This is a written and spoken word essay which we are writing and recording in March of 2023. To serve as a bit of a time capsule while also sharing some personal insights through struggle. For, like the majority of artists through time, we've spent the better part of two decades in "The Cannot Be Given Away Phase", which you very much may be in as well.
Putting this out privately, this currently goes to a small audience. Primarily to those who support our work via a membership, paying a little something to download this essay volume, or in perhaps 20 years from now put up on some sort of archival website. For those of you who have been past or present members, thank you so much for doing so - Essentially sticking with us here, especially at the time of this writing as our exclusive outputs for patrons have slowed in the last couple years. This is both due to the evolving of our work through our own development, combined with the continuing need to make money in commerce. And in all honesty, we'll give you some specifics of our ongoing challenges with all this, including some specific numbers.
It's not that uncommon to hear people claim that they put a piece of media online, such as a video or song, and then say "the response to it has been amazing". Or say the phrase "the power of social media". Our experience has nearly always been the exact opposite. We have put out a lot of content in the last 10 to 15 years, most of it took a long time to create and is of high to very high quality, and the result has, for the most part, been met with dusk bowls and crickets. So yes, we sometimes wonder why we keep doing it. In all honesty, it has felt like our posts anywhere we place content have usually been to an empty room, but that's how it's almost always felt so we are used to it. We've rarely if ever had a series of comments via the internet or in person responses from our work. Sure, there is an occasional comment or two here and there, public or private, which are very appreciated, but they are very few and far between. One shouldn't need external gratification to continue creating, as creation should be an internal process. But some threshold of positive external output does help. Both in terms of keeping wind in the sails, but also creating a lasting body of work - that is known. In this case, in person there has been a rare appreciation about our work from one who's watched one of the projects or listened to an essay, but those are even more rare. To be honest, there are members of our own family that don't even watch or listen to most of it. And the God's honest truth is as our internal growth has expanded through the years, (our external mundane success growth regarding the audience for our personal work), numbers growth, has done the exact opposite. Our audience numbers during the years have been contracting and not expanding, reducing instead of growing. So one of the main continuing struggles is the constant underlying worry that when we take the time to create something of quality, which thus means it takes a good chunk of time, will it basically go unheard or unseen and of course, un-responded to? There's a saying that "it's better to have negative attention than no attention at all" and man, we've really come to know why. As for some, being an asshole on the radar is thought superior to not being even a blip on the radar at all.
When we started our first podcast which was called Novelty Generators, that was at the time of this writing 15+ years ago, it would get somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 listens. Which we've come to realize now was quite high. We credit this to being more in the early days of podcasts, when less were out there. Now there are like over a million+ podcasts in existence so the competition is higher. Same with our film outputs on a platform such as Vimeo. We would put a piece online 10 years ago and it could get 3000 to 5000 views. Now we're lucky if it gets 100 views. We directed a couple short narrative films during our living in Los Angeles years, one took us a year or so of side time to make and the other a few years of side time to make. One got some festival recognition and the other was on what has become the de facto indie science fiction platform called DUST, and we learned a lot from them, but they never led to any narrative directing work. Which helped force us to steer more toward documentaries. But we very much still have interest in what is called mockumentary - which is a documentary that is partially or fully re-enactments of past events with actors. And in order to do that well, one has to be good with actors.
When we later rebranded the podcast to An Infinite Path like 5+ years ago that really killed the numbers, which then sunk down to 2000 to at best 5000 listens per episode, which were very dependent on the guest. For a third rebranding a year ago making it just about our spoken word essays, we're now lucky if it gets 1500 listens and the YouTube channel of the back archive being uploaded currently barely breaks double digit listens per episode. Our long-form filmmaking content such as Transmutation and Shamans of the Global Village have been our most financially successful in the world of commerce. Leading to some connections being made and even though being created for very little money (Transmutation was made for around $8,000, EP#1 of SGV for $10,000 and EP#2 of SGV for around $3000), which have all been financially successful, having at least doubled if not tripled the money they cost to make them with occasional sales to this day. We have occasionally heard from folks who were positively influenced by them, however, none have gotten us more documentary work or by any means allowed us to be industry known as a filmmaker. So we still have to work in our previous industry, where we are a cog in an assembly line and use 1/10th of our skillset tops, in order to make a living. Not to mention taking up a great deal of our time. Since most of our personal creative short form outputs are either voice, photo, or film / video based, video platforms are the best place to put our film content. Yet even on the main current video platform of today YouTube, which we've been trying to do more on camera content for with more broad appeal, our channel is very obscure and unknown - having surprisingly little subscribers when the quality of the outputs deserve to have 100x more subscribers. And this doesn't even get to our photography. As we know we are one of the best street photographers, one of the hardest types of photography, in the world and most of it has barely even been seen. At the time of this writing we actually find Twitter to be the best photo sharing platform so we've been engaged in "digital minimalism" there. Sharing a somewhat comical and philosophical observation on humanity via our street photography there during the last year, and not only has posting it not been met with new notice or followers, we've actually lost some followers. Which Godzillionare Darth Elon would say were "bot followers" that have been removed. But we're not so sure about that.
While we appreciate networking with fellow podcasts and have been a guest on quite a few podcasts, the work itself has gotten little to no press. With minimum sharing. So we have to share it ourselves. So platform wise, we have long been a denigrator of social media cause we suck at social media. We actually seem to have a talent of posting content and losing followers. Any marketing person will tell you in order to be successful at it you have to do two primary things. The first is to be persistent, and the other is to constantly engage with them. Meaning give them a lot of your time. A friend of ours who very nicely manages one of our social networks for one of the long form projects, constantly gives it his time, so much to the point that he has literally spent more work on it than we do creating the underlying content itself. Not being willing to make it our full time job, we fully admit we are good at creating content and suck at getting it scene. So much to the point that we are constantly considering quitting various 3rd party tech platforms due to extensive lack of engagement back. So we get the hint.
This is mentioned to you because in order for an artist to make a living off their own art, they really need to be continually growing in terms of audience. Which is external growth and not the internal growth that our work often speaks of. But, ideally, the first would mirror the other. And we're sharing this to highlight how incredibly difficult it is for anyone to make a living off their own creativity. It's a bit of a sad reality that you've either carved out a niche within your specific industry, becoming a mini celebrity within that industry, or else you're in obscurity and thus poverty. And because we've never gotten large numbers, such as tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, let alone millions of listens or views on any of our works, in the long run that means then one can only output slow drip - which doesn't work as well for a subscription model with constant exclusive extras. In the past, when we tried to just focus 100% of our time on our own content, regularly outputting and saving half of it for private release on a regular basis, we make maybe $300/month and our bank accounts drained. Which of course is not enough to live on or be in any way sustainable. There is nothing more we would love then to do that 100% and make a living off of it, which would require 50x as much money received than we have thus far. But to date, that has never come to be. When we were most busy with an external private member section for our work, putting out one to two private member outputs per month, on top of one to two public outputs per month, we got up to mid double digit subscribers. In that last couple of years, as we've changed back to a freelance day job model, which allows for us to actually have a living wage in the state of California, resulting in our personal outputs to slow, at the time of this writing that has been reduced and is heading down to single digits. Continually lowering, even without even charging folks. So in terms of external growth, we have to date, been an utter failure.
All this being said, this has been us talking about ourselves in the past and not the future. It also hasn't been about you and what our outputs can continue to do for you dear reader, listener, and / or watcher. While all of our personal work does have philosophical themes of self development (which is hopefully really spiritual self development), esotericism, and the natural world, we realize that type of content is not favored by the algorithms of today. And on a rare occasion that it's recommended to a new audience member, it can be hard for many new folks coming in to find a through line with it. Because it's very individualized. It doesn't come up in recommendations because the algorithms don't favor it because it's not really like many others' works. It's not a paint by numbers thing. It's also deep and complex, and not a simple concept or mundane. Most folks are good but a bit mundane so they have mundane interests - See our essay on "Big Sports Fansmanship" and most importantly it's not commercial. It's a lesson in human psychology that you, the creator, have to constantly remind people on the regular to do things to help your reach. Which is a commercial contract. The classic example being asking listeners or viewers to like and subscribe. Which is unsophisticated and we put at the level of a used car salesman. But the truth is, those who are willing to sink down to that end up with more of an audience. Which then translates to more financial liquidity.
Commercial creators can grow a larger audience that are certainly interested in high level things beyond the mundane. Let's take those who are interested in mental or physical health for example. Which are of pinnacle importance for society. It's not like where the gal that's talking about only making vegetable juice, with everything being exclusively about juicing on what seems like the audience's behalf with it all being catered to how the audience can learn to make those juice drinks and how they help the audience's physical well being. While at the same time being very commercially successful and thus enriching the creator because they also have relationships with juicer companies, having maybe even created their own company that's making a revolutionary new juicer, and juicer affiliate links all over their websites, videos, podcasts, and blog posts. Those are the types of podcasts and channels that are most successful. Because they usually have a simple call to action for the audience, which attracts new members and then has them adjust their patterns of behavior to benefit both themselves and the creator. That, instead of sharing a portfolio of your own obscure content like we have. Folks do come to your work cause they enjoy it. But mostly because of what it can do for them. Little to no one invests in something because they want to support it. They do so because they hope it will give them a return on the investment. For themselves. And when one's work is more individualized and complex, that's harder for an audience to see and appreciate.
Now, this is not meant to be a pity party. As there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of others outputting content whose work is less known then ours and we think of this just as the "Niles cannot be given away phase" of his art. Millions of other artists have also been in such a phase and millions more will always be. Joseph Kosinski is a Hollywood director who we worked with many years ago on a commercial. When he first got representation as a commercial director in Los Angeles many years ago they couldn’t even give him away. Getting essentially zero work. So he sat around for over a year doing little to nothing. And that was with representatives working for him - which means people who see your value and want to help speak on your behalf and help get you work. Most entertainment industry artists don't ever get representation at all let alone work through that representation. We remember a fellow colleague at a sister company literally saying to us, "Yeah, they couldn't even give Joe away". Let alone have a client who wanted to pay him a lot of money to work with them. Later he went on to become an incredibly successful director who just so happened to direct Top Gun Maverick. Could other aspects of his life still be an absolute mess? Of course. But he's utilizing his creative potential.
Ke Huy Quan is an American born from Vietnamese immigrant parents and has been a phenomenal actor his whole life. He played Short Round in the early Indiana Jones movies and Data in Goonies and was literally thrown away by the acting world in Hollywood for over 20 years. After being a successful child actor, he had so much trouble finding adult acting work he started going by Jonathan Quan, thinking a more Western style name would help. During the interim struggle, he worked various sporadic roles in the industry. Including being a stunt coordinator and even an assistant. Later during the covid 19 pandemic, he was unemployed, with no health insurance and was inspired to get back into acting after seeing the film Crazy Rich Asians and would call his agent every 3 to 6 months asking if anything was out there and the agent would always say no. He was then cast by a quirky directing duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert who go by the name Daniels, (who on a side note just so happened to direct what could possibly be the most brilliant music video ever made - DJ Snake's Turn Down For What. Second only to the masterpiece music video for Aphex Twin's - Windowlicker - which makes fun of low brow, hyper misogynistic, materialistic hip hop videos) to be in the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once which had a very asian cast, and reminded everyone how phenomenal of an actor he is and has always been - now during the week of this writing having won an Oscar for best actor. While Vivian Maier was a phenomenal street photographer who took over 150,000 photos in her lifetime, on expensive film mind you, and in the later half of her life was too poor to even have any rolls developed. Her day job was that of a nanny and virtually no one ever knew her photography existed until after she died when her negatives were found in a storage locker.
One could consider all of these first world problems or even upper middle class first world white people problems. The fact that some established power player person who we've reached out to and could really help our career doesn't call or write us back is insignificant in most ways. It's not like we, our you, are fearing for our life everyday inside a collapsing country, or working for pennies in a sulfur mine, or living out of our car as a single parent, or risking death riding dangerously on the top of a crowded coal train with thousands of other peasant migrants, or being diagnosed with a terminal neuroblastoma with 6 months left to live. Even though there is a lot going well, especially on the mental and physical health front, the spiritual path front, the home front, the fellowship front, this is us speaking of the work front alone. We're even appreciated and in demand for some things on the work front, even if they are not the specific things we would like to be in demand for. We've had a long problem, and it's a good problem to have, of being in demand for things we are good at but don’t want to be doing. We're not trying to be famous but we would love to be in demand for what we are most passionate about, and respected but more of an audience for our insights, knowledge, and creations. To have our work known enough to keep doing it exclusively full time. And will continue trying just that. For one of the things that Ke Huy Quan shared as he was back being recognized for his craft, is to not give up. Not to quit. And we are not going to be doing that either. Our work will absolutely continue. With ongoing refinement and adjustment. And perhaps actually have an audience one day after someone writes an article about us called "The never-been-represented, financially successful, documentary filmmaker you've never heard of."
What is also needed is continuing insight from you about how we can help you. If not in terms of support, we are always open ears on any suggestions, corrections, or recommendations you dear listener may have. It's also known that these struggles, and your struggles, are good struggles to have. Because we and you are supposed to be going through this right now. There's nothing else we're supposed to be doing. For we learn through our mistakes or non-successes and as shared here, we've certainly had a few of those.