Beyond neurosis, there lies reality.
It wasn’t neurosis that made me come up with the ten disclaimers, essentially telling my followers they shouldn’t even bother listening to the song, and then posting the song the next morning anyway.
I wasn’t being bipolar when I was one way one day and one way the next. For beyond neurosis, beyond bipolarity, there lies this thing called reality.
And reality can sometimes be the last thing the Artist wants to face. In fact, maybe the fact that the Artist doesn’t like to face reality is the reason why the Artist became an Artist in the first place.
Maybe, at some long-forgotten age old time of childhood, a little boy learned something about reality that he just couldn’t handle.
Maybe his childhood was so idyllic, and he loved his parents so much, that he couldn’t handle finding out that there was this thing called “death” that would take away his father one day, and take away his mother, and eventually take away his own self.
Maybe that was so painful that for two whole years he looked around at all the people doing normal things, and thought painful thoughts of despair. “Why is that guy washing his car?” the child would ask himself. “Doesn’t he know he could die tomorrow? And what would a clean car be to him then?”
Maybe the child turned from about five to about seven, and suddenly realized he kinda knew how to do things like play Old MacDonald and Mary Had a Little Lamb on a piano, and write little children’s songs, and draw pretty pictures with colored pencils, and write little fairy tales and nursery rhymes, and sing silly songs long into the night, while pretending his fingernails were ice skates, his fingers the skaters, and the sheets of his bed the skating rink, where round and round the skaters would skate, and skate themselves out of their pain.
Maybe he figured that God’s creation was just too painful to face. So he created his own creations, and found pleasure in what he decided to create – a pleasure that cancelled out for a season, the pain of the creation that was God’s.
Whatever the case, it was not neurosis that issued the disclaimers, nor was it bipolar of me to be one guy one day, and another fellow the next. For on the third day, he rose, and he realized reality.
The reality he did not want to face.
The reality is that the song straight-up, flat-out sucks. And he knew it from the start. He wanted to be cute. He wanted to entertain. He wanted to fool people into thinking that he didn’t know the song would turn out as badly as the song in fact turned out. So he went for high drama, like the Actor that he can be, and played his show of neurosis to the hilt.
The truth is, he was never neurotic. The truth is that he knew all along the reality that he did not feel he could face. The reality is what it is.
The song sucks — and that’s reality.
But maybe the song needed to suck, because the Artist needed to face the music, and learn a needed lesson. Maybe the lesson he needed to learn is the reality all Artists must one day face.
For the creation of the Artist is by no means superior to the creation of the Reality. And that creation is not of the Artist. The creation of Reality belongs to God.
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Maybe the song didn’t suck – maybe those who didn’t listen or those who did and didn’t hear missed an opportunity to explore its unsung melody.
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Naw, Starr. I do appreciate the thought, and the fact that you’re even actually reading me, for that matter.
It wasn’t that the disclaimers got huge legitimate attention from people who actually read them, and that the song itself only got superficial likes from “likes collectors.” (Except for one that I know of, who would actually have bothered to listen to the 13 minute travesty.) It’s that the Artist himself has a standard, and he fell so fall short of his standard, that he couldn’t live with his creation.
However, you may be right that had I sung the melody and not just pounded it out with confusing chords, it may have been more effective. Next time I’ll actually practice the song before I try to play it. Thanks for your feedback.
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This song sucks is very subjective. I for one hate hip hop and r n b songs for the most part but they top the charts every week. Doesn’t mean it’s bad overall. Sometimes, you’re not the demographic.
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I am *never* the demographic. But why should the value of the piece be determined by the demographic? Does the popularity of a rap or an R&B song make that song good? Is popularity an artistic standard?
As far as subjectivity, none of our assessments of the work of ourselves or others is objective. We are all limited by the subjectivity of perceptual differences, differences in taste, and so forth.
However, when an Artist is assessing her own work, and not the work of another, does not her assessment carry a bit more weight? Should not the Artist have the right to decide whether or not the piece is good, despite what anyone else says about it?
These are the questions your comments naturally generate, and I would be delighted to receive your answers.
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