Good. Fast. Cheap. Any two, but never all three.

There’s a triangle wedged in the heart of art as commerce. You’ve heard this before. Good, fast, cheap. Any two, but never all three. If you want something good and fast, it won’t be cheap. If you want something good and cheap, it won’t be fast. If you want something fast and cheap, it won’t be good.

For the most part, this has proven pretty honest in my experience. But it also takes the nuance out of a lot of it. There are a few exceptions. And most of those exceptions are determined by a different triangle: profile, passion, price. On the other side of you making something, is another artist who you’ve invited to make something. My wife, a freelance director, will take any job so long as it fulfills one of three things: does it elevate her profile? Then it can be work for cheap. If not that, is it something she is passionate about? Great. If it is neither of these two things, then the price has to be right.

As a writer, it’s often my pleasure to invite someone who is SO good, and for lack of a better phrase, “Accustomed to a certain lifestyle because of it” who will, nonetheless come and record a song for me because it fills their passion. Or is part of a bigger machine that will elevate their profile. It’s rarely a thing they do because I pay handsomely. Wish it wasn’t so, but I work a full time job out of the arts because… institutional biases and an over dependence on consumer culture. That’s a conversation for a different time. Today I want to talk about something completely different, and in order for me to do that with credibility, I nee to first acknowledge the above. That there are two concentric (concentric?) triangles at play in everything.

About a week ago I reached out to a friend. Actually they’re a new friend. I know them through their paramor, who is an old friend. They don’t really know my work, though they do know one of my shows, and maybe their paramor has given them insight into what I’m about. Unclear. But I invited them, via messenger [read: all in text, archiveable and presently available to read from their phone] to come in and record some spoken-word dialogue for a piece I’m recording. We set a date, after which I said “I’m only available after 5, I have to be at my job until then.” They said great. I put it in my calendar.

Here’s what happens next:

I put their name into my calendar. Which means that time, while still mine, has now been promised to them. I would never do it if they hadn’t agreed to it. But since they had, I dedicated that time to them. What I did not do, was find another person to see if they were willing to do the exact same work. Because that seems super douchey. If you’re going to ask someone else, then start there. That’s called respect and integrity. So the day of, I text them again to confirm. They say “what time” and as is very much always the case with me, I said then what I said before: I’m free after 5. [simply scroll up, if there’s confusion about that.] To which they said they could not do it after five because they had to meet their paramor’s family in Great Neck.

What did not happen between then and now? I did not get a call or a text or an email from them saying they had double booked. I heard it on the day of, as I was confirming them. Which meant what for me? It mean that anything I had planned on getting done that morning had to go out the window in favor of finding someone else to come in last minute and do this for me. Which, thankfully, I did.

They apologized (?) and said to send them the music so they could learn it for next time. (WHAT MUSIC???) I ignored. Because there’s nothing they do now, when the stakes are as low as this, that they won’t do when the stakes are super high. When they get their broadway show? When they get their pilot? When, if they are ever so fortunate, they reach the kind of level that will allow them to be accustomed to a certain lifestyle, they will find a reason to devalue who they work with or under schedule or over schedule, or blame their paramor, or any number of things. And now they will most certainly not be invited to come work with me on anything either.