A Rule of Art: The Economics of Creativity
I have a friend who is a talented, multifaceted musician. By choice he is a blues guitarist, but is the type of artistic outlier that can pick up any instrument at a whim and play it like it was his own. He can go from shredding a mean Jimmy Page on the guitar, or playing a soft Elton John on the keys, to screeching like Neil Young on the microphone, all at the simple request of an audience.
He’s quiet, and can be a socially awkward person in all instances when he’s not playing an instrument. The stage transformation from the shy hipster into a wild, slashing guitarist is something the audience experiences as much as he does. My theory behind the social barrier is that he doesn’t feel in control of his creative outcome like when he’s holding his musical sword.
This is a phenomenon of balance observed in creative outliers. They express best through their craft, yet find it difficult to express themselves fully, to the sense of others’ satisfaction, in other mediums. It’s less about strengths and weaknesses, good and bad; to me, it’s about the economics of creative emotion. We disrupt any existing balance of creativity to our benefit when we focus on our craft, sometimes even to the point of disaster.
The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, “then” what do we do? – David Foster Wallace
To excel is to control, and the first step of control is simply being aware that the relationship exists.
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In Defense of Anxiety | alex j. mann (.com) added these pithy words on Apr 05 10 at 7:05 amAdd a Comment