Music

Self-promotion is the part of professional music I'm least comfortable with. It's always been an awkward process for me. The most offensive component has always been the bio. Musicians, artists, and everyone else trying to compete for the limited leisure-time attention of America's distractible public all find themselves, willingly or reluctantly, having to write self-congratulatory bios lauding their own prodigious talent, notable associations and historic achievements. To make it palatable, the standard form is for bios to be written in the third person. Here, I will try to account for who I am in a way for which I'm not ashamed to take credit.

Recently, a friend pointed me towards an edition of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in which the preface contained a number of critical reviews contemporary to the book’s writing. Not surprisingly the critical response was overwhelmingly negative. Naturally, my first inclination was to pooh-pooh the critics and lament their failure to recognize something great in its time. But another, more important idea struck me.

A profound lack of talent and ability characterizes the majority of music created today. This seems especially true of music that exists outside the mainstream. The surprising aspect of this phenomenon is that the bands taking themselves more seriously seem less likely to offer anything resembling serious musicianship.

A couple months ago, before my last relapse and subsequent progress towards recovery, I wrote an essay published here entitled Art in the Cloud. While it contained the germs of several important ideas in whose merit I strongly believe, it also suffered several major shortcomings. Some people complained of the essay's vagueness, unsure of what tangible things I was advocating. Others outright dismissed the entire essay, suggesting that it was merely a collection of pompous declarations. A few people criticized the essay, suggesting that people do not want a more 'robust' connection to artists, they just want the music. Additionally, many asked of me, why should artists be sharing more information? Simply because they can?

Recently, able to think and play again in a way that has eluded me for years, I have been devoting a lot of thought to the bigger picture concerning my art. What constitutes a justification of art? Is it emotional expression? Can a justification of art be generated by an extrapolation from some simple axioms? If there is a justification of art, does it demand that art be original? I should preface this discussion with the disclaimer that this discussion concerns only an investigation of my personal notion of what constitutes a justification for art and not a judgment on whether or not any work that doesn't meet the criteria that I will set forth has redeeming value.