Creativity Quote by Leo Kottke

Kottke is describing outsider status as a kind of career technology: if the mainstream can’t “accept” you, it also can’t fully hire-and-fire you. The sly move here is turning exclusion into insulation. “Their rise and fall” evokes the pop-cycle economy, where attention spikes are treated like merit and obscurity like failure. Kottke shrugs off that graph with “my own little curve,” a modest phrase that hides a stubborn, almost punk independence. He’s not claiming he’s above the market; he’s saying he’s routed around it.

The vaudeville reference is doing heavy lifting. Vaudeville wasn’t about branding; it was about showing up, night after night, and winning people in real time. Kottke is pointing to a pre-recorded, pre-algorithmic model of legitimacy: repetition, presence, the slow accumulation of trust. “Because of how much I play” isn’t romantic; it’s logistical. His audience isn’t primarily assembled by radio rotation or press mythology but by a touring circuit and the intimacy of live performance, where virtuosity reads as honesty.

There’s a quiet rebuke in the phrasing “accepted by them.” It suggests gatekeepers, scenes, critics, trend cycles - an undefined “they” that decides what counts. Kottke’s intent is less bitterness than reframing: if you’re built for the long road, not the coronation, then steady work becomes a kind of freedom. The subtext is that durability is its own aesthetic - and maybe the only one worth betting on.