From our outpost at Spacey Panda Music:

The Artistic Introvert / Extrovert Clash Too Few Are Talking About

From our outpost at Spacey Panda Music:

Art Requires THIS Sort of Sacrifice?

There's a Japanese legend about a cursed flute.  It makes its player a gifted musician, but the price of the flute's magic is blood sacrifices.  Does all art require burnt offerings of some sort?  Close to home, my Grave Mood Rings series essentially took as a sacrifice a close acquaintance of several decades who outright cancelled our connection over communication differences.  Could something similar be happening with people who "ghost" fellow artists?  We try to make connections in relation to our art, and sometimes those attempts create ghosts as if the art took a sacrifice.  Making art fine-tunes one's frequency, so we are bound to encounter more and more ghosts as we focus beyond those at other frequencies.  Thing is, people on other frequencies literally can't understand or even see us.  It's like the ending of the first Silent Hill film — Rose is trying to call her husband, and his phone even rings, but he can't hear her voice through the static because she's on another plane of existence.  When we lose friends or go off someone's radar, we might flip our interpretation and take it as a badge of honor, for it proves that our own frequency has risen beyond them.  Consider a mountain metaphor — when you're standing on a mountaintop, you can see down to those who are lower than you, but from their angle they can't see where you're standing.  Maybe they can sort of hear you calling down, but there will be a weird echo and they probably won't understand.  It's nothing personal, even though it can feel totally personal.  

So when someone ghosts us, can't we say to ourselves, "Another sacrifice to the art, and the art feeds and grows"?  Just imagine a Japanese-style bulletin board of people's faces, with red streaks of paint crossing them off along the way.  Nobody promised it would be pretty, right?  

Speaking of ghosts, should we ourselves operate more as if we are spirits in this world, not expecting to be seen or understood but seeking to materialize our miracles to the wonderment and confusion of others?  Why try to get caught up in the all-too-human popularity game when one's frequency is literally above all that?  Granted, we require at least some amount of money to survive, and we surely wish for sets of eyes and ears to take in our work, but just think of the horror of appealing to the lowest common denominator!  Let's focus on finding a refined, rarefied audience.  As my magic teacher, the thrice-great Eugene Burger, suggested, "Always speak to the smartest person who might be in the audience."

Artists seem doomed to handle ruining blows.  Just yesterday, I felt devastated after receiving a measly 45 cents on a $40 sale of a Tarot deck I created.  So I had to employ that esoteric practice of seeing things in a new and truer way by flipping them upside down and backwards.  That 45 cents can be viewed not as a defeat but as a personal victory.  The 45 cents shows just how terrified the Archons are of artists, which proves how important art actually is.  My art is so priceless that the printing company didn't even know how to begin paying me for it.  The Archons want to obliterate art, to make artists doubt their worth and to give up trying, so this 45 cents is the perfect reminder never to give up and never to let them win.  The number 45 recalls an old 45 record, which is a "single" ... so perhaps I'm symbolically being reminded that I'm a singularity?

Onward and upward, I'm Prof. Oddfellow.

From our outpost at Spacey Panda Music:

Do THIS to Be Remembered as an Artist of Originality

The Japanese painter Korin, who lived until 1716, is famous for having blazed a trail "that seemed designed to thwart any would-be followers" (Mizuo Hiroshi, Edo Painting, 1972).  Followers here refers to adopters of Korin's style and/or students of his technique, but it can also mean one's champions and enthusiasts.  And there, in a nutshell, is the secret to being remembered as an artist of originality: express such peculiarity as to be inimitable even by your own biggest supporters, and also don't give your admirers a second thought.  That's not advice that's necessarily easy to adopt in a flash, but might not its achievement be the key to securing one's legacy?  To be unattainable elsewhere — that's the definition of "exclusive," and surely it's a goal for any artist.  Another definition of "exclusive" is "excluding," as Korin did his would-be followers.  What a solitary path!  But that's no surprise, is it?  Every true artist is a trailblazer, and the way is narrow when we stand upon the trembling margin of a new world.

What is effortless, actually, is finding one's singular artistry.  That's because it's always at the core of your very being — it doesn't have to be discovered but rather unfettered by externally imposed overlays that may be masking it.  Just as no two singing voices are identical, every artistic vision is one-of-a-kind, as long as it doesn't lazily emulate those who came before.  It's inevitable for an artist to have idols, and those idols very likely direct one toward one's own singularity (meaning that if you resonate with another artist, it's because there are aspects in that person's work that are stepping stones on your own path toward originality).  But consider someone like filmmaker Brian De Palma making blatantly Hitchcockian thrillers — De Palma homages his hero, which is a lovely gesture, but isn't it Hitchcock himself who will be remembered as the true original?  The two most effortless ways to untangle yourself from your models and free your voice are to pay attention to your dreams and to meditate (if not formal meditation then the Zen practice of "just sitting" quietly for periods of time).  

To cite an example close to home, as an electronic musician with the band Neons Gone Mad, I didn't wish to blur into the background of all my biggest influences, so I sought to create a hitherto unknown genre characterized by a haunted grandfather clock connected by a thread of cobweb to a Tesla spirit radio.  Clockwork rhythms, eerie bells, and ghostly voices from the aether accompany synthesized melodies and lyrics representative of my idiosyncratic angle on life.  The overall effect is unique, instantly recognizable, and nigh impossible to be imitated.  To be clear, this new genre wasn't forced simply to be something weird and different.  The inspiration for it came naturally, as the genre simply distilled several of my interests (time-bending, Tesla inventions, Spiritualism, ghost detection, experimental soundscapes, mechanical/industrial noise, synthpop) into a theretofore unknown synthesis.  Like the work of David Lynch, Neons Gone Mad isn't for everyone, but we've been commissioned by artists around the world for haunted clockwork remixes, like Sigfus of Denmark, Archmage Band in Australia, Bearcraft in the United Kingdom, and Wunderfish in Hawaii.  Yes, we're still working on "don't give your admirers a second thought."  It's a process.