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An Artist's Passion
By joseexist in Musings On Muses
October 12, 2009

An artist’s passion for her or his craft can be inspiring. It doesn’t matter if those individuals on the receiving end of the “artwork” are professional artists themselves or not, a pinch of insight into the mind of the artist can convey voluminous information. The curious crowd, most likely because they are much more attentive, will usually glean the most. They have a positive-ness to their madness. As fans they have the luxury of fixating onto the artists’ works and by association to those works, keeping an open mind to the little “extras” that might pop up. Good fans will settle into the comfort zone where their senses miss nothing “new”. The standard output by the artist is mentally ingested of course but, any little thing outside of that will set off the alarm so to speak. Tidbits of “got to know” information are assimilated and filed away in the “zone of mystique” as “eureka moments”. Few pleasures on earth can equal what a fan of any art form experiences. When those experiences are embellished with a touch of the creating artists’ private personality, the pleasure is multiplied.

Any artist can tell their story about how they were “inspired”. Few have the mental acuity to realize that simpler things than those explanations can have a much heavier impact on their fans. Take one of my “heroes” for example. I love the music and lean in close when they hit the news or land in a magazine article, newspaper, or even a book. Years ago in an interview they extrapolated about being at a party. They were listening to music and they noticed that every time a guitar solo started, the crowd started talking louder amongst them selves. The artist was incensed by this behavior. He only wanted to hear the “Music”. The crowd treated it as background “filler”. When I read that paragraph I immediately became aware that I was not the only one in the world who felt this way. I was a teenager and I “lived” for music. It meant more than anything else could ever mean to me. Yet, at every party, on every road trip, and at the worst possible moment, people became vocal distractions. To me they made it so much harder to learn guitar because I couldn’t hear what was going on inside the music anymore. I was trapped in a world of beings that had little or no respect for audio excursions. Don’t quote me on any of my recollecting, it was a guitar magazine and the artist was none other than Eddie Van Halen.

Idolization is a complex mental-play. The amount of information that is accumulated and organized can be astounding. There are those who memorize every word from movies, songs, poems, plays, every note from certain composers, every minute detail about the day to day life of someone famous, where they were when so and so did this or that, how many shades of fingernail polish they’ve ever worn in public, and the list goes on forever. There comes a fine line between “fan” and “stalker” that artist hope people will never cross. That hope is of course, wishful thinking. Normalcy rarely applies to the life of the famous. I’m glad I’m not famous. I have signed a very small number of autographs and as good as it feels, the sun still rose the next morning and bill collectors still kept calling. I have many idols but no fancies to be an idol.

Flattery, yes, I had to go there. If you like the work of an artist you can copy what they do to a certain level of perfection and get paid to do it. You can make a living, put yourself thru college, or maybe even raise a family. Bars can’t always get the big names to come and perform so there is a rather large niche for that sort of thing. If on the other hand you can’t approach that certain “level of perfection”, banish the thought of kicking bars beer sales into the stratosphere. I don’t do “covers” because not only are they songs I did not write, but I have no desire to play anything “just like the song on the album”. I’m not that good of a musician as far as I’m concerned. There are a few songs that I have learned with former bands but my versions were always a bit different from what was on the album. I burned out fast on trying to learn the songs of successful artist. I never burned out on just writing songs with or without a band. Granted some artist want nothing more than their songs to be played by every one who can learn them, but let there be no doubt that there are plenty of artist who have no qualms about unleashing a volley of lawyers that will come on like a hurricane and leave nothing that can be rebuilt in their wake.

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