Frank van Pamelen: Entrepreneur

Column 1 min. Frank van Pamelen

Comedian, writer, poet, grand artist and alumnus Frank van Pamelen reflects on entrepreneurship.

Yep, that’s me. Sole trader. By choice, as I recall. Not that I had much of one. In this country of ours, writing for a living (copy, books, theater shows, anything really) isn’t the kind of work that lands you a permanent job anywhere. Which is just fine, mostly. Just not in a pandemic. Because that’s when the brown stuff hits the proverbial fan. No one is going to compensate you for your loss of income. Librarians, theater attendants, event crews: their salary payments continued like clockwork. But the creators, the real victims of venues being closed, had to dip into their pension savings. If they had any, that is. No support schemes for them. Freedom of choice and all that.

Oh, well. Had I had real business savvy, that would never have happened to me. I would have come up with some clever ploy to make a killing. To turn a virus threat into a face mask opportunity. To fleece the State Treasury. But I’m just not wired that way.

All I think when I hear ‘treasury’ is: I’ll have one, please! When I hear ‘entrepreneur’, all I think is: why does everyone use a puffed-up French word? Why doesn’t everyone simply say ‘undertaker’? That is after all what the French word literally means. Or is that too close for comfort given what an entrepreneur/undertaker actually does: taking people in? And then I think: Or is that ‘taking people down’?

I probably have my forays into the humanities, back in the day, to thank for that. I have since figured out that it’s the wrong place to grow a head for business. In fact, you likely won’t be going places at all, instead having to ‘eat bread in the sweat of thy face’. Is that why ‘labor’ has such a labored ring to it? Why is the winner’s ring made of brass? Do real entrepreneurs have brass necks? What neck of the woods do they call home? And is that where charity begins? Four or five such random mental sidesteps is all it takes for me to go completely off-topic (and lose the breadcrumb trail in the process). It’s probably just that. My commercial mindset is simply too wobbly. And then you’re well and truly done for. A fate you only wish on a steak.

Translation: Dick Broeren