A fitting example of this is found in the lead characters of Jonathan Larson's Rent: Mark Cohen, a filmmaker, and Roger Davis, songwriter and musician. Both are archetypal "starvists" (starving artists) struggling to come up with their overdue rent (hence the musical's name), even in a slummy New York neighborhood:
MARK
How do you document real life
When real life's getting more like fiction each day?
Headlines, bread-lines blow my mind
And now this deadline "Eviction - or pay"
Rent!
ROGER
How do you write a song
When the chords sound wrong,
Though they once sounded right and rare?
When the notes are sour
Where is the power
You once had to ignite the air?
MARK
And we're hungry and frozen
ROGER
Some life that we've chosen
ROGER & MARK
How we gonna pay, how we gonna pay,
How we gonna pay last year's rent?*
An earlier production by Larson, tick, tick...BOOM!, is both highly autobiographical, and fraught with anxiety over whether the protagonist, Johnny, can succeed as a song writer—whether he has anything worth writing at all:
Break of day, the dawn is here:
Johnny's up and pacing.
Compromise, or persevere?
His mind is racing.
Johnny has no guide, Johnny wants to hide.
Can he make a mark if he gives up his spark?
Johnny can't decide.
The plot of tick, tick centers around this neurotic obsession of Johnny's over whether he should continue to pursue his love of composing in the face of persistent self-doubt, which is exacerbated by failure. [Ironically, Larson died of an aortic dissection on January 25, 1996, just hours before opening night of Rent. His goal was to bring musical theater to Gen Xers—a goal he would have no doubt considered realized had he lived to see Rent's tremendous popularity among that demographic, and its widespread critical acclaim.]
Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years [mentioned here in the N.B.] follows "Jamie Wellerstein, a rising novelist, and Cathy Hiatt, a struggling actress" (Wikipedia). Though the theme of artistic integrity vs. financial success does not figure as prominently in this musical as it does in Larson's work, Jamie's preoccupation with the success of his novel does play a large part in the dissolution of their marriage.
In terms of the number and percentage of lyrics dedicated to the problems facing starvists searching for their path in life, Avenue Q is hands down the leader in this musical theatre sub-genre. For example, "What do you do with a B.A. in English" (a question I find myself asking with increasing regularity these days):
What do you do with a B.A. in English?
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge,
Have earned me this useless degree.
I can't pay the bills yet,
'Cause I have no skills yet.
The world is a big scary place.
But somehow I can't shake
The feeling I might make,
A difference to the human race.
Songwriters Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx wanted to create a musical that used puppets that interact with real people, inspired by Jim Henson's Sesame Street, to address people of their own generation, and their collaborative efforts produced Avenue Q, which by their own admission is informed largely on their own post-college experiences. (Click here for an interesting interview with Lopez and Marx, complete with song excerpts from the original Broadway recording).
In the interview, Marx, who attended law school concedes, "I think...when you come out of school, and in fact the better the school—Bobby went to Yale—the better the school, the worse you feel it: you feel like you just have this vauge notion that you're talnted and you're smart and you're going to do wth with you life that's important or respectable. And when you get out of college there are just not all these opportunities banging down your door like I suppose when you're a college kid you dream that there will be...With time, you're thrust out in to the world and you figure out how to make your own life." Which I conjecture must have led to the song "Purpose":
Purpose.
It’s that little flame that lights a fire
Under your ass.
Purpose.
It keeps you going strong like a car with a full
Tank of gas.
Everyone else has a purpose,
So what’s mine?
...
I don’t know how I know,
But I’m gonna find my purpose.
I don’t know where I’m gonna look,
But I’m gonna find my purpose.
Gotta find out.
Don’t wanna wait.
Got to make sure that my life will be great.
Gotta find my purpose,
Before it’s too late.
And just to make full use of the blog medium (and to spare the reader the tediousness of having to read through another set of lines of lyric), here's a Youtube video of one of my favorite songs from 'Q:
The characters in each of these works express anxiety about not only about success in their respective artistic disciplines, but finding real meaning in life, and being appreciated as artists and creators.
The problem with the motif of the angst-riddled, self-doubting artist is that if you're never discovered, then it just sounds like pathetic whining. LOL, I guess if you're never discovered, then no one will hear/read your work anyway, so it won't sound/look like anything. So in that instance, I suppose it doesn't really matter how whiny a piece turns out.
If you are discovered, however, then you can't deal in that theme anymore. It's sort of a one time deal. Experiences in failure and rejection are certainly defining in terms of a peron's character, but they can't comprise the totality of a body of work, because once a project like Avenue Q or Rent makes you successful, no one wants to hear about your past obscurity and destitution. Besides, it seems hard to be inspired with the hope of success if you already have success, is already spilling out of your bank account and back pocket, right? Oh, if only one day I were no longer at liberty to blog about the woes of obscurity and destitution. If only. One day. But for now, poverty, obscurity, and rejection.
*See also the lyrics to "One Song Glory":
One song
Glory
One song
Before I go
Glory
One song to leave behind
Find one song
One last refrain
Glory...
One song
Before the sun sets
Glory—on another empty life
Time flies—time dies
Glory
One blaze of glory
One blaze of glory—glory
Find
Glory
In a song that rings true
Truth like a blazing fire
An eternal flame
Find
One song
A song about love
Glory
From the soul of a young man
A young man
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