Monday, August 14, 2006
Original Voices
Much has been said recently of an “original voice” being much overstated or over-rated.
I disagree.
The music that really counts, the music we all go back to hearing again and again, by performers and composers both, has that most rare of qualities. Bach had it. Mozart had it. Beethoven had it. Mahler had it. There are many imitators, but no one else quite sounds like them. Sergei Prokofiev, Stravinksy, Debussy, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Irving Berlin, and Frank Sinatra had it.
It’s no guarantee of success. There are thousands with an original voice from whom we’ll never hear a note, read a word, or view a paint stroke. There are hosts of others with nothing original or special to say, many with laudable careers, but they probably won’t last more than a decade.
Like most serious artists, I aspire to it, but I try not to worry about it. Like chasing a dream, composers and artists or every discipline can twist and break their psyches trying to find the Holy Grail. Perhaps it appears, or it doesn't. Is it subjective? A matter of taste? Is it marketing? I don’t really know, but I doubt it. As in science, some individuals have a special insight. And every era has their great and original moments.
I think the best we can hope for is to find the magical whisper of an original voice in the shouting morass. And the rest will fade sooner than later.
S’cuse me, gotta go put on some Louis Armstrong ...
posted by Cary Boyce
5:16 PM
No More Great Artists
from a Forum in the September 2006 issue of Harper's, on whether or not video games can be used to teach (creative) writing skills:
"Everyone in the overdeveloped world will have the tools they need to create this amazing stuff, whether it be blogs or films or [video] games. None of it will rise to the peaks that we associate with names like Joyce or Proust, but a great deal of it will be fantastic. And there will be so much of it that it will inevitably divide into niches, into small groups devoted to the art they are making. In a way it's the fullfillment of an ancient dream. Everyone can have a creative life and a meaningful dialogue with the culture. Everyone will be an artist, but the price is that no one will be a great artist. There will no longer be a place for such a being."
-Thomas de Zengotita
posted by Corey Dargel
10:26 AM
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