Tin Cup Pricing

Bums still cry 'Hey buddy, have you got a dime?'
And the beat goes on, the beat goes on.
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain...

Sonny & Cher wrote those words in the Vietnam era but they apply today... except today you have to amend the first line to 'Hey Buddy, have you got a buck?'

Now the volume of the beat is being turned up. The doomsayers are at it again, getting us ready for another 'dip' in the economy. Seems weird since many folks here on Vashon Island are actually seeing slight improvements in their lives.

As I wrote in an earlier blog, artists are bellwethers for the economy... first to get hit and first to rebound. Vashon is an artists’ colony and maybe that is why, here at least, things seem to be on the rebound. But maybe not, if that's what the pundits say. I say, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!.

Abraham (www.abraham-hicks.com) teaches that you get what you think about and you think about what you want. That's why I think about the next illustration I am going to make and how nice the giclées (and the blackberries) are looking... and what's for dinner.

Pamela Swanson (www.poetpam.com) introduced me to the teachings of Abraham. I felt an immediate affinity and attraction (to both). As the years have passed I have discovered that the laws of attraction are true enough. We are what we think about. That is why the constant drumbeat of the doom-saying pundits eventually percolates into the brains of the populace. The net result is a self-fulfilling prophecy... isn't that what Abraham is saying? But I disgress....

Maybe Vashon Island is weird after all... maybe we're too isolated to hear the drums... maybe its the rain. Whatever it is it's a good thing when a community is optimistic. Optimism facilitates action, which drives movement, which propels things forward... okm backwards sometimes (but what's backward for one is forward for another).

It doesn't really matter why, although it is fun to speculate about that. In my opinion it's three things:

1.) Adaptation to a new reality
2.) Re-set of values
3.) Suspension of disbelief.

Its everyone's' need to survive that's at the root of these three causative factors.

They say that people eventually learn to become happy with things they can't change. Duh... they 'adapt'. It's an evolutionary thing of sorts. Life is a continual process of weeding out things that turn us off, striving for things we want. Like weeding a garden. Now, the 'new economy' isn't so new anymore and has turned into the new reality.

At my giclée printing company, Vashon Island Imaging (www.vashonislandimaging.com), this is reflected in the acceptance of giclée by more and more artists.

Anyone into new-media art is totally aware of the bias against them by the conventional art world. There is a distinct discrimination, as if 'digital art' were an oxymoron. Speaking of morons...

Any artist that still clings to yesterdays pricing is probably either near death or soon will be. The ship is sinking... we are in the last part of a 'Titanic' saga when the tail of the ship rises for the final descent. Geez, you'd never believe I am optimist with a statement like that. But you see it doesn't matter whether the ship sinks or not because fundamentally nothing will change... only the numbers will get smaller.

You remember the ride up during the 90's and early part of this century? I don't know about yours, but everything in my life stayed more or less the same while the numbers kept getting higher and higher. We climbed that mountain and now we are on our way down off of it... into the valley. But hey, valleys are where civilization started... that's where the rivers flow and things grow.

There has been a fundamental reset of values, which more and more people are realizing. Not just monetary values but personal ones too. People who used to hang at the Mall are the only real losers in this... the rug was pulled out from under them. But artists have two feet on the ground even if their heads are in the sky. Artists are survivors. Why? Probably because they are doing what they like to do and can do nothing other, they accept downward mobility and realize that we are all serfs of the king(s).

It's the downward mobility that has led to the reset in personal values. If you can't take that cruise around the world, the world around you looks better and better.

More and more people are releasing their denial of the new reality. Their disbelief that things have permanently changed is being suspended. Perhaps that is why the pundits are all talking about further calamity. Authorities need fear. For those who govern, fear is a good thing, especially if they are associated with relief from fear. Polls create problems so they have things to fix. The whole fixing process is what half the world's commerce is all about.

I'll concede that sometimes fear is a good thing. It's a great motivator. For example I am so afraid of not being able to be a professional giclée printer that I give my customers fantastic deals on the best work in town. I want them to succeed because if their canoes tip over the waves might tip mine.

Hmmmmm, 'tip-a-canoe' ...reminds me of another old song called 'Tippecanoe and Tyler too!' based on a slogan from the presidential election of 1840. “Tippecanoe” was presidential candidate William Henry Harrison, who was a Battle of Tippecanoe hero in 1811. John Tyler was his vice presidential candidate. The song was written by Alexander Coffman Ross to the tune of the song, "Little Pigs". It sang Harrison into the presidency.

In 1840 the big issue was a reaction to the Panic of 1837 which was a financial crisis in the United States built on a speculative fever. The bubble burst on May 10, 1837 in New York. Banks began to only accept payment in gold and silver coins. It was based on the widespread assumption that Andrew Jackson's government was selling land for state bank notes of questionable value. The Panic was followed by a five-year depression, with the failure of banks and record-high unemployment levels.

'And the beat goes on...'