Life Lessons on the Train pt. 2

I have yet to experience the pain which is my traditional doom as an artist. There are periods unavoidably, of little reward (the blahs, in vernacular), but that consuming depression, or self-hatred so recently evinced by San Gilliam's striking a fellow airline passenger in Rockne Krebs described as one of his usual depressions following a period of work, shall never claim me. Work is my uplift, my identity. I tend to feel that disturbed persons make disturbed artists (Jackson Pollock) and that no truly professional (a description of attitude) artist could experience pain through his (or her) work. As much as success is at the back of my mind this week's work is at its front. Knowing myself as I do, it will always be thus, and non-recognition (such as having my paintings rejected 3 months running at the art league gallery) will have no lasting deleterious effect upon me.
In fairness, I must admit that since the Stauffer philosophy recognized all neuroses as both self-induced and rather easily self-cured (or exorcised), lasting neurosis becomes by corollary, pitiable. This has colored the previous monologue.


Only 5 of the 20 or 30 songs I've written (in considerable detail. No simple fragment of melody for me) have ever been heard by another ear, 4 that were played by Roger and the Outasites, and 1 that I taught Sharon. Yet they are as precious to me as painting or love itself. They are an ongoing body of work which is constantly being weeded out and added to (some of my first songs have died stillborn, left behind by changes in me or in popular music) and "making it" a a singer-bassist-composer is perhaps a more hoped for fantasy than "making it" as an artist. Of course, art one can do alone, in a room - music of my sort takes people, practices, organization, commitments, dependence on others. Conversely, if I did have a success in music, it would be with Sharon beside me, singing or playing piano (or now I try to write recorder interludes) and that would be a nice way indeed to "make it."

For now, my songs are a bubble in which I breath, work, love. It is a rare waking hour that I do not hum an old song, polish a guitar part, try to assemble existing fragments and newly-invented melodic lines into a new entity. In this way I spend, without touching my bass, 4 times as many hours on music as I can on art. I can do my music at work; the unrewarding "work" at which I support myself. My music is like a portable atmosphere I carry with me in a harsh environment. [Ed. note: I was so charmed by that image that I had to use it. Even after arguing with myself for about a minute. Actually, considering my happy disposition, that was putting it rather strongly.]

Now, I can see how writing can clarify one's own mind to oneself in a way I never had previously suspected. Never before have I expressed my thoughts about my songs to myself or anyone else; I am glad to have done so, tonight, on the train from Washington to Baltimore. I shall put up this diary now, and sleep.