From Where One Is Purely Oneself

"It's not that I'm particularly unslightly"

A couple weeks back, I showed a co-worker a page of the music section of the local weekly paper, and in exaggerated bemusement said to him, "Hey, look! A bunch of band guys posing for a promo photo! Hahahahah!" Himself a musician, at first he begrudgingly acknowledged the joke – but then he had to laugh along with it. The whole musicians-posing-for-promo-shots thing seems so boringly rote and off-puttingly archaic, now. It's jut one more aspect of the world which has failed to change along with the majority of it. (Other examples of such are the two-party political system, network TV shows, movie stars, identity politics, cigarette smoking, and Amtrak.)

How posing for promo photos might differentiate one musical artist from others is now a mystery to me. They mostly look alike, dress alike, pose alike, and are photographed alike, indicating that they sound alike. More often than not, for such reasons, promotional portraits of musicians and bands make me not want to hear their music. It indicates more jerks workin’ on their careers, their publicists’ trying to turn them into the public's imaginary playmates, and replicant drones who believe that going through the same motions and making the same poses as everyone else edifies them as distinct viable commodities and makes the public take them seriously. Unfortunately, the public does still take this bullshit seriously, just as there are people still smoking cigarettes, watching TV, voting Democrat or Republican, or riding on Amtrak at any given moment.

Walking downtown, I pass by the “historic” old theater where, in addition to film screenings, there are regular performances of musicians and stand-up comics. In the windows of the lobby are arrays of headshots and posters of its upcoming performers. One day, I looked at them and then reflected on that although I also make music (though I don’t do live performances), I don’t perceive myself among the ranks of people who have photos of their countenances plastered up with their names in display fonts. Despite what I fundamentally have in common with those folks, I have never envisioned myself as one of the faces on the posters. It’s so far beyond why I make music, whereas for the people on the posters – as well as to most among the public – having one’s face and name publicized like a soft drink or a vacation getaway package is an integral and inevitable reason why one would devote so much of oneself to music-making. Being a musician is one thing, but being a marketed personage is, to me, something starkly anathema to it.

It wasn’t until a considerable amount of time after I’d begun making music again and posting it online that I’d bothered to notice that I don’t put images of “myself” to accompany it. It’s not because I’m particularly unsightly, it’s because it’s my music by me, which I perceive as distinct from me-myself, that I’m presenting. However, just as I don’t associate my art with my person, as my creativity is decidedly not self-conscious and not how I am with people in the world around me, when obliged to provide an image of “me” for people to associate with my art, I am disinclined to have anyone’s experience of my art associated with their experience of me as a person, nor vice-versa. It’s only secondary that this keeps me from being self-conscious in what I do. Mainly, I find it unfair to my art for it to be tainted by anyone’s perception of me, just as I don’t want to be treated according to how my music or some line of my lyrics has made someone else feel. Alternately, I don't suck just because my music does.

I have, for decades, maintained that “art is what one does in spite of oneself.” There are some despicable people who’ve produced some remarkable works of art. Adolf Hitler should have stuck with painting. Charles Manson should have taken his songwriting to Austin instead of Hollywood. I myself have led a life of which I'm mostly ashamed, but I am quite proud of the songs and recordings I have produced. They come from aspects of myself which go unseen, either by others’ laziness in getting to know me or by the imperative to keep a lid on some stuff that’s nobody’s business. Often, I've had no idea where things had come from; they'd just happened, and I had to settle for that as the explanation.

Creativity also comes from something which defies the ostensible: from God, from the Id, from disembodied voices, from one’s truest intentions and purest sentiments, from dreams, from intuition, from chaos magic, from etheric connection to others, and whatever else ya got. Art also comes from being utterly alone with oneself, which is why too many people don’t become artists. Its substance comes from somewhere so far removed from what one is to others, located where one is purely oneself, which a sacred scary place.