Surviving Your Artistry

Sometimes I kill myself with that label "Artist."

It sounds so pretentious. I want to gag. I want to swear like the girl I was in Glasgow at the bar, with a pint and smoking. Was I posing? Probably. But it was fun.

The band would hit the bar after rehearsal. The pub would be roaring with "Wonderwall." Outside, a busker would be singing "Wonderwall." It was a loud Oasis time.

I kept my inner Artist sane by saying things to myself like, "But your lyrics are much more complicated than theirs. You're an Artist , after all, not a pop star."

Still I loved the swagger and the insolence of rock stars.

I longed to play my guitar like that, with no care in the world. I wanted to play the way I felt. And the way I felt I did not feel free to express.

Isn't it funny how we call ourselves something to make us feel like we are someone? We had terms for the audience. We called them "punters." Now, I think this sounds reductive and derogatory. I have learned to appreciate listeners, fans, audience, whatever you wish to call them. In the post-Covid world, they matter more than ever.

It's terrifying to imagine any show without an audience. But I am told it happens all of the time.

Artists are playing to empty rooms. Artists are pouring their hearts out in songs to people sitting in front of their laptops.

All of this makes one question the value of The Artist, in a world that prefers entertainment and

escape. An Artist examines life, feels life and reflects the happy, the sad, the quizzical, the mystical, the weird, the funny, the dream and the nightmare. An Artist has visions. An Artist dares to put these feelings and thoughts and ideas in song form. This is a risky business.

Shut up and just sing. Don't express views. Don't question. Give us the hits. How many on your Spotify page? What is your genre? Who do you sound like? Are you sexy? Are you pretty? How old are you? How do we market you?

Now those are a lot of questions! An Artist might not answer them. She might be thinking instead about a line in a chorus and a double meaning. Or a harmony that isn't perfect so that it creates dissonance that corresponds with the lyric.

Who picks up on these details? Who cares? Do Artists overthink what the public doesn't give a toss about?

Somehow I have to survive my artistry and balance it. Not with carelessness, but with the idea that music can get weighted down by too much pensiveness.

Redefine Artistry. It is perhaps that moment when thought and feeling and energy merge into an undefinable moment that everyone experiences. No one is controlling that moment. It just happens and no one can explain it. You had to be there. Time is suspended. People shape shift. There's a merging.

I know I have felt it, at a concert, when I least expected it.

I have felt it performing too. And I knew in that moment that Artistry is the gift I receive,

after all of the preparation. It doesn't belong to me. It flows through me. It comes and goes.

Realizing I don't have to own it, but can inhabit it, helps me to survive myself and all of the bloody turmoil my own mind puts me through in trying to be the best I can be at my craft, doubting myself over and over, thinking too hard about stuff that at the end of the day is irrelevant.

The trick is to keep doing it. And expect to be surprised. That's when you know you have arrived, at least temporarily.