Art and the Artiste

Friday, March 31, 2006

Art is expression and the artiste is one gifted with the ability to express but expression is not confined to the ability of the artiste. It is the need of man to express and be understood that has brought about communication protocol like gestures and languages.

An artists ability to express is none like any ordinary mans, thus setting him apart, because he has the ability to see things that not everyone can see&appreciate until they have been revealed (There are people who have good taste and people who give them an opportunity to enjoy that taste.). It's like there are things that "metaphorically" float in the air above our head and between us. It's an artist's ability to see these "metaphorical" things and bring them to the notice of the rest of the world.

Though the people of the world need artistes to find the perfect companion when a fellow human being wont do, to take them away from this crazy world we live in for a while and to give them hope against faultless reasoning when it is uncalled for, they bind him down by forcing him to give them things that they want to hear in they want to hear them in an indirect manner by determining his success in the support they lend to him in return for that pleasure. The constant complaint of an artiste, if he chooses to complain, is that when he offers his audience something to think about, they take on the armour of analysis and analyze it until it dies away or dies down until it is kept alive by a few who believe in it. If he offers them something hollow, rebellious or just what they want to hear, they take it in because they like things the way they know them, rather blame someone else or they'd just rather leave life's questions unanswered.

A clever artiste knows what people want and gives them exactly what they want. A true honest artiste digs out the truth and offers it up. He is a true believer in the arts. He is in between the audience and the art. The audience needs to understand that they are ill- knowledged when it comes to things that he can give them that are worthy taking in. If they could do what he can, he wouldn't be needed to do them but since they can't, he is there. They only have the power and the ability to stop him in his tracks and deny his discoveries fromfurther penetrating into their lives and affecting them.

In touching hearts, souls and lives lies an artiste's success. That is where his audience can cut him off. They can choose to let their hearts, souls and lives be touched by things they choose to let it be touched by. As an amateur artiste (as I'd like to call myself), it is this that weighs heavy on my shoulders. It needs to be understood that an art wouldn't be called an art if you could make it what you want. A true artiste is a visionary who is gifted with many a vision which he understands better than anybody else that he can speak of, sing about, write about or describe with conviction in a manner that nobody else can.

Every art has got its folk form, which almost anyone can indulge in as well as another but its true form is one which one needs to be gifted enough to be a part of. Being the key to its survival and it being almost our everyday need, we need to allow the free flow of expression and support the arts. We can never tell what it may bring us because they are so many things that we don't see. Its best we leave that up to artistes because only they can bring them to our notice, without allowing them to work only within a certain framework. There's a huge world out there. Most of us live in our own world far from it. That's what motivates me as a songwriter. There's never a song not to write. The world is never big enough, beautiful enough or versatile enough. So many things to understand and define before you get to what's absolute.