The barbed wire fence stretches on
KeithHandy posted in Business on June 18th, 2007
Apologies to anyone (particularly myself) whose sensibilities are being tested with my recent rant and subsequent follow-ups. Let me make this clear: I’ve never wanted to “rise above you”. I want to take you up there with me. A good thing becomes a bad thing if it’s not in a good place, so I’ve shifted my concern from the work itself to its context, or environment, which has been neglected. The where, as opposed to the what. It’s just hard to discuss this without making a zillion little disclaimers for everyone that’s out to seek and destroy prima donnas.
An angle I still haven’t mentioned with regard to the barbed wire fence of fame (I can’t call it a “wall of fame”, because that has an entirely different meaning — which is fine, because I’m burned out on the “wall” metaphor anyway) is how it impacts our relationship to music itself. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we seem to have a much easier time forming a relationship with music when we don’t have a real relationship with the people who created it. I don’t know why that is; maybe knowing the person kills the mystique. Maybe it’s because we feel safer surrendering ourselves to music when we know it’s in a “fixed” state, because otherwise we’re afraid we might influence it (we don’t trust ourselves). Or maybe it’s simply that fully forming both relationships, to the person and their music, is overkill, and too much for any person to handle. Yet again, maybe all of this was a lot less true when music was live and communal, and didn’t magically spring forth from electronic boxes. In any case, the detachment from the person seems to actually help the music to shine through.
Wouldn’t anonymity help even more, then? Apparently not — even though the artist must remain untouchable, we have to form the internal hallucination of a relationship, a sense that we “know” the artist; but this apparent relationship is just our concept of the artist, which remains entirely under our control. It helps that we can easily overlook his worst characteristics. If we hear that the artist is rotten to his spouse or children, we can write it off as defamation from a vindictive journalist; and then when we hear that the same person has done something noble, we take it as fact. This is a lot harder to do when you live with someone and see that person every day.
What we really want to do with music, whether we’re the creators or just the listeners, is surrender to it. We’re handing ourselves over to it and letting it have its way with us, and this is an extreme act of trust. Otherwise we’re just hearing sound, which is outside of ourselves, and has nothing to do with us.
June 24th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Because I read your blog sporadically, I’ll answer in a somewhat general manner to the “Fame” posts. First of all I think that the reflection on fame, beside not being whiny at all, is absolutely necessary for anyone who’s at least half-serious in making music. It’ll hit someone who’s hugely famous, when their interactions with their fans and even with their intimates become problematic, just as much as someone who’s struggling just to keep creating at all when faced with all the demands of daily life. Of course, it can be ignored, just by letting the dust gather on the instruments, by using lots of drugs and groupies, and so on. But whether or not we choose to face it, we can’t escape the fact that what we do has a double purpose, and that they can come to clash. We want to express something, to be heard, we want people to like our music, our writing, to get it, just like we love other people’s art and like them as people for that reason. And, well, art is a merchandise, too, no matter how you put it; even if it’s free, it still has to be presented and publicised - and publicity (the fact of being made public) just happens to work on the model of merchandise today (did it ever not, though?).
So there’s the inevitable question of “why am I doing this?”, not the least because it’s a lot of work (especially in your case!), and because both failure and success make it a question. I’d like to say that it’s not a question of failure or success, that the meaning of it comes in the creative process, in the expression and its reception, but to a certain point, we need to feel that there *is* a reception, and it’s not that easy to just give up how we think about everything just because theoretically that’s not how things work and that’s not what creation is about. And I don’t think there’s any way of saying that for one person it’s all about the money, that they might just as well be selling shoes, or that it’s all about the art, either. There’s a tension between the two, and there’s really no point when it stops being problematic.
Like I said, I think that it’s possible At the same time, I really admire you both for writing this blog (I think your reflection on that in your last post, just after this one I’m responding to, shows that you want to be read (and heard!) more than you want to be famous) and for making music without giving up through all the years I’ve known you. You’re driven, and no matter what part of your life that happens to take place in, that’s something I can’t help but respect.
The blog idea was one that came up for me too (and I still plan to do it, I just have to get it started). What you put on there isn’t solely for the purpose of others, it helps you think through what you’re doing and to make sense of it - and usually it doesn’t end up being all that technical, or when it does it usually serves another purpose. And here I think we’ve got the same thing happening as with the musicians we admire. We (your public) can come to know you, can come to know vital, essential things about you, much better through your music and through your reflections on your blog than through what *you* could tell us about yourself. There’s things we can’t know about the people to whom we’re the closest, because of shyness, decency, not wanting to be boring, not seeing it as important or interesting, that just happen to come across mediums of expression like these.
I’m aware I’m rambling, and I’m aware I’m over-thinking (but hey, that’s my job after all) and stapling my grand theories onto what you’re saying.
You mentioned having a lot of projects on the go. I think the idea of a compilation is great - because songs by themselves are already complete. Although I completely understand your way of seeing them as part of something bigger (I think), since I’ve always done the same thing too - with music at first, with poetry, with articles and books now. I think at some point I feel I just need to put something out there, to wrap up *some*thing, to give life to the project that the part belongs to.
And then, in a less reflective way, I’d have to add that I’d really like to hear more of what you’re up to.
June 24th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Jerome: thanks for putting all the time and thought into this comment. Your “grand theories” are apprecated, and I hope you used a red Swingline stapler (nothing but the best for my peeps!) to attach them.
By the way, if I do a compilation, it would be primarily for people who’ve never heard anything by me at all, because most of it would be redundant to anyone who has downloaded the mp3s here.
I look forward to being one of your regular readers when you get your blog started. :)