Getting Late

“When I set out in my 20s I understood very little but I understood this much: Any educated white person in America is privileged, and no one is going to allow us to starve. We can't even starve if we want to. People keep inviting us to dinner to talk about Robert Lowell.” – Cary Tennis, salon.com

I just got thinking today about the authentic aspect of art. Watching I’m Not There lead me down this train of thought. Is pop music today floundering because most of the makers have never struggled? Most of the contestants on shows like American Idol couldn’t starve if they wanted. Most of us can’t starve. There will be someone there to help us along. Once, in college, a fellow student said that she thought that great art really couldn’t be created in dire circumstances because the artists would be too fixated on survival. I knew this girl and the life she led. It was one of privilege, despite how much she tried to hide it. Ironically, she lived in the West Village, once the Mecca of struggling artists. I didn’t need to prove her wrong, Edgar Allen Poe already did. But here we are. So many of the popular artists of today are the offspring of privilege. What do they have to prove? Why do I feel like the image of the artist is more important to the artist today than the art itself? I have a feeling that the influx of images has something to do with this. I can see the artists I love today. I can see them on TV, I can see their impromptu moments of creativity on the internet. I can see them and I can judge their images based on my preconceived notions of those images. I used to think that art wasn’t art if it wasn’t shared, but I’m beginning to think that the art hidden under the bed might be more authentic and more honest than anything offered. Why can’t the art of today speak for itself and why do we need to know more about the artist? Where is this going? I have no idea. Should I even put it out there? More importantly, can we struggle? Is there anything to struggle for? Most people I know struggle for money, but after watching the lives of the really rich on TV, I don’t want to struggle for that. Should I have offspring, I want to give them nothing. That way they can make it on their own. Honestly.

Sometimes I think these conversations with myself would go better if I had someone to answer me.