When I first came to New York, more than ten years ago, it was a bad time to be a writer, an artist, any sort of creative person. A democrat was in the White House, the economy was booming, and crime hadn’t been so low since 1964. It was difficult to walk down the street without a venture capitalist hitting you with a sack of money. Recent college grads were landing jobs with fat stock options and titles like “Director of Advanced Mixology” and “Imagineer.” You could become a millionaire playing around on the internet in pajamas.
Even I couldn’t help but be touched by the boom. I sent a fake writing sample to some start-up called imaposeur.com or something, and got a call a few weeks later: how would you like 200 bucks to write a column? Sure. How would you like to write the lead feature of our launch issue? Sipping champagne on each level of the three-level launch party in a loft downtown, I was drunk on power. Those were different times. Who’d want toil for ten obscure years on some work of staggering genius when you could be an Imagineer, have your own office with a margarita machine? Why would you want to write about suffering when you could get a dollar a word for writing a feature about natural deodorant or slacks made out of organic cotton? We were all a little stunned then, what with being hit by the sacks of money and everything.
Of course, things have changed. Terrorism, blackouts, war, recession. Is it the 1970s again? Maybe. Alls I know is that every day NPR wakes me up with another scary warning about the economy falling apart, and at least I know one thing: I don’t have to worry about somebody luring me away from my dark garret with promises of untold riches and incredible stock options.
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