The Peach Pit Grant

LET ME GIVE YOU MONEY!

After five weeks on the road, through rain, snow, and other similarly perilous conditions, the van remained in perfect shape until I backed it into a telephone pole exactly twenty feet from my house.

RIP

I was slated to make (maybe) a couple thousand dollars from this tour, and in the last few moments of the journey, I watched it all go down the drain. Not only is the window destroyed, but so is the back panel of the van as well as the fancy backup camera. It will require a full replacement, the invoice for which I am avoiding looking at but know that it’s putting me in the red.

This is not horrific news for me. Having another job that supports me, I prioritize paying my band well, making sure they sleep in comfortable beds every night, and paying myself last if there’s any left to go around. The fact that my other job is well-paying and possible to do from the road is a luxury given to almost no other indie musicians at my level. Having to pay for major van repairs would be a death sentence for other bands, bands who would depend on that income to float them until the next tour.

Having my other job while pursuing my music career almost feels like having rich parents — I’m okay if shit hits the fan financially with the music, as it is want to do in this industry. Having my other job feels like having rich parents in general. I frankly never thought I would be able to financially support myself, let alone have extra to go around. And I love to see it go around.

I’ve intentionally built my career in a way that leaves me beholden to almost no one. Through promoting myself on the internet, running my own business, and being extremely selective with the very few external entities I choose to work with, I’ve worked toward freedom I never thought possible. I am extremely grateful for the obvious luck that has come my way, but also for my own self-belief, without which I know none of this would have been possible.

My road to feeling somewhat established as an artist has happened through many big leaps of faith. From traveling across the country with no more than 30 dollars in my bank account at any given time, working manual labor odd jobs to get by to biting the bullet and going full-time with podcasting, writing, and music, I’ve always found that jumping where there is no landing pad inevitably gives you the tools to make your own wings.

But it’s really not that simple. The main thing that stands between people who want to fulfill their artistic dreams and people who actually do is money, regardless of whatever romantic notion we may hold about that process as consumers of art or as artists ourselves. We are quickly hurtling towards a world where the only people for whom art can be a sustainable vocation are the ones that never needed to make any money from it in the first place. In the words of the prophet Adrianne Lenker, “this, to me, is sad.”

Until we can build a world where people can feel free to pursue art as a career and have a good chance of that actually working out, we will need some helping hands along the way. And it’s not going to come from corporations without major strings attached, or from the government at this rate (but imagine if my taxes could do that instead of building bombs).

So, the other day I had this idea. Here’s the idea.

Peach is my alter ego. She writes the advice column. A peach pit is the raw center of a peach — it’s in every one of them, except maybe for some weird ones, but I’m not a peach scientist so please don’t get into the particulars with me now. The peach pit is usually something we throw away. I’m done with the peach and it’s too hard to eat, what else would I do? But if you plant it, a peach pit becomes a peach tree. If you plant a peach tree, you can eat your peach and give the pit to someone else. Then they can plant their own tree.

Introducing, the Peach Pit Grant.

Sometimes all we need is a pit to get started, and I want to give some away with no qualifiers attached. Here are the details:

I’m opening submissions from now until the end of the month (April 30th) for anyone who would like to apply for the Peach Pit Grant. After the submission period, I will go through them and select three people who will each receive a $1,000 grant from me to put towards some artistic project. I think about how this money would have changed my life years ago, what I would have done with it, what I did do with it when I had access to it, and how possible it made everything feel for me.

I’ve filled out some brutal grant applications before. They were long and complicated and required me to submit tax returns or write a lengthy statement or generally feel like I was begging on my hands and knees for something. That’s not how this will work. Although I want to remove as many barriers as possible for potential applicants, I want to be clear about who this money is for.

The Peach Pit Grant is, fundamentally, to help people take a big, new leap. The ideal applicant will be sitting on some project that seems fun or risky but worries about the logistics of funding the big idea.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things that come to mind when I think of projects this grant makes sense for:

• Wanting to print the first few hundred copies of the zine you’ve been working on

• Paying a producer to help you track a record or EP

• Taking a week off of work to finish your novel

• Buying some amps so you can set up a new DIY music venue

• Getting a fancy type of clay for an important sculpture

The world is your oyster, or…garden here. Mostly, I want this money to give someone the freedom to take a risk and not worry as much about what could happen if it doesn’t work out. It also, selfishly, gives me an excuse to look at some really cool art and hear about forthcoming projects from artists I may not have heard of before.

Here are the submission guidelines.. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY:

Send your submission to peachbellini444@gmail.com with the title “Peach Pit Grant Submission.” I will only be reading submissions with this exact title so please adhere. Submissions will close on April 30th, 2024.

In your email, include your name, location, and a BRIEF (!!!!!) description of how you would use the grant money. A few sentences should do the trick. I am only one person, and I can’t go through paragraphs of description. Also, please know that you all deserve this money to make your art and I wish I could award it to everyone, so there is no need to justify why you may deserve it more than someone else or feel that you need to prove yourself to me on a moral level. I don’t care about any of that, and everything will go much better for you if you start out believing that you deserve good things like this regardless.

If you feel inclined, you may attach previous work / proof of concept of the project you are hoping to put this money towards, but this is not a requirement.

That’s all!

I feel a little nervous launching this because usually grants come from a Big Established Corporation, and it never seemed like something I could do. But I had this idea and, after kicking it around for a bit, don’t see any reason why I can’t give some cool artists this money instead of buying some dumb shoes or watching it rot in my anxiety blanket of a high-yield savings account.

I’m very excited to look at your submissions, and hopefully be a part of a new artist community where those with peach trees feel empowered to start handing out peach pits. I think this is the new world.

XOXO

Eliza