Chapter Eight: Veritas

Thursday, August 07, 2008

There is one thing I've noticed about music critics and reviewers.

Some of them seem to feel that their job is not to describe music (which is admittedly extremely difficult) but instead to describe the motivations behind music.

"This band were going for SOUND A but instead they are SOUND B!"

"This artist thinks he is TYPE A when in reality he is TYPE B!"

Well, maybe the band did come up with SOUND B and maybe the artist is TYPE B, but how is that related to their intentions? Where did SOUND A and TYPE A come from? Do they all sit around and plan their artistic trajectory, or do they just ride it out?

I come across this mentality in every day conversations as well.

"Would you prefer credibility, or fame and money?" I was asked the other day.

These questions have been put to me in the past, sometimes on more than one occasion, and I imagine they will get put to me many more times in the future.

"Surely you want to play to 100,000 people!" I don't - at least, not at one time.

"Surely you want massive popularity!" I don't, just a sustained and dedicated audience.

"Surely you want money!" I do, but only enough to eat.

"Surely you want fame!" Look at the nauseating puppets in the celebrity magazines. Like hell I want that.

The list of markers of apparent success go on and on ...

So, there I was being asked about the fame versus credibility conundrum. Well, I answered "credibility" of course! Yet thinking about it later, I didn't tell the truth. And I couldn't have answered it truthfully using just one word anyway.

We always tend to work out the perfect comeback long after the chance to make it has passed. So in that spirit, I considered the question a few days later and realised that I should have said: "Why can't you have both?"

In about 5 minutes, that seemed wrong (as in untrue) as well. So I thought about it again. "Neither" was my second, slightly more accurate (but too-late) response.

But I still wasn't even close to my own personal truth. And what is it, anyway?

And this is the real bastard about life. Our own truth is often hard to know, because we spend so much of our lives answering questions and performing our actions in ways that are acceptable to others rather than true to ourselves.

The reason I struggled with this question, is that the question is not really about what it seems to be about. It is not about the simple, buried truth. It's about the complex, superficial truth.

The questions, like reviews, are designed to dig out the motivations behind the creation of your product. To work out why you do this peculiar thing. To fathom the reason for doing it. What you think about when you do it.

In essence, what you truly and actually hope to achieve as a result of it.

And the more I think about it, the stranger and more amusing - and increasingly unanswerable - the questions become. Odd and confusing. Just like reviews.

We received generally positive reviews on the release of the first single from "Desire", but there was one particularly negative one which I found hurtful and stupid at first, and later, simply funny and intriguing.

At one point, the writer claimed that I probably intended to "drip with romantic irony" but that the lyrics and music did not have the requisite "edge" to see this intention through.

Well, yes, there wasn't much edge, because it was a gentle song. And I don't know who it is that aims to drip with romantic irony, but it's not me. That's just weird.

If you're reading this, and you do, then I apologise. I am not a romantic ironist. I have nothing against it. Some of my best friends drip with romantic irony. As long as they do it in the privacy of their own homes, I have no argument. Just let there be no public parades in the street, please.

The truth is that in that particular song, and in all songs I write, I never aimed, or aim, to do anything. As hideous and laughable as it may sound, I write what I feel. I write my own personal truth. And the band plays according to how they feel and what they think is the truth. Often our ideas align and that's what makes being in a band so addictive and thrilling and fulfilling.

I don't sit around planning how best to create an effect when I write a song, and the band doesn't get together and plot out how best to effect the effect once that song is written.

These statements are assumptions which reflect the writer's own ideas about how and why others write.

It's the same with the questions.

Asking whether one wants money and fame, or credibility, or attainment of any other social status, says more about the questioner than the question. The questioner has certain ideas about life. They have a notion about how the game is played and how it is won.

Or lost.

For many people, life works best as a set of polar oppositions. That way, you know where you stand. There is wealth or poverty. There is artistic prostitution or there is artistic purity. There is screaming fame or there is hopeless anonymity.

You either own it, or you rent it.

And inherent in their questions and statements is the suggestion that one state of being is preferable to, or more righteous than, the other.

The truth is that there is no black and white. It's all shades of grey. Uncertainty is what makes life exciting. But people are so risk-averse in the way they mentally and emotionally embrace life.

Sure, something very bad might happen. But equally, something very good could happen.

I find that I'm attracted to people who are openly contradictory and conversely, turned off by people who are completely self assured. This black or white, good or evil, everything or nothing business disturbs me. All of us are partially one and partially the other, all of the time.

Now, the artistic, intangible world, expands well beyond these simplicities. I'm not saying that artists inhabit some higher plane. They are as low and as normal as everyone else, despite what they'd have you believe. But if you want to talk about the motivations for actually being an artist, you can start by forgetting every single traditional state of being you know.

The rules just don't apply.

And while artists may sometimes be outwardly concerned and depressed by their lack of appreciation, recognition or cash, it doesn't - or shouldn't - stop them from continuing to be great artists. Even if they are not particularly great, at the very least, attempting to be great artists.

See, the fact is, I don't create art because I want something from it. That would be too much like going to work. Art holds no useful currency for me as far as physical survival goes. As a human being I want and care about many things, particularly survival. But as an artist I don't want for, or care about, anything but art.

I've answered many questions about my intentions as best I could in the past, many times, through all the bars, the parties, the dinners, the offices ... and almost without fail, I have been faced with doubtful, amused, and sometimes almost disgusted replies, all of them along the lines of:

"Liar! I know you want fame/money/success/attention/glory/applause! Why else would you do it? Why are you lying to me and to yourself? Come on, tell me the TRUTH!"

And you tell them the truth, and tell them the truth again, and they just will not believe it. For some reason, they just can't.

Given that, and all I've said above, I now must seriously reconsider my position on this matter.

Perhaps the best response to all of these questions and judgments is to remain completely and utterly silent and get on with writing the next song.

Until the next time ... Stay Tuned.