The Hunger Artist
by Stewart Brinton, July 2003
It's the inertia of cultural ignorance, the artist constantly pushing a rock up a mountain only to have it tumble down again. People don't realize the decades of unpaid or low paid effort needed to establish mastership of an art form. Artists are as endangered as the butterflies you see so infrequently in summertime. Harassed by a housing crisis and government cutbacks, artists are being drained from the cityscape, leaving it dangerously drab. We are the keepers of vim; we are the anarchist visionaries; we foretell the pratfalls; we puncture the posturings; we are the clarions, the canaries in the coal mine; we are the divine fools.our only credential is the authenticity of our art.and we are part of the mass of 38,000 marginalized lumpen now threatened with extinction by the Ministry of Petty Abuses.
I am a starving artist in my garret.except in Vancouver it's a dingy basement suite. disciplined and dedicated and living as frugally as a monk on 67% of the Federal Government's established poverty level. Because of the housing shortage I have moved nine times in seven years. I am always one government check away annihilation.from living on the street. But austerity has made me a more compassionate human being. I empathize with the homeless: dems is me. Welfare has become my Bhuddist practice. For years I witnessed the seasons change as I stood in the weekly food queue at the Longhouse Church, thumbing through my dog-eared copy of Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginners Mind," seeing the Bhuddha in everyone, and pondering the strange egalitarian spirit that exists when you're part of an amorphous army of people all receiving the same check from Big Daddy on Mardi Gras Wednesday.
I am a "PPMB".a person with persistent multiple barriers. awaiting reassessment to see if I will win the Liberal lottery for the disabled and become upgraded to a "PWD".person with disability-- and make slightly more money as well as receive a yearly bus pass. Like all welfarites I'm only granted 325$ a month for shelter. a rate that hasn't changed in over fifteen years. After paying 450$ in rent and utilities a month as well as my phone bill and bus pass, I only have 160$ to live on. The Government will not pay >me more than $325 for shelter but if I miraculously discovered a little moldy, pisshole of a ten by ten foot room somewhere that only cost 250$ a month, the Government would deduct 125$ from my check.
Cruel is the rule in the Ministry of Petty Abuses. They have lots of stingy stratagems. Because of the way government regulations interlock with the calendar, four times a year the Government cynically saves millions of dollars by further starving their impoverished clients. You get the same amount of money for four weeks but must now spend it over a five week period. May is one of those five week months. Because of extra expenditures on clothing it's May tenth and I have only seven dollars in my wallet and $1.87 in my savings account with a two and a half week wait before the next check. I go to the welfare office and talk to the lady at the front desk. I hand her my identification card and she sees my financial aide worker is Bob # 101. "Oh, call Bob," she says enthusiastically. " He's compassionate; he'll help you." I call Bob #101 and explain my dilemma. "What's the matter?" he replies cooly, " Can't you manage your money?" I'm dumfounded. There's a long embarrassed silence on the telephone as I speechlessly shrug my shoulders. Bob # 101 says he'd like to help me but under current regulations he can only give me twenty dollars out of the total hundred dollars I am allowed yearly for "emergencies" then nervously adds he would have to report it to headquarters in Victoria.which means more work for him-- and I would be put under "administrative review" whatever that means.
I'm angry and ashamed. I open my refrigerator door and stare inside. I have ten days of food maximum. I refuse to go to the free evening meal at the Hindu temple or stand in the queue at the Union Gospel Mission.I'm on special diet and can't eat the food. I have had friends give me emergency money before but this time I can't lift the begging bowl. My heart isn't in it. Fuck 'em. I'm the Hunger Artist; I'm Third World Man running lean and mean. I carefully ration my food but soon am reduced to two bowls a day of broccoli with chicken broth garnished with black beans. I remember a Cree woman telling me how she ate nothing but potatoes for years during the Depression.potatoes you had to cut the rot out of. She got nauseous just looking at a potato. I find myself despising broccoli.
Finally I am foodless and just drink water for several days. I play my saxophone with the fervor of a gypsy violinist facing Armageddon. I become dangerously thin. I capitulate, swallow my pride, and ask an old friend for grocery money. He willingly gives me forty dollars. It's nutritional salvation but I have been playing sax four to six hours a day---fashioning a tune called "Baghdad".and my fasting has made me weak and giddy. Hurrying to my practice space, with my sax in its case over my shoulder and a backpack on to boot, I slip on a set of stairs and land on the step below all on one foot with my body in a vicious twist. I pull a groin muscle.
All night long I lie awake in discomfort. The next day my doctor tells me I will have to stop playing sax for several months if not longer. He worriedly inspects my body and weighs me; I've lost fifteen pounds. But I have finished "Baghdad," making the tune round and smooth as a river stone and fortunately two days before my accident I record it with young, eager musicians on bass, drums and congas. It's my redemption. I have alchemized the indignities of supercilious bureaucratic assholes.turning the dross into gold-- and created a Middle Eastern motif, a harmonic minor melody as a tribute to the Iraqi people; it's a prayer for peace as an antidote to the hideous waste of war.
On June eleventh I receive a letter telling me I am now "DWB." I am relieved but also enraged and guilt-ridden. It means I get a little bit more from a whole lot less. I'm still a slave in Gordie's Gulag and others in need are being deprived. I feel like a Nazi collaborator. Fuck 'em.
Enforce the Charter of Rights! We need a guaranteed minimum income! To the barricades!