Desperation and Struggle

"Understanding the meaning of struggle
Giving your whole life to a single passion
Which others may or may not
Consider obsolete

Like a rare flower
Seen by a few before it withers and dies
(before it withers and dies)
Seeing it all
All the way through the very end
Regardless

A full stop followed by an exclamation mark
Written in your flesh and blood
Getting knocked down every time
Getting knocked down every moment
you get up - until you love getting up"

-- "Struggle" by Killing Joke

From the BBC...

A musician in Moldova has gone to an extraordinary length to get his career started - by selling his kidney to afford a saxophone.

Sergiu, 23 - who as a professional musician has toured parts of Europe - sold the kidney to a Turkish hospital for $10,000 (£5,800).

He has since been able to afford the instruments to further his career in the poverty-stricken eastern European country.

"This is my only profession. All I know is to make music," Sergiu told the BBC's Romanian service.

"I don't know anything else. I can't do anything else, and my future depends on these instruments I have," he said.

"They are my daily bread."

I really cannot relate to the desperation that Sergiu felt, to donate a kidney so that he could afford a saxophone.
I've never felt desperate for anything.
It's not that I'm wealthy, or anything like that. Quite the contrary. I have next to nothing. I have a crappy job that pays enough for me to have a roof over my head and pay the bills. That's really about it. I have enough money to pay for food because I'm a notary and can collect a dollar fifty a pop from that.
I spend what's left of my income on personal entertainment, as I am single. I could save some of it, but it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans in a decade. I have a tiny little checking account, and a tiny little savings account in a bank that isn't even in town.
I suppose I supposed to be desperate. I'm supposed to feel hunger and rage. But, I can't. Life is really good to me. I've never been to the point where I had to truly sacrifice. I never feel unloved or truly alone. I'm truly thankful for that.
Is art supposed to be about struggle and sacrifice? We have our romantic ideals of the starving artist, or the struggling writer...but I can't believe in that.
Art is struggle, yes. But it's also joy. And I'd rather wrap myself in happiness than strife at the end of the day.
Unless, of course, it was Gonads and Strife...