This article is not really about art. My father was a “scrape yourself up from the bottom” guy. He was the hardest working person I’ve ever known, first as a p

This article is not really about art. My father was a “scrape yourself up from the bottom” guy. He was the hardest working person I’ve ever known, first as a physical laborer, then as an operating systems programmer. Microsoft used his Wang kernel for NT, but he never got on that train. He was deeply skeptical of all institutions of prestige and never attended college. His father was a professor, double math/physics PhD at Berkeley. The hard road for him was a conscious choice, something he had to prove to himself every day. Life eventually beat it out of him, but that’s a different story. I don’t match up to him, but I have a habit of leaving the professional world to live among laborers and soldiers for the comforts of their ethos. It seems that everybody exists somewhere on the spectrum from ascetic to charlatan: monk, soldier, athlete, laborer, coder, doctor, manager, lawyer, salesman, founder, artist, celebrity, criminal. You may dispute the order, but that’s where I’ve seen the category _medians_ fall. The art example: buy a toilet and sell it for millions, is brazen chicanery; in fact that’s what gives it value, although you might also agree that the network made it possible. Similarly, many startups are technical garbage before they get money-bombed into a foregone conclusion. Network? Charisma? Luck? Outrageous claims that offend technical experts? It’s not that different from the art world. But is it good advice to network? PG says no. AVC says no. Trust that there are plenty of failed artists trying to network their way into million dollar toilets too. On average, plumbers do better, but nobody’s impressed with a working toilet until they stop going to burning man and divorce the artist.