The ‘Middle-Class Artist.’
That's Not My Ministry
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(You can read it, but if you really want to feel it, listen to the audio version and read along!)
Reader’s Note:
I don’t usually write response pieces. It’s not really my thing.
But after reading Amie McNee’s recent essay that touched on the“middle class artist,” I couldn’t shake the need to respond.
Let me be clear. I mess with Aimee, like heavy. I respect her work, her voice, and what she’s doing for creatives trying to survive under capitalism. This isn’t shade. It’s just….perspective.
I also want to name that she states in her original post that Substack “is here for me to explore ideas imperfectly. This is not a book. Nor is this a chapter of a book. I demand space to dilly dally with my ideas. I give myself permission to leave many parts of this topic unchartered, I give myself room to say things that will need me to research it further.” So I want to honor that as well, as this isn’t a fully researched idea that I am responding to.
But while I feel what she’s saying, I also felt something rise up in me.
So after a full day of wrestling with the idea, with my own story, ambition, and what kind of artist I’ve spent my life trying to become, this is where I landed.
No ill feelings.
Just real ones.
Oh—and if you're not a basketball fan. I deeply apologize for the amount of unexplained terminology!
-Dom
The Middle Class Artist
I just read this Substack post by Amie McNee called “How Capitalism Gaslit a Generation of Creatives”.
She’s preaching. No other word for it.
She’s talking about how we’ve been tricked into believing the lies of the starving artist and the superstar artist. And how what we actually need is a world where the middle class artist is possible.
Someone who maybe doesn’t do the work full time. Someone whose value isn’t tied to audience size, virality, or whether the algorithm says they’re trending.
Someone who’s paid fairly, making work that touches people. Even if it’s just ten people.
I can appreciate the argument.
Because yeah, capitalism taught us that your work is only as good as the money it makes, or the money it makes for someone else.
Amie? She’s at the pulpit. She’s in a little Southern church with no AC in July. She’s wiping her head with a hand towel, halfway into a Negro spiritual. The tambourine shakes in the corner and she says,
“We have everything we need with the Lord by our side!”
And the room erupts.
But me? Not so much.
I Wanna Be Like Mike…
Because for me…there’s the ’90s boy, sitting up under his Granddaddy.
Basketball on the TV. Chicago Bulls. MJ flying through the air like he’s defying gravity, because he is!
My Granddaddy just got home from a long day of work as a Jack-of-all-trades.
Maybe he was fixing a pizza oven at a restaurant downtown.
Maybe a car engine. Doesn’t matter.
What mattered was I was with him.
And then the commercial would come on…
"I wanna be like Mike, Mike, Mike!"
And in that moment, I knew what greatness was. It was the roar of the crowd. It was Air Jordans. It was a million kids across the country looking at one man and saying, “That’s it. That’s what I want.”
That was the ethos that shaped my idea of “career.” Of “impact.”
Of what it meant to be somebody.
Find Your Greatness
Not ten years later… I’m still watching basketball. But now Granddaddy’s gone, he passed on Grandma’s birthday two years earlier. And I’m watching a new name rise.
LeBron James.
A Black boy from Akron, OH, just like me. Wearing 23, just like MJ.
And even though I didn’t want to be a basketball player, it felt like greatness was migrating.
And it was getting closer to me.
All I had to do was position myself to grab it when the time was right.
That’s what I built my entire dance career around: Not just having impact. Having the kind of impact that leaves a wake.
Not just changing one life. Changing the energy in a whole damn room.
So when someone says “we need more middle class artists,” I get it. I feel the logic.
But emotionally? It feels like…
“blah.”
Because I didn’t train to make work for an intimate audience. I trained to do the impossible with my body first, and then my career second.
I trained to make work that leaves defenders behind me as I drive left to the basket, finishing with a lefty lay-up like Bron in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals.
I trained to finesse the impact and make it look easy. To shift American dance culture in real time.
To leave sweat, sound, and reverence behind me as I go.
My favorite ad campaign of all time? Nike's "Find Your Greatness."
“Somehow we’ve come to believe that Greatness is only for the chosen few. For the superstars. But the truth is, greatness is for us all.
This isn’t about lowering expectations. It’s about raising them for every last one of us.
Greatness is not in one special place. And it’s not one special person.
Greatness is wherever somebody is trying to find it.”
That campaign gave me fuel when the eyes of the world were everywhere but Northeast Ohio. And they probably always will be. But I believed if I stayed committed to the craft, if I positioned myself right, then the industry was mine for the taking.
So when I hear this middle-class artist idea, it’s not that I disagree—it’s just…
it feels like being cool with being the sixth man off the bench.
Yes, the sixth man is valuable.
They bring energy.
They can win games.
But they don’t carry the team.
They don’t close.
They don’t point to the rafters.
Me?
I want the ball with 5 seconds left.
I want the pick & roll to get the funders out of the way. I want to call an ISO on the dance venue presenters. Right elbow. Fake left. Dribble right—two dribbles into the paint. Spot my shooter in the corner. See the Trump administration defender fake toward me. Slow down—take what the game gives me. Then…
explode.
Power dribble. Rise toward the baseline. Defy gravity. Look like I’m putting up a floater…but switch hands midair, go under the backboard, and finger roll that thing in.
Let people think I’m just making “stage work”,
Then put it on TV.
Let the whole world see.
And the crowd? The crowd goes wild.
The other team calls a timeout just to kill the momentum.
But it’s too late. Because the electricity is already in the room.
And I know I’m the spark.
That’s what I’ve always dreamed of.
So yeah… I hear the “middle class artist” thing. But I also know I was built for the biggest moments.
And this?
This feels like the second quarter of my career.
Right before halftime.
Everybody knows how important that moment is. If the other team is trying to stay within 7, you try to extend it to 10 or 12. You throw up a heat check to see if you’ve got one of those nights.
One of those careers.
The kind that blows people’s minds.
The kind that reminds people you are…
HIM.
Impossible Is Nothing
And I know, I know some of y’all will say:
“Dom, don’t let capitalism define your version of success.”
But what if I’m not letting it?
What if I heard capitalism’s sales pitch about success…and in this one, specific area of my life—I said:
“I’ll take it.”
And yeah, maybe that opens a bigger question:
If you accept one part of capitalism… do you accept it all?
I don’t know.
But I do know I want to leave wakes. Not just in theaters. In culture.
I want to be the kind of artist that makes the whole stadium lean forward.
Impossible is Nothing.
That’s not just a campaign. That’s my reality. It’s what I believe.
And if I’m gonna go out there and perform? If I’m gonna put it all on the line?
Don’t hand me a towel and tell me I did enough.
Hand me the damn ball.
—Dom
I think of the six mistakes of man that are commonly attributed to Cicero. I was just reading them and am discussing them with my sister tomorrow. #3 came to mind instantly with this article.
1.The delusion that individual advancement is made by crushing others down
2.The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected
3.Insisting that a thing is impossible because we ourselves cannot accomplish it
4.Attempting to compel other men to believe and live as we do
5.Neglect in developing and refining the mind by not acquiring the habit of reading fine literature
6.Refusing to set aside trivial preferences in order that important things may be accomplished
Love your energy, your neon drive. So glad you had the right role models for your energy. But that middle class artist is also chasing his/her greatness...while trapped in a 'job' that supports the family. Responsibilities (and the system), can reduce choices by using up all our energy.
Still the soul is desperate to be SEEN, to be expressed, to be developed, to share joy with others...So they create whenever they can, with whatever they can. And they enjoy it. Because they finally feel seen and valued for more than their muscle and sweat.
Maybe one day they will find some head room for themselves and those years of small-timing it will have honed their voice, their niche. If they are still hankering for the lime-light, they can find a next step, a larger stage for their heart, their spirit, their gifts. It's all greatness!