about money
and asking for it
When I was a kid, and we would stop at a gas station by the highway, my father would throw his hands in the air and implore us to only get what we needed for lunch, rather than “buy crap just because you want to buy some crap.” By crap, I mean things you don’t need, especially overpriced items for sale in an isolated environment located between one thing and the next. I was in a museum gift shop this weekend in Copenhagen, and it was filled with beautiful, handmade, expensive crap. It would have been unwise to buy the coral-colored silicone pepper grinder (clay mill within) or the hound’s tooth bath towel. The array of perfectly designed handle-less coffee cups got me feeling dizzy. I had been looking forward to the gift shop throughout the exhibition, and organized my time so that I wouldn’t need to rush. I need a new notebook, but they didn’t have what I wanted. I haven’t been earning enough money lately, so I can’t afford expensive treats, but because I had psyched myself up to get the notebook, when it wasn’t there I still wanted to get something. I couldn’t leave. I touched one piece of crap after another, trying to make a decision although the decision seemed to already be made. I was in a trance, and it wouldn’t stop unless I spent money or forklifted myself out of there. Luckily for my bank account, like Luke Skywalker after Darth Vader comes out as his father, I held on to my resolve and said no.
It was hard. When I found a white Ralph Lauren sweatshirt on the airport floor on the way to Berlin, it felt like a reward. The cotton smelled like a fancy babe who uses a straightening iron, and felt like fabric softener. I took it because it is cute, in a normcore way. I wouldn’t have purchased it myself, but it found me, and will look cool paired with unusual items.
But do I really believe the sweater was a karmic reward? I did, for a second, but then I un-believed it. If God had rewarded my “good” spending behavior by laying this fresh white cropped sweatshirt in my path, then that would mean I believe that God thinks it’s good for me to be thrifty. I believe God doesn’t care. Being modest and responsible, “tightening the belt” and “buckling down:” these are ideas dripping in Protestant ethics, and are alluring in that metal-and-leather, straps-and-ties, subby workhorse vibe. And although I am a Protestant, I believe the restriction-as-redemption metaphor is 90% delusion. Never forget: capitalism rests on the scaffolding of the protestant work ethic. The idea that we need to be smaller, tighter, and bent over in order to overcome a dip in income doesn’t make sense. Neither does the idea that one person’s relationship with money is private, or that that relationship is one person’s problem, rather than a collective one.
Recently, I sent an email to about 100 people, which enumerated my skills and described them, and asked for work. Here is an outline of the email, in case you would like to try the same trick. It won’t help you get rich quick, but it’s good to do if you know that you will need work in the months to come, and you want to be proactive about filling gaps in your income.
use a nice image in the subject line, and then use that image to introduce the topic of the email: looking for work.
link one thing you’re currently doing that you’re excited about and want to share
name what kind of work you do. You can list the ‘jobs’ but you can also try to wrap them under one conceptual umbrella, briefly, like saying “I spend most of my time thinking about how to compose in space, both as a choreographer and a graphic designer.”
tell them that this email is written so as to be easily forwarded, and that the CV and anything else are attached
go into more detail about you different skills. You can add links, references to people, photos, or other clickable things. Take space here.
give gratitude and thanks, remind people to reach out if they need help, or if anyone wants to collaborate or do a skill exchange on a certain topic.
I have decided to give you the option to pay me for “5, 6, 7, 8.” Substack has been pressuring me to do it since day one, and I resisted because I wanted to make sure this newsletter was something I really wanted to do. I also wanted to think about what model suited me and my politics best. For a little while, I thought about putting dance reviews behind a paywall and to leave the rest free. My friend Sarah, who has beautiful punky politics and a masterful way of speaking about money, asked why those who get the most from the dance reviews would need to pay for them. Right, I realized. I had come up with a “get ‘em hooked then lock the bait away” model. Then, I felt guilty about having thought that in the first place, which I led to me feeling guilty about wanting people to pay for this at all. If I can do it for free, why not do it for free?
The year I learned the most about money was the year right after college, which I spent living with someone who has a completely different financial background than I. We taught each other how to survive. I learned to know exactly how much you have at a given time, how counting and saving up is a habit I was not taught, and that I would need to adopt it if I wanted to become a dancer, which I did. My friend watched me network with ease. Together we walked into theater foyers full of strangers - the entitled behavior fostered by my upper middle class upbringing attracted the attention I needed to be connected. They witnessed the value of that behavior and copied it.
Talking about money is one way of diluting the suspiciously private chokehold money has us in regardless of our class or background. Talking about it is what allowed my friend and I to transcend class barriers as much as we did. There is no amount of talking that will change the way money fuels crisis, in both its excess and its lack. It ties you to systemic power that perpetuates money’s existence and the continued suffering it brings. What is money? It is power and status, it is comfort and safety, and it is fear and shame, it is a basic need and an incessant drain. Beyond the power it does or doesn’t give you, it is also simply confusing, intimidating, judgment-obscuring, and loaded with meaning.
Meaning-making – deciding what you believe in and what you’d like to un-believe – is what this newsletter is about. Belief and meaning-making don’t work without practice. Your actions matter as much as your beliefs. I think that being involved with your personal finances by imagining, designing, and fulfilling what financial responsibility means for you, by naming what is of value and working for that, is the same as fighting the financial violence we are all subject to.
I love this newsletter, and I value all of you who read it. I put time, effort, and care into it. I have been writing it for more than a year now, and I think that those of you who would like to remunerate me for these monthly essays should have the option to do it. All of it will remain free to everyone. I will never use a paywall. Being a paid subscriber means not only paying me for my work, but also paying to keep this work accessible to everyone.
And then, imagine, maybe if writing this became more sustainable, it could grow. For example, I don’t usually have time to research and add source material specifically for this newsletter. I’ll quote things I am reading anyways, but I can’t put aside enough time to look for other voices and engage with them in meaningful ways. Another idea is to commission a writers I like to take over one month’s newsletter.
Mostly, I want to acknowledge how valuable writing these letters is to me, and how much I cherish the relationship I have to you as an audience. I could write without you, but I would never want to. I need you to read me in order to write, and at this point I also need some of you to pay me. So, if you can afford to help pay for the three or so days I put into writing it each month, please do so. I promise to continue writing, caring for how I write, and working hard to send you thoughtful, nuanced, first-person letters about dance and devotion.
If you feel like you would rather like to put your money elsewhere, there is a fund called the Mattress, which I’ve helped create and currently help run. With an eye towards redistribution, the Mattress helps bring people who’ve been historically exploited by or excluded from what I’ll call the ‘European cultural project’ to Performing Arts Forum. You might remember PAF from the first-ever edition of 5, 6, 7, 8. It’s is a residency space in a big old building in France (a former convent), and the time I’ve spent there has taught me so much about experimental thinking, and all the ways of liveing together. It’s a place I care about a lot, and that isn’t able to transform and shed the layers of white supremacist logic that affect us all, and that therefore cannot be accessible to everyone, without the Mattress and the people who will come to PAF with Mattress’ support. You can read more and donate by clicking here.
Please share this email. Write me back with questions and critiques—God knows there are many.
Sending love,
Louise
This edition of 5, 6, 7, 8 was guest edited by Anne Swardson and Zinzi Buchanan. Thank you to Zinzi for asking me to define what I meant by “crap,” and for their words about how money fuels crisis perpetually, in both its excess and its lack. Check out Anne’s blog “Planted in Paris,” it’s really good. Thank you to Martin Hansen for the last-minute read and encouragement. And thank you to every guest editor who has been here for this writing thus far!
PS: It may be that you have received two emails. The first says “Subscribed” and the second offers you a button to upgrade to paid. I am working out how to avoid this issue. In the meantime, sorry for any confusion! Even a friendly newsletter platform like Substack makes it hard to create a model where everyone has access to everything. If you have experience resolving this please let me know!