Niche Asphyxiation

A million people telling you what to be is not necessarily good advice. Much less a niche of the young and hip. I’m not saying you shouldn’t bear certain opinions and/or idols in mind when trying to discover yourself, but you shouldn’t spend the majority of your time worrying about what is currently fashionable in the world around you (or, worrying about what would be un-fashionable, as the current fashion seems to be). Ground breakers seldom come out of well established areas, and even when they do, across the board, it’s because they have tossed aside the ideals of the people around them and became something more.

Can you imagine David Bowie if he had simply stuck to folk/glam? We never would have heard from him again after 1980. Or how about Jackson Pollock (an example used so often in this argument it almost seems cliché)? Pollock knew how to paint. He chose to throw shit around. Bowie knew how to write a solid glam record. He chose to ditch genres completely. Another example, my last example, the man a friend once aptly referred to as “the original goth”, Jim Morrison. Jim Morrison was a poet long before he moved to California. He knew he wanted in on the music scene, the writing scene, the general creative, emotional era. But when he got to California, do you know what he did? He burned everything he had ever written. Every word, in an attempt to grow. He settled into the West Coast free love world and wrote songs of murder and terror. Self-deprecation and psychological expansion beyond (but definitely not excluding) the ever popular world of LSD. Jim Morrison, David Bowie, and Jackson Pollock all looked at the world around them and said “This is not my world yet,” and plowed over the masturbating bullshit and built kingdoms of genius. Because they understood that no true voice can come out of a scene which only survives by mimic.

I see in my life artists of staggering brilliance. Creative, dangerous, mad genius’. Held back by fear of losing credibility among the shrinking hordes of trends, scenes and idols. It’s beyond sad to me. It’s devastating. To know that such potential exists, not only in the world, but in my own backyard.

In better universes, what masterpieces have been created, free of the bounds of acceptance? What voices scream up from faces I see remain silent here in this one? What words could I type to free these creators, my friends and peers?

Stuck in a world where being the same means being cool, when do we grow? What can one hope for? Being admired for the ten minutes on stage and forgotten immediately afterward? Maybe someone will wander into your gallery and nod at your painting, your splatter paint bullshit, call it great, and then forget all about it. Maybe someone will stream your music online. Maybe someone will peruse my blog for a minute. Will they follow your painting career? Will they spend ten dollars on your next record? Will they pick up my book? No, probably not. Our inability to break free of a mass insecurity prevents it. We are pussies and we will be forgotten for it.

-A.