Interviewing the American Dream; The Aspiring Artist Part Two. Where Do I Go?

"So the recession has clearly done a doozy for my American Dream."

Part two of my interview with an aspiring graphic artist talks about the American Dream today; in general terms and in terms of her own life.  

How much do you think that pop culture and the media inspires a certain concept of the American Dream?

I don’t give it as much credit as I think a lot of people do. I’ve heard, you know, typically your evangelists, your people who will say, ‘ooh “R” rated games or our fascination with sports, you know athletes and actors and things like that have a negative effect on our youngsters, our culture.’  I don’t give it as much credit as they do simply because, I grew up in that like everybody else. I think that parenting is a huge part of that. I think that if you instill in children what a true hero is, which is, hopefully, your parents or some member of your family. Like for me my biggest hero is my grandmother. Being a black female; she was born in 1913. One of the first black women to get a college degree. She was AKA, she was in a fraternity, all black fraternity. She had worked on Barbara Boxer’s campaign. She had two bachelors and a masters, getting her last degree in retirement. Matter of fact in Marin County right now there is a senior center that is dedicated and holds her picture and was renamed after her because of her works in getting senior care. She was voted woman of the year a couple of times in the County of Marin. That is a hero. That is somebody who is very much a part of their community, a very part of change, while having those perceived strikes against her, being a black female, excelling even though. That’s a hero. Not somebody who can play ball. That’s great! But that’s a skill. That’s something in its own right, but you notice the difference. You can appreciate somebody having an extraordinary skill and you can give them their just due. But that doesn’t necessarily in and of itself makes them heroic. So I think families have a lot to bear that they want to push off on media and society. But having said that it makes it difficult, it can make it difficult to be bombarded on an hourly basis, on a daily basis, with the newest car, with the newest makeup, with the newest fashion, with thin is in. Thin ain’t never going out. Oh no it’s a size 6, no it’s a size 4, now it’s a size 2, no it’s zero; be anorexic. Everybody wants to fit in. Everybody wants to be liked. So that’s where I somewhat take issue with the media. Where they’re constantly pushing this. Okay, okay this year’s color is pink, just to turn around next year and go, oh pink is out, it’s dated, it’s whatever. And we’re constantly being manipulated and coerced into whatever the newest thing is.

The media gets blamed for 90 percent or better of what goes on. I’m stating that they get blamed more than they should. But that is not to say that they share no blame at all. My feeling is that if we were individually stronger and spent more time with our children and our families that the media would have less effect. I didn’t say they wouldn’t have any. I said they would have less.

What is your sense of what young people strive for today?

If I was going to theorize now, my theory would be that to a great extent they would probably want the same thing that I wanted when I was younger. Simply because I don’t think fundamentally, even now that we’re in a recession, even though now we have all of these problems, I think people still have an idea of the American Dream. Now whether they’re able to achieve it (a Jaguar drives by)…speaking of the American Dream that’s a lovely little Jaguar right there...I don’t fundamentally believe the dream has changed. What I believe that has changed is people’s belief in achieving it. I think they still want the house and the nice car and the great job. But I think people now are particularly going, what is the likelihood of that really becoming a reality.  And I think that is where some of the shift is, it’s going, wait a minute, I honestly, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to achieve those things. Whereas when I was coming up, there was no question that those things would be achieved. It may have been a matter of when or how but the expectation was, you would get it. I think now that is not necessarily the expectation. You just don’t go, oh yeah, it’s a foregone conclusion. I may not get it today and I may not get it tomorrow, but it is in fact going to happen. So that’s what I see is a change. I don’t see that people have stopped wanting it. There’s just a little bit more of a reality check about whether or not that’s going to be plausible. I have a couple of cousins that are now in their mid to late twenties that I honestly do believe that they still see that as something that they would like…but they’re also a little bit more prepared for it not to happen. So if it doesn’t happen they won’t be destroyed. Whereas I think there are some parts of mine (American Dream) where it was so expected that it actually created some little moments of despair or depression. Because you go, wait a minute, what do you mean? You know kind of like you’ve been seeing, hearing, speaking all of your life for it to suddenly go away. That would cause a certain level of…wow!! How does that happen?  As opposed to you know that you have in your family a congenital disease, that you may or may not lose your sight. So then there’s this thing where you tend to appreciate more what you have and you tend to kind of prep a little bit more for a possible outcome that is not what you hoped for. So based on my relationships with them that’s where I think they’re coming from at least. They’re still wanting it. And the want.  Is the want media? Is the want something that is instilled from family? Yeah, I think it’s both. Now how much depends on each family because clearly there are families that don’t do anything except sit their children in front of TVs all day and absolutely the media and what they peddle is the 95 percent. But I think that there are other families that are teaching or training different kinds of focuses that, yeah you still want it. Let’s be clear, I don’t care how much your families eat dinner together and you play board games together. You sit down at the TV or the kids at school have whatever they have, the latest Xbox, the latest iPhone, the latest…..Sure you want it. But how you deal with the inability to get it or what you are willing to do to get it I think that’s where the differences come in based on, how people, you know, their fundamental ideology, how they were raised, what their focuses are.

To go back to myself, given that my focuses have changed through the years I realize that there are going to be a lot of things that I may not achieve. Doesn’t mean that I don’t want the six bedroom home that I grew up in, with the yard and the plot of land. I will never cease to want those. But the fulfillment and the focus that I have on this goal or this part of my life that I’ve now said this is what makes me happy somewhat makes my not getting those things okay, because I’ve made a conscious decision to go, I want this, which means that I may no longer be able to get that. 

So here in 2010, how would you summarize what your dream is?

Here in 2010, my dream would be to have a career, or to make money at the thing that I love, which is my art. My dream is to make money doing what I love to do and to make enough to be comfortable. Now, that still, in my mind, means a house and every once in awhile, every decade maybe, a car. But I am coming around to the idea that okay, maybe it doesn’t have to be a six bedroom house. Maybe it can be a three bedroom house. Maybe it doesn’t need a half acre of land, maybe we could have a quarter acre of land. And that I continue to be happy in the relationship that I’m in. That I continue to have good friends. Far more simplistic. But at the same time though different, it’s still the same. You hear me still saying I still want the house? It just doesn’t have to be the bigger house. I still want the job. It just doesn’t necessarily have to be the big paying job but the job that fulfills me that gives me, like I said, like Spielberg, I want to do it whether I’m able to pay my light bill this month or not. I guess at this point it’s more about what I consider to be more of an emotional and spiritual fulfillment. Those are my goals now. Obviously you can’t live without money, but to be fulfilled more emotionally and spiritually and really feel like, that when my time comes I’ve done exactly what I’ve wanted to do the way I wanted to do it and was happy.

What has the recession done to your American Dream?

It’s completely f’ed it up (laughs). It put a real, real, real, real hurt on my newfound American Dream. Because now I know what I want to do, what will fulfill me emotionally and all that other good stuff and yet there’s nowhere to do it. As you know, I was working for EA (Electronic Arts), hoping to do that whole little climbing up. You know starting through the back door. I had started meeting producers. There was a gentleman that I was slated to get in touch with who was a modeler which is what I wanted to do. Basically just networking, laying out groundwork in 3D modeling and animation. So I wanted to go into the gaming or the entertainment field. EA was talking about layoff, basically the writing on the wall. So I, probably about ten months earlier, had applied to BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). At that time I applied because I had a friend who was like, girl you need to stop, get your head out of the clouds, get a job, so that you can live the American Dream. Now her concept of the American Dream was a good paying job with a retirement plan, with good benefits. A union so they couldn’t just fire you at any whim. So you could buy stuff, lots of stuff (laughs). You know, I couldn’t care less. I was like, but it’s a crappy job. That’s not the point. You got retirement; you can buy all this stuff. So just to shut her up, I actually applied. Strangely though, as things worked, I get this notice from BART saying, okay we’re now going through applications, are you still interested? I’m at EA and I’m a contractor for EA so I don’t have fulltime employment, I mean I’m fulltime but I’m a contractor so it’s not like its permanent and I kind of go, hmmm, things are looking kind of shaky. When I first got to EA one of the smaller gaming studios had just closed and I went huh. Anyway so I took the job at BART. Probably two months after I left EA, they had a massive layoff. I clearly would have been a part of that layoff as a contractor. You get rid of your contractors first plus the game I was working on was coming to an end. So for that I was grateful because I said okay now I have a job. I had a classmate that was working at Factor Five which was a gaming studio. Probably eight months later that whole studio closed their doors. Sometime after that I had a couple classmates that were working at The Orphanage, which does visual effects for movies as well as commercial work, the whole studio closed. So all these are places that I would have been trying to apply to, get my foot in, work my way up, they’re gone. And that was a couple of years ago. First part of this year, EA did another massive layoff of artists. Where do I go? I now found my dream, my newfound dream, one that fulfills me, I have nowhere to go because for those jobs that still exist you now have artists that have been doing those jobs for years. Some of them decades. They’re out of work. Are they going to take me or are they going to take you, with ten years? So the recession has clearly done a doozy for my American Dream. Because now it’s like, now I’m left with this somewhat of a battle of, do I hold out the hope? Do I hold on to my dream, which is do my art on my own, keep perfecting it, keep working at it, stay at BART? Allow it to pay for my bills and hope that like everything this cycles through and be ready for the next wave. How long it’s going to be, how well that recovery’s going to be, nobody knows. Or do I acquiesce and say alright it’s all fine and dandy to have the dream but then there’s this certain amount of reality. The reality is you do have to pay your bills; the reality is I do have a partner; the reality is her job is constantly on a flex as to whether or not she will have it. I can’t support us on part time BART.  So do you go and be a cop? Do you go and get something that is solid, that is as much stability as there can be given our current state and just make it work? And so once again I find that I’m in this place like I was early on in life where you go, this is what is expected, I expected, everyone expected of me and yet it doesn’t work for me. And now I’m on the back end of that and I go, I know what works for me and know what I want, I know what I need. But it’s not working.