The Cost of Creation

Poetry Jun 30, 2025

by Daniel Breuer

I work in a language that never pays rent,
where silence is costly and rhythm is spent.
Each phrase is a scaffold of shimmering air,
constructed for listeners, not millionaires.

I chart out the sky with a fretboard and pen,
compose constellations, erase them again.
I play in old rooms where the air turns to dust—
the bass line weaves through shadows, uncertain, unjust.

Music is labor—mechanical, vast—
a blueprint of futures that vanish too fast.
It offers no pension, no stock, no estate,
just tempo and texture and brushes with fate.

The treble is taxed, the harmony strained,
and each note is minted but seldom retained.
I pour out precision from dusk until day,
and what do I get? “Exposure,” they say.

Still, I return—like tides to the shore,
like fingers to keys they’ve struck before.
Not for applause, nor wealth, nor acclaim,
but for moments of stillness when music’s untamed.

For music reveals what the market forgets—
that meaning survives where no profit sets.
It pulses in patterns, it fractures and binds—
a ledger of feeling that nobody signs.

So I labor in clefs, in sharps and in flats,
a tradesman of timbre, a broker of stats.
No gold in my pocket, no crown on my shelf—
but I make what I need: not money, but self.