I went out with the girl last night, fresh from Hawaii and Madonna (she's so jet set), and we attended a musical train wreck at the Exit Art gallery in Manhattan.
Under the guise of jazzy sonic experimentation, we paid fifteen dollars to watch notes and harmonies bash against each other in a mind-numbing vomitorium of sound.
Shortly after taking our seats, the host took the stage and failed to introduce himself before reading off the list of the night's performers. Each musician's description was snuggled within a personal anecdote of how cool it was to be bohemian and jazzy.
"I first met this guy at blah blah blah Jazz Festival in Croatia"
"Hearing this guy changed my life man"
I despise any group that espouses their social importance in endless streams of self-promotion. Artists invent a social void, pour themselves into it, and then praise themselves for their task. I see no difference between artists, politicians and religious authorities, yet artists claim a higher intellectual status simply because they create.
In my experience, the least creative and talented people I've ever met have called themselves artists. The true creative geniuses of our world don't spend time selling people on the importance of their own work. They don't sit around in support groups denying the mediocrity of their art. They touch a pen to paper, bow to string, brush to canvas, for no other reason then the need to express...to create.
The "turntableist" comes out and begins to spin random cuts while a blind writer attempts to recreate some of his book from memory. The droning boredom of one record is fed through a delay box while the other platter intersperses random interjections of sound. At some point, it becomes evident that the lack of musical cohesion and rhythm is due to a complete absence of ability rather then the design of some grand experimentation.
One record is tossed onto the dirty floor while he bends down to search for another.
The poet's mouth was drawn back, half in grimace, half in smile. He spoke through clenched teeth in mumbles, occasionally stumbling over parts and repeating others until he pieced together his narrative in the correct order. The words were largely unintelligible, but random moments of clarity produced visions of big-titted blondes and coke snorting parties.
The writer finished his set with kind applause before being led off the stage by the host. The tables spun another random clattering of recordings while the trumpet/saxophonist took his position.
Over the course of the night, the DJ continuously showed his lack of ability and general absence of musical awareness. His heavy hands attempted to produce interesting effects my repeatedly stopping and starting the record while the delay's feedback produced a rudimentary pattern. Potentially interesting, however his clumsy touch only succeeded in causing the needle to skip repeatedly.
I've produced smoother cuts on my fisher-price record player.
Every time a performer seemed to get into a groove and find some rhythm in a particular record, the DJ would sabotage the collaboration and lose the beat. He was so fundamentally untalented that he couldn't provide a simple up-tempo beat for the young freestyler that took the stage.
He mangled the flow so badly, that he just turned off the tables and let the rapper do his thing a capella.
Finally, at the conclusion of the night, all the musicians took the stage in an attempt at some sort of jam session. The collision of music that followed was beyond laughable. The drummer, who seemed to have considerable skill, farted all over the beat by playing his drums with random metal sculptures. He would introduce an interesting pattern or two, but would then abandon it to further explore the limits of non-rhythmic drumming.
Eventually we left, perhaps a good ten minutes later then we should have.
We wandered about the art exhibit for another five minutes before the "music" finally concluded.
In the end, it seems that it was more performance art then music. The musicians punished the audience for paying them fifteen dollars. The antithesis of entertainment becomes entertainment. Old is new, black is white, etc.
The more I'm exposed to the art world, the more confident I become in my own talent. The worst of my art seems to be exponentially better then most everything I find in the creative community.
The problem is that I lack the desire for incessant self-promotion. I want everyone to love what I do just because they love it, not because I tell them they should.
Strangely enough, I want everyone to love me just because they do, not because they think they should.
