The Artists Torment...

Damn them, those that I love more than my life itself! I must practice, practice, practice, but I feel myself guilty of not absorbing their fleeting hours of innocent youth.

I am selfish. Selfish with my desire to play the strains of the Hawaiian steel, that sweet melody that I am morbidly addicted to. Damn the drug. Damn the peaks of ecstacy.

Play, play, play, as they drift off to other fleeting domains. Far now from my reach they drift away with the tide of youth. If only I could gain restraint and begin my sobriety. Damn the steel...

But is it Art to play waht's been played?

With out your footprint changing it to your own, would it matter, if it were ever played again...(scratching chin) and if nobody heard it ..was it played at all?

Precisely, you must write, Bong. Write as if the winds of endless time are at your back. Leave your mark, we need it.

On 2004-12-04 14:15, Gigantalope wrote:
But is it Art to play waht's been played?

Geez son, I've written over 40 songs. I don't just do covers. What's your art?

The answerless philosophical question which is continuiously asked ( especially in Art School)...What is Art...there is no correct answer just like the "Falling Tree in the Forrest" noise question.

As for my "art"...besides posting questions which have already been asked, I draw, sculpt and paint.

I was in a two week long debate with the founder of a band who quit when they started to have financial sucess...It was his view that after the mechanical process of writing the what he wanted the song to feel like, that the performance of it was only genuine if it were different each time.

The long tours when they often performed several times a day had driven him to a dark state of self loathing, binge drinking and self destruction.

The Cartoonist Bernard Kliban, who drew that scrachy black and white cat in the 1980s had a similar relationship with his art. He hated the cat he bacame famous for.

Is art being genuine actually up to the Artist at all, or the emotions of the viewer or audiance?

Is the torment you describe important in the production of any art? Can some bastard like Thomas Kinkade set up art as a production process using employees?

One of Kilgore Trout's books questioning "Why Must Man Suffer" simply ended in "Why Not"

Now, this is Art!!