Independence Day.

Yours...

What does Independence feel like to you?

What does Independence mean to you?

Is it agency in your work? Is it the sense of being yourself in your relationship? Is it money? Freedom from too much responsibility?

I thought this week might be a good time to think about independence. It’s a hard one because the Me-First mentality of Neo-Liberalism parades competition as the greatest good. Co-operation is for losers.

In Trump-World, American independence is about being the greatest, the biggest, the best. Annihilating others. Life as a cage-fight on the lawn. To be dependent is to be second-rate, vulnerable, weak, unable to succeed without help.

Yet, who amongst us isn’t vulnerable, doesn’t need a helping hand, isn’t riven with anxiety through long and lonely nights? Who amongst us isn’t as afraid of success as we are of failure? What will happen if we get what we want? Who doesn’t need someone to talk to?

As a woman, I want to be financially independent. When I tell young women that they couldn’t get a bank account or a mortgage or any kind of business loan in their own name without a male co-sign, until 1975 in the UK, and in the USA, they can’t believe it. I warn them not to Trad-wife away those hard-won rights.

Your own money is important because it allows you to think straight. This is especially important for creative work. It doesn’t matter how you bring in the money in to pay the bills. It does matter that you make your creativity independent of financial concerns.

It’s hard to make a living doing your own creative work, but it’s not hard to set aside time for that work. The decision to do that is true independence. You might have a crummy job, you might have family responsibilities, so others are depending on you. Maybe you have very little time, and dream of the leisure, or the opportunity, to work at what you love.

What I have noticed with many – not all- of my students, is that they do not use the time they have, or they produce very little in the time they have, because there’s always a reason why they just can’t. That’s a discipline problem, yes, and a dedication problem, yes, but at root it’s about independence.

Can you be your own person?

Can you be the person you say you want to be? Creativity is never a job - though it is is endless hard work. Creativity is a self-state.

That’s independence. Not a private income. Not free time. Not an easy life. Not fewer responsibilities. We choose independence when we consciously choose what matters to us.

Obviously, you can’t choose what matters to you if you don’t know who you are, if you are a composite person, made up of social cliches and borrowed opinions. Nothing will feel real because it’s not yours. You borrowed it. Nothing will have any value because it’s not deeply felt. Strangely, people who are composite and who have never thought or felt deeply in any authentic way, are permanently angry. Their endless rage convinces them that they do believe in something, are feeling something. But it’s not true. Noise hides emptiness.

Creative work is a lie-detector. If you have no truth, then creative work will be hard for you. It will bite back. There will be lots of good reasons (excuses) not to do it. If you want what you say you want you will give anything to get it, to be there in the room, to make it happen. You might only have an hour a day, but that adds up to a day a week. Things happen in an hour a day.

This isn’t a follow your dream/star, whatever it is.

You don’t follow your dream – you wake up and turn it into daylight.

The star? Well, stars come out at night, so following one will leave plenty of time for the day-job.

OK, that’s flippant. What’s serious is that creative work doesn’t involve junking the rest of life – we live in an inter-dependent world, and we are part of that world, and a part of those around us. That’s the right kind of dependence. I need you and you need me and we all need a functioning society and a planet that’s habitable. We have responsibilities there. Co-dependencies there.

Our independence isn’t about following that myth of the lone (male) superhero, the saviour, the outlier, the genius, the One. Independence is, first of all, recognition. It’s recognising yourself in the creative work you are trying to do.

Of course it’s great to have extra time and extra money. I have those things. I have worked for them, and I have had good luck too - both generational and personal. What I know, after forty years of earning my living through this life is that I am earning my life through this living. I feel like the work I do is paying back the debt I owe just to be here. The incredible best luck of all - to be here. What I also know is that my independence is built on my simple stubborn belief that this is what I am for. This is what I do…. and it was always what I do, when I had other jobs and needed them, and when I didn’t anymore.

As a woman, financial independence is key, but it’s not everything. There’s a push-back right now, and we all feel it. Arguments about whether a woman is designed to be independent. There is a Substack on this site that will tell you for sure that women belong to men. Shame on Substack. But we’ve been there, talked about that. Thing is, as it’s only 50 years since women became financially independent , it seems early, and sinister, to tell us that it was all a mistake, and we will be much better off asking for the housekeeping money and a new lipstick.

For a woman who is creative, it’s our duty to stand up for women’s creative strength. Not to accept less money than the men are getting. Find out. Stake your claim. There is no real or objective ‘amount’ that a piece of work can command. It’s relative. Who sets the prices? Mostly men. My advice? Argue.

Money isn’t everything but it helps.

And it helps with an independent life. But you know what? To read that book, to write that book, to sing, to paint, to play, to act, to direct, to make happen, to heal, to give, to open what is closed, to make a difference in this world, every day, because you can, that’s independence. To say what you believe. To believe what you say. Every day.

That’s independence.