Down to a Fine Art - by Elizabeth Flux
ISLAND | ISSUE 159
Forgive me: I’m going to tell you about the unibar toilets.
As a medical student I didn’t go to the unibar often. Our building was barely on campus – you had to exit the university gates, cross a road, and go up some stairs before you found yourself standing in the faintly sheep-smelling building. It meant that, when we went drinking, it would either be in the common room or the cheap pub nearby.
But, every so often, there’d be a band, or a gathering of school friends, or the quiet unacknowledged tug of wanting to know what uni was like for the ‘normal’ students. A small group of us would make our way across the sticky floor, order a jug, and I, inevitably, would excuse myself, navigate the labyrinth of corridors, and enter the second cubicle of the unibar toilets.
And there, stuck to the wall was the metal toilet roll dispenser. Right above the slot where you could pull sheets, someone had written in Sharpie: ‘Please Take An Arts Degree’.
I thought it was funny. Because here’s the thing – I imagined my degree was leading to a career that’s actually useful, that has a role in society. The arts were just for fun. They filled the time in between real life, between the things that actually matter.
It wasn’t so much an opinion as an uninterrogated certainty, swirling and churning beneath everything else; I’m fairly sure I never thought those things in those words. I hadn’t given it form. Now, I’m appalled at myself.
My 17-year-old self is not alone. This attitude exists – perhaps subconsciously – in many people. Possibly in most people. There are the real jobs – the essential jobs – and there are the expendable ones. Column A: doctors. Column B: arts workers. As someone who has moved from one to the other, it’s strange now to have a foot in each camp.
As I pulled the flimsy one-ply out of the dispenser I looked again at the words and smiled. I made sure to commit them to memory. I would tell my friends to look out for it if they headed off to the bathroom. What a good joke.
Ten years later I would be staring at my phone, watching a video of two women in a supermarket having a physical altercation over the last packet of toilet paper. Half of my loved ones would be getting ready to head out to work in hospitals and clinics, their jobs, both secure and dangerous, memes papering over their very real panic that clung to every jocular status or caption.
The other half were facing an employment crisis. As shows, festivals and workshops were cancelled, months of preparation went into the bin. Uncertainty and financial rockiness was all that lay ahead. Book tours were cancelled. Galleries were closed. Editorial hours were pared back. Lecturing jobs were cut down until they existed only in theory. The Australian arts industry was crumbling and if anyone outside of the industry dared mention it they’d be met with the favoured mantra: ‘the arts are a luxury’.
“The Australian arts industry was crumbling and if anyone outside of the industry dared mention it they’d be met with the favoured mantra: ‘the arts are a luxury’.”
*
‘So, what is it, fifth year next year?’ We had a family friend over, and as we sat down with our cups of tea, he made the usual polite enquiries into my studies.
‘I’ve actually deferred.’ My voice wobbled as I tried to look him in the eye. ‘I’m going to try writing.’
His smile froze. ‘Ah. Right.’ And then the conversation quickly shifted.
I’ve thought a lot about this moment in the years since. He was just being nice, and my unexpected response had thrown him.
The words I said might have been I’m going from medicine to arts. But what I was telling him, what he heard, what society had instilled in him, was that I was choosing to go from being someone with purpose and value to something unknown and unnecessary. How are you supposed to respond to that?
*
One friend, a hospital physician, posted two pictures of the virus on Facebook, a take on a classic meme format. In the first, the top half was the now-familiar red, while the bottom was a bright denim blue. In the second, the virus was awkwardly shoved into a pair of jeans. ‘If COVID-19 wore pants, would it wear them like this – or like this?’
I saw it and laughed out loud in my empty house.
Afterwards, I read an article about two healthcare workers in Wuhan, both young women, who had contracted the virus. The article described their families, their cats, their very normal lives. It teased from the outset that only one of the two survived, a macabre trick to keep you reading. When I got to the section about one of their mothers bringing her daughter food, I cried and couldn’t stop.
This is just how it is now. I’m scared. Really scared. Not in the same way I was when I was a child and learned that stonefish exist, or found out about Ebola. Back then my fears were about something happening to me and abruptly snuff- ing out my own life. Now, the terror comes from looking around at a world where the goalposts are not simply moving but disappearing entirely.
I think about that article and mentally substitute my friends from medical school who are now out in the world, scattered throughout hospitals across Australia, preparing for what comes next. I wonder which details a journalist would choose to highlight from their lives. I wonder who among them will get sick.
I wonder if any of them will die. If I think about it too deeply my mind starts to spiral, my breath catches and my stomach clenches. It isn’t a hypothetical.
The same fear snakes through my body when I read status updates from friends who work in supermarkets, in hospitality, in the arts. Every day something closes or gets cancelled as we are progressively sectioned off into our own little compartments in the world. With every closure or cancellation comes a wave of unemployment and financial insecurity.
A friend puts up a picture of her cat in a paper dress she’s made from posters for her cancelled show – what was supposed to be the bulk of her income this year. Half of my loved ones don’t know how they are going to pay rent this year. And, while they do the right thing and stay at home in houses they can’t pay for, the other half are forced to go out into the world to keep things turning; to keep the rest of us healthy, fed, and alive.
One side is overemployed and the other is under. But it is the same thing dragging them all down.
*
We’ve been forced to think, more than ever, about what is or isn’t essential – or more specifically who.
COVID-19, however it wears its pants, has forced us to distil things down to what really matters. It’s ‘What would you save if your house was on fire?’ and ‘Who would you have in your nuclear bunker?’ all rolled into one. The answers have shone a light on some ugly truths and attitudes.
Who is essential? The supermarket workers on minimum wage. The hospitality staff who bring us food or package our deliveries. The healthcare workers who don’t have enough personal protective equipment.
Who isn’t essential? Interestingly, and essentially by their own admission, politicians. Parliament isn’t sitting for the foreseeable future. They’ll be paid their normal salary, of course.
What will we do in self-isolation? Read books. Listen to music. Watch films and TV.
What is happening to the people who make these things? They can’t pay their rent. They’re haemorrhaging money. And they’re being told their work is meaningless by people who would, on any other day, declare their love of movies.
Perhaps we aren’t used to seeing the people who create art – we only know the end product. The arts are so ingrained in everyday life that it’s easy to think they just happen. Music. TV. Film. Books. They’re always just around. Meanwhile, always in the background, are the people who create them. The hours of honing skills, writing drafts, receiving rejections, making false starts, and just sheer grind of creating good work, all invisible behind the final film, book, artwork or game.
“Perhaps we aren’t used to seeing the people who create art – we only know the end product. The arts are so ingrained in everyday life that it’s easy to think they just happen. Music. TV. Film. Books. They’re always just around.”
The other problem is that because the end products are associated with fun and recreation, there’s a sentiment that the process of making them must also be fun and recreational. It’s not. Like any other job, creative work takes time and effort. It can be gruelling. But even if the creative process were 100 per cent fun, there is a punitive attitude that if you enjoy your work it isn’t really work – and so you shouldn’t be acknowledged or reasonably paid. It doesn’t matter if people like what you produce; the enjoyment tax still applies.
But current events are showing us just how much we rely on and need the arts. They aren’t simply entertainment or fripperies. They are comfort. They are distraction. They are expression. They add beauty to the world.
As I am kept from my friends and my family, we lean on the arts to find new ways to connect. I discuss books on the phone with my mum. My friends and I watch films in sync, writing comments and jokes to each other the way we would if we were in the same room. I devour stories and novels about the things I can’t experience right now; I use others’ words to work through what I’m feeling, to visit the home I miss, to try to imagine how things might be on the other side of all this.
*
I wonder how many public toilet roll dispensers still have that joke about arts degrees scribbled on them. Probably a lot. And people are probably still laughing at it; still making sure to commit the words to memory to tell their friends.
It’s weird to think that after I thought what a good joke, I returned to the unibar, put $1 into the jukebox, and requested a song. That a few days after that I’d go watch a film – something I did every week to have a break from study. Or that on my tram ride back home I’d allow myself to read a few pages of a tattered paperback to give my mind a break – to escape.
The arts were an essential part of my life then as they are now – I’ve just moved to the side where you can actually see the work that goes into their creation.
*
We have been taught to see everything as a competition, with money and acclaim as a metric. It’s why people congratulated me on getting into medical school, and grew uncomfortable and changed the topic when I said I was going to be a writer. It’s why people view working at a supermarket as a summer job or something temporary. It’s why people ask their Uber drivers ‘what else they do’. We are taught to constantly rank and compare, and have internalised what is and is not essential. We have learnt to equate it with value. And now we are being forced, finally, to reassess.
“We are taught to constantly rank and compare, and have internalised what is and is not essential. We have learnt to equate it with value. And now we are being forced, finally, to reassess.”
We are learning many things now, and one is that when it comes to jobs we shouldn’t compare. We are doing different things that contribute in different ways. Healthcare and hospitality workers are risking their lives and health to keep us safe. And the arts? The arts are keeping us sane and occupied. But the arts don’t just happen – there are real people making them happen. And they are often forgotten.
The best way to work out what and who is and isn’t essential is to imagine the world with it stripped away. Yes, I want to keep breathing and I want my heart to keep beating, but I also want to exist as more than a body moving through a silent utilitarian world. Rather than ranking roles from most to least essential, we need to start seeing them as they are; as pieces of something bigger, that all fit together to make life liveable, sustainable and beautiful. ▼
Photo by Claire Mueller on Unsplash
This article appeared in Island 159 in 2020. Order a print issue here.
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