Singing Waiter: Surviving a life that’s arts-adjacent

A friend of mine called me a “singing waiter.” This was new slang to me, and I didn’t want to throw a good glass of pinot noir at him until I knew the deal.

“Your career is bifurcated between making art and making media,” he explained.

I blinked until he explained what “bifurcated” meant too.

I replied that I was making a living.

After he stopped laughing, he said that’s why I’m a singing waiter—I’m sublimating my art into the day job.

I made a case for being a practitioner of the “fine art of media,” which convinced neither of us.

A fancy business newsletter I read encourages brands to identify tensions in our culture and market their resolution. The go-to example is usually some do-gooder company that helps high-end consumers assuage their guilty participation in an inherently exploitative capitalist system by leveraging part of their purchase into the service of a cause. These companies proliferated in the aughts and teens.

Now, a tension I perceive amongst my cohort is this singing waite…