On Work

Thinking about the honorable drones who work in hospitals, say, dutifully following stringent protocols, doing their tasks, keeping things going along, or countless other job-holders, not to mention physical labor, I realize the great class distinction I and my kind embody: the artist-intellectual doesn't work. Not in the way a worker works, performing defined tasks to objective standards, usefully steady, team player, cog in machine. We claim autonomy, a deeper duty to determine our own endeavors and pursue the dictates of our own ideas—if they are our own. There's the rub.