"I have been writing since I was about 20, and at first I wrote in secret and never showed anybody. I was very concerned about making a living, so I conducted"
About this Quote
Confession is doing the heavy lifting here: Friedman frames his origin story not as destiny but as a private compulsion he didn’t yet trust to survive daylight. “I wrote in secret” isn’t romantic mystique so much as a snapshot of the practical fear that shadows most creative lives. For a working musician, the early years are rarely about aesthetic purity; they’re about rent, reputations, and the quiet suspicion that your “real” self might be economically useless.
The unfinished pivot - “I was very concerned about making a living, so I conducted” - is telling even in its truncation. Conducted what? A parallel life: day jobs, safer gigs, the respectable track. The grammar itself performs the split. One sentence holds the hidden art; the next begins to justify the compromise. That’s not hypocrisy; it’s the standard survival strategy in a culture that praises creativity while underwriting stability.
The intent reads as demystification. Friedman isn’t selling the myth of the fearless prodigy; he’s admitting to caution, even embarrassment, and then implying the long, incremental path from private practice to public work. The subtext is that artistry often arrives as a second language you teach yourself after hours, while your first language is security.
Context matters: a musician coming of age in the late 20th-century economy, where making art was admirable but not reliably employable. The quote works because it refuses the tidy arc. It catches the moment before the narrative turns inspirational - when writing is still a secret, and “making a living” is the loudest instrument in the room.
The unfinished pivot - “I was very concerned about making a living, so I conducted” - is telling even in its truncation. Conducted what? A parallel life: day jobs, safer gigs, the respectable track. The grammar itself performs the split. One sentence holds the hidden art; the next begins to justify the compromise. That’s not hypocrisy; it’s the standard survival strategy in a culture that praises creativity while underwriting stability.
The intent reads as demystification. Friedman isn’t selling the myth of the fearless prodigy; he’s admitting to caution, even embarrassment, and then implying the long, incremental path from private practice to public work. The subtext is that artistry often arrives as a second language you teach yourself after hours, while your first language is security.
Context matters: a musician coming of age in the late 20th-century economy, where making art was admirable but not reliably employable. The quote works because it refuses the tidy arc. It catches the moment before the narrative turns inspirational - when writing is still a secret, and “making a living” is the loudest instrument in the room.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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