WMV Music Web Log

Can't quite adjust to not being in Paris (!). I don't speak French and had never before been there, but Paris felt like home to me. What does that mean?

There is a terrific interview with composer David Rakowski at New Music Box. He is a wild man - we've got to program some of his music!

Pondering a new collaboration, with the bookstore(s) in the warehouse next door. Osiris Books has set up a living room-like space, with couches, tables, carpeting, and book lined walls - it cries out for a salon. I could simply roll the Yamaha out of our bay, into the parking lot, and right into her space. We are thinking of a December event - hopefully it will draw some folks who actually read (and buy) books, as well as dig our informal brand of music, art, and talk.

Mike Hummel has come up with some great questions for Saturday night's panel discussion/performance event in our studio - it looks like the Kensington BannerArts series is once again alive and well. Here are Mike's questions, and I have added some notes for my answers, pretty much off the top of my head:

1. How do you experience the tension between the internal artist and the external rewards and criticism (or neglect) the artist receives? Is success an internal or external measurement?

Things that have registered as success: passionate performances, projects that came off the way I imagined, hunches that worked out, mp3 downloads, audiences that return, reviews, appreciations, respect of my peers.

2. What kind of support do you need around you to be an artist? What’s available in American society, what’s missing, in terms of support for being creative? How has each of you carved out a support network for your creative work, your creative "soul"? And most importantly, how and why do you keep going?

I need: piano, venue, audience, enthusiastic and capable colleagues, money to pay musicians. All of these are surprisingly tough to acquire. I had to go to the trouble to start a non-profit corporation just to make any of this possible.

3. How did your relationship to your art change when you decided to take an entrepreneurial step like working freelance full-time, leaving your “straight” job to pursue your creative goals, or opening up a performance venue, putting together your own series? Why did you take steps toward a more public identity? Why wasn't it possible for you to be a “contented amateur”?

There was surprisingly little change – mostly I took on more ambitious projects. There were misguided attempts to be accepted and supported by institutions that couldn’t care less. There was a desire for a public identity as an artist, again misguided, because I could only confer that identity on myself. As a performer, my art is only possible in a public setting – without an audience I am speaking only to myself.

4. What are the satisfactions of pursuing one’s art in a serious manner? What are the frustrations? How do you cope with the frustrations?

Permanent absence of boredom. Fundamental satisfactions, spiritual, emotional, sensual. Practical frustrating issues: financial, physical, business, marketing, unpredictable vicissitudes, politics, competition. Unreliability of anything in the arts environment. Hierarchies, pecking orders, in-groups. Coping by withdrawal into artistic solitude, making do with the available resources. Fighting back when possible: blogs, websites, video – maintaining a public profile in spite of everything.

5. I was particularly struck by how Carl encountered so much resistance early on in his comeback, and that raised the question of how do you make it work when the “establishment” arts world won’t welcome you? Are there back doors and side entrances, parallel tracks that can allow you to find fulfillment?

No one can stop you from pursuing your art; they can only stop you from realizing the material rewards. Persistence can result in grudging recognition that you exist, without necessarily granting you access to the means of production. It is absolutely vital that you acquire your own means of production, whatever those may be, so that you don’t rely on the beneficence of an essentially hostile system. God bless the child that has his own!

6. Is being an artist a sort of transcendent identity that allows you to integrate all aspects of your background? In our culture we try to label people—African-American, WASP, etc.—do you think being an artist supersedes such categorization and how does it play out in your life? What does the identity of artist mean to you?

Yes, as an artist I feel that I can communicate on some level with artists of every origin and time. My responsibility is to stay as true as possible to that which moves me, but that may or may not have anything to do with being male, white, Jewish, American, middle class, straight, a parent, etc etc. African-American culture, for instance, is one of the fundamental inspirations of my work. On the other hand, it was by encountering the music of Ullmann, written in a concentration camp, that I felt the most personal connection with the holocaust.