[music playing]
Man: To take from an artist is to take greatness from this world.
[music playing]
Man: I wasn't born saying I want to be a poet.
WOMAN --a painter.
Man: --a musician.
Man: But I wrote my first lines when I was seven.
Woman: Made my first movie at 13. Today--
Man: --today--
Man: --today--
Woman: I am made of so many years of drive--
Woman: --of hunger--
Man: --of practice.
Woman: Today--
Woman: Today, it is not my dream--
All: --but my responsibility to create, to share with those who are willing to listen.
Woman: But it all comes at a cost.
Man: I am an artist who creates for freedom. But I do not create for free.
Man: On the radio--
Woman: In a bookstore--
Woman: Online--
Man: There are days I stumble upon myself.
Woman: Invisible--
Man: And my name is nowhere to be seen.
Woman: I am stripped and erased.
Man: Taken advantage of and reproduced.
Man: To take from an artist is to take greatness from this world.
Woman: We pour ourselves out for you.
All: We pour ourselves--
Man: --out for you, sell CDs and chapbooks out of the trunks of our cars. At times, $10 per purchase becomes feast or famine.
Man: This art pulls us from our darkest holes, tells our smile it has a price tag, then forces us to give it away.
Woman: How can someone hijack my spirit and that not be considered a crime?
[music playing]
Man: Those who steal creation without consent do not value my worth.
Woman: It is no easy show to be the drafts--
Man: --the uneven tempos--
Woman: --the photos that never develop--
Woman: --the spins that never land.
Man: To be an artist is to put in the work, to mark a price tag on your blood and tears.
Man: We are the couch surfers, the often unrecognized or misquoted, the underpaid--
All: --and the plagiarized.
Woman: We are proof of the lengths words can travel--
All: --and the therapy in its weight. How we unearth ourselves through poem.
Woman: --or in a song--
Woman: --on a canvas--
Man: --or on a screen. We are the motion picture still in motion.
Woman: Asking not only to be seen, but be respected--
All: --recognized, compensated.
Woman: To take from an artist is to take greatness from this world.
Man: We need each other.
All: We need each other to survive--
Woman: --to continue to be the magic--
Man: --to live without a filter--
Man: --to ask an audience to complete the art.
Woman: Because without you--
Man: --we are poems howled at the wind--
Woman: --a song without a voice--
All: --a painting in the dark. All we are is this relationship of give and take--
Man: --searching for a place to spit blood without reserve--
All: --without robbery, without having our heart occupied by strangers. Today--
Woman: We have made a home of this craft.
All: It is our breath, or belief, and our bread and butter.
Woman: We just ask that you think--
All: --before stealing from our plate.
Narrator: If you use the school's network to access, download, upload, or otherwise share copyrighted content without permission, you are likely infringing copyright laws and violating school policy. There is a fair use exception, which applies to the limited use of copyrighted material for news reporting, criticism, commentary, or teaching. The US Copyright Office has lots of information, which you can find at www.copyright.gov.
[music playing]