"Style is anathema to creativity"

Chris Willingham, the instructor for my figure drawing class, gave me the above quote one day. We were talking about one student in the class. I was commenting on how strong his work is, and how I hadn't seen it in previous semesters. Chris, agreed, but countered that he was developing a style, and beginning to rely too much on it.

So I've been meditating on that quote quite a lot. Concurrently, today I finally heard my friends' band's material (along with the band they're on a split CD with).

These two things crashed together in my head pretty hard. Listening to my friends' band, I was pretty impressed by how generic it was. Not in the uninspired kind of generic, they're definitely passionate about what they do, but in the style they play, and the pretension of their anti-ego attitude. Its a nice package. Knuckle-headed metal-core and no-politics brotherhood. This shit will sell.

And in all honesty, good for them. I'm happy for them and whatever success comes their way, they are doing what they love.

But there's no adventure in it. No sense of anything "art" at all. So much of "hardcore" now is build on a styles and reference points laid out by bands from over, at most, the past 15 years. Its depressing to hear hardcore, something I grew up on, and still feel some vestige of pride in get so played out. I think what saddens me even more when ever I hear new hardcore bands, is that there's so much intent on being a rock star, so much posturing. I hated all that 80's glam/cock rock/hair metal bullshit when I was a kid. I turned to punk and hardcore and metal for to get away from it. I didn't care about the flash and pomp, I wanted the passion and fury. i wanted to hear something exciting and new. You can't tell me that Poison and Warrant are by any means ground breaking.

Power ballads are far fucking below anything I'd consider "low art."

The more I think about this, the more I think about the success, or lack there of, of my own musical endeavors. At the core of what I do, as far from "punk" or "hardcore" as anything could get, I still base everything off of the ethics I learned from punk and hardcore when I was a teenager. Everything I do is about experimenting, about trying new paths, about new methods of creativity. I don't see how so many metal-core bands could be so popular when so many are just variations on riffs written by Meshuggah, Hatebreed, Converge and In Flames back in 1997.

But when I think about what is "successful" and what is truly expressive and unique, I see a big gap in popularity. Not to say that none of the above bands have paid their dues, but there are so many more bands riding they're coat tails that are either blatant rip-offs or are too dumb to realise that they're pretty far from being as original as they may think they are.

And maybe I hold myself up to high standards, as any self-respecting artist should, so I don't feel that every thing I've recorded or preformed has been as dynamic or original as I've wanted it to be, but I keep pushing myself. I keep trying to one-up myself, as much as i try not to rely on anything "stylistic" beyond the things that are the limits of my own musical and recording equipment.

No does this make my music pretentious? Does the fact that I am making electronic noise, or experimental electronics make this music intrinsically pretentious? Possibly, but I am very passionate and true to the music I make. Regardless of the audience I perform to.

Maybe its this fact that I don't perform or make music to any one audience, other than myself, that marginalizes my music?

Maybe its the staunch intimacy of my work that makes it inaccessible?

As I pursue my education in the fine arts, I'm constantly asking myself these questions about my own visual work, too. I know this particular choice of "career" is not an easy path to follow, let alone the lack of financial profitability that I'm facing, but I move forward, following my heart and my passions. I couldn't imagine another way of life. I've had the menial service jobs, the office job, the factory job. In college I played with the bureaucratic BS when I held a position in a student organization...

I feel like I spent my 20's doing a good job of trying out various career paths. Jobs are jobs, right? A career is my life's work then... and to another instructor, "There isn't much else in life that's worth a damn."

I'm too old to have the romantic dream of the Victorian aesthete, sipping wine and absinthe, living in some large house, funded by a charitable benefactor pursuing my whims as I see fit. On the other side of the coin, I can't help but feel that nearly every hour I spend at a job, selling my time to make ends meet and make someone else money, is a waste. I'm not achieving anything new, I'm not really meditating on the themes and ideas that I need to, and I'm sure as hell not spending my "peak energy" hours practicing my craft.

So I think, should I just rely on the packaging, find a market to set up a niche in and get comfy. Or do I constantly push myself to grow and do so with or with out the rewards for my true life's labors that I desire?

Is it too vain to desire acknowledgement and reward for the products of my passions?

I wish my own happiness and satisfaction would be easier to find.