging an art? I hope so. Wouldn’t it be cool if I lived in a world where you would owe me money if you had read this? Taking that to its extreme, don’t all of my students owe me money? I have (subjectively) been entertaining my students in my classes for eleven years now with ill-considered rants such as this, and I have gotten a few laughs...so...seeing as I am infinitely more exclusive than Michael Macintyre or Peter Kay, does this not mean that literally anything I say or write must be...um...invaluable?
Maybe this is why the word “invaluable”, a word apparently used to suggest that an object is so valuable it is not possible to apply a value to it, has always confused and bemused me so. Like “inflammable” actually means “it is possible that you can set this alight” but it reads as “it is not possible to set this alight”, I think the word “invaluable” might actually mean “this item has no value” after all, in which case I think I’ve just explained everything to myself – and that, ladies and gentlemen (and here comes the call-back) – is invaluable.
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