I intended to write about a different topic for today’s post, until this article about a Wells Fargo advertisement drew my attention.

Poor Wells Fargo Bank. Perhaps they had no idea that the world is full of people who sacrifice their entire lives to be artists. They exert untold physical effort, abusing their bodies to leap in a perfect jeté or perform a soaring melody. Day after day, they sit, cramped, in a musty, damp, or stifling artist’s studio, sketching, painting, sculpting, molding, hauling, cleaning, worrying, and hoping the still half-finished work will sell.

Musicians live years of their lives inside a small box called a practice room. Like dancers with bleeding feet, harpists nurse bleeding fingers and wind players nurse cracking lips, calculating how much stress the delicate muscles of the mouth (embouchure) can tolerate on each given day. Oboists bandage the cuts on their fingers from carving reeds. String players practice nearly around the clock at certain stages of their training, as do pianists and organists. And then, my favorite—percussionists who leave the stage after the last bow, grab a coffee and go straight back into a practice room for two more hours of intense drilling. Why? Because certain musicians cannot get it wrong: their mistakes won’t hide within the lush sound of an orchestra. And prime among these are percussionists!

Okay, I could stop now, but . . . what about actors who pace the hall, pressing their hands against their foreheads as they beat a character’s word into their minds and souls. Or have their dreams invaded by monstrous versions of leaps they must make from a precarious spot the stage to an even more precarious spot—all part of the process required to perfect a role.

And don’t get me started on what art historians—or music, theater, and dance historians—do to obtain the training, degrees, and experience required in order to write coherently about the arts.

Don’t get me wrong. Being an engineer or botanist is a wonderful thing. It’s just not a solution to what Wells Fargo perceives as the “problem” of being an artist.

Indeed, this advertisement made me mad. But, on the other hand, isn’t it grand that this thoughtless ad made a bunch of people mad. Maybe the committee who came up with this copy (for surely it was a committee, right, or could an individual be that stupid?) will be invited to sit backstage for a dance or orchestral series and find out what really happens. Or, maybe they can do penance by attending a complete cycle of rehearsals for a Met opera production, from the initial read-through to endless coachings to final dress. Virtually anyone (and I do mean that) who experiences that cycle will come out a fan of opera.

Or maybe they should trail along behind the museum workers who painstakingly stage exhibits, sometimes working two or three years behind the scene to get it all right. Or they can learn the mechanics and mathematics of being a set or stage designer. Or the science and art of choreography. In short, no, Mr. Wells Fargo, ballerinas really do not settle for a frilly little job as a dancer because it’s sooooo much easier than being an engineer.