I was reading a great blog post by Fahamu Pecou, a world renowned visual artist and business owner, who has been nice enough to talk to me from time to time over the last 5 years.
There is a point in his post where Fahamu wonders "what if every athlete donated 5% of their annual salary to a fund that helped to secure better pay for social and civil servants, i.e. teachers, policemen, firemen, etc"
Strangely today I was also thinking about athletes, and precisely why most people expect that they should give their money away.
I agree that many athletes do silly things with their money, but so do most people - the sin in the athletes case is just magnified.
Now I love teachers as much as anyone, my mom has been a public school teacher for 31 years, and as a financial planner most of my clients are educators.
However, I've had lots of fun conversations the last couple months with a partner in a law firm that represents lots of professional athletes. We tend to talk about how athletes make poor financial and life choices (see making it rain) and end up broke.
The law partner knows that I am a big arts and nonprofit guy. I support both fields as much as possible, and one day I was criticizing the partner for not doing enough to "give back" and by extension not doing enough to encourage his book of athletes to "give back" as well.
The next few moments of conversation were enlightening.
In his opinion one of the biggest problems in the black community is that we don't have enough real wealth (which is a totally different concept than income). He suggested to me that before I start giving the shirt off of my back, I actually build enough wealth so that it can take care of generations. He was on that "grandkids, grandkids" tip.
Many athletes are under accumulators of wealth. Which is to say for someone making their income they don't have as much wealth as they should. I would rather see ball players accumulate great personal wealth than give it way to charity.
Then, when these guys have Warren Buffet money - they can give away 37.4 billion dollars to charity and still have 4 billion to support their "grand kids, grand kids".
Now that is what I would call progress.
What can we say about Matt Hayes that hasn't been said already?
He is one of the few people who have the academic discipline, raw creativity, humility, and depth of spirit to actually transcend both genre, place, and time.
Matt Hayes is the type of man that the great Greek writers of yore would spin plays and epic poems about.
One can't help but imagine Homer writing, "Tell me, O Muse, of the god-like Matt Hayes" and his journey to get back home.
In fact, much of Matt Hayes can be defined by his journey for home. A resident of at least 5 different states, from Nebraska to Virginia to North Carolina to Texas to California - there is a physical and tragic nature to this search.
But perhaps most importantly it is the idea of "home" being a collection of people who are like you and accept you that becomes the most haunting journey for Matt.
For who, really, is like Matt Hayes? Who's appetites, knowledge of all things cool and cutting edge, hipness, fashion sensibility, work ethic, and ability to create beautiful things can rival this artistic genius?
Winner of the most prestigious undergraduate scholarship in this country, the Bill and Melinda Gates scholarship, this filmmaker, journalist, fashionista, lover of German, cultural critic, and all-around great guy can be found interviewing celebs at red carpet premiers, writing for the L.A. Times, and hopefully, soon, at a theater near you.
Happy Birthday Matthew Winfred Hayes III!
May your journey continue indeed.
Until then, enjoy the best of Matt Hayes on Art Star:
1. A Moderate, To Dazzingly Awesome, Smoothie - pure vintage Matt Hayes, not really having to do with anything, except making a great smoothie. No pretension, just real.
2. When Cool Kids Implode - for my money, one of the best Art Star posts of all time.
3. The Only Difference Between Us and Them is money - truer words have never been spoken.
4. Omar Miller Is A Fucking Giant, part 1 - first of many celeb interviews
5. Weekend Jamz Part 1 - this post actually won an award from Imeem. Seriously.
6. Omar Miller Is A Fucking Giant, part 2 - the citizen cope section is priceless.
7. Shit I Wrote When I Woke Up Part 1 - the weird gets weirder.
8. Merry Christmas You Animals - just an inspiring list.
9. Clicking Around With Music: Savage - a hip hop interview just for kicks.
10. Art Star Interviews Cederic The Entertainer - mmm he interviewed Cederic the Entertainer.
We are so honored to have such a talented and noble individual blogging for us.
Happy Birthday Matt!
love,
Art Star
Long time, Art Starrers! Click to view at original size. It's a smidge smudgy -- I'm still cutting my teeth on artwork -> PDF conversion -- but you get the idea.
Smartblackboy hisself dropped this catchy nugget ("You can't fake real!") in a cell phone conversation some time back, and I was inspired to slap it onto one of my extensively back-catalogued I Am Art b-side photographs to bring y'all a spankin' new flyer. This confirms my suspicion that I Am Art is not simply a sextacular installation art piece whose physical manifestation crescendoed nearly two years ago, but a lifestyle. To our model, SL, wherever you are, I give you props for being patient and beautiful in spite of my near-total lack of photo-know-how.
For the curious, the flash player embedded below contains Andrew Bird's witty and whimsical "Lull" from his album Weather Systems, which soundtracked this flyer's creation. It makes a wonderful soundtrack for viewing the flyer as well.
