Portrait of the Young Artist as a Mess

[Kudos to Matthew D. for providing this link:
http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?
id=3f3fx1g6hkqwwye00vja7vzoyuf57p5x]

As I tentatively begin devoting more and more energy to the practice,
theory, and creation of music, I find myself running across one the old
bugaboos I have left over from art school, namely puerile Romanticism.
A handful of my professors were rotten with it: their pedagogical
philosophy had little to do with skills acquisition, and absolutely
zero to do with the artist finding his or her role in society. What
mattered was being on the conceptual cutting edge, of twisting and
turning the Wonderful Artist Ego in wonderful and amazing new shapes
and forms. This, more or less, confirmed fine artists as freaks,
fragile little butterflies to hurl acrylic-laden mud back at the cruel
bureaucratic world which hated them so.

Gag. So anyways, now that I'm learning to play music, I'm hearing the
annoying old Scottish brogue of my beer-drinking (in class!) Drawing
professor, whom eschewed traditional drawing skills in the name of
Expressionism: don't bother learning notes, scales, chords, or keys,
just grab the guitar and EXPRESS YOURSELF! This of course comes
filtered through my long upbringing with punk rock and experimental
noise music, where learning to play an instrument with excellence were
all but laughed. "Detune your guitar and evolve!" became my
wannabe-improviser rallying cry, and I made dozens of personal
recordings of my old bass guitar beings tortured with a spoon and a
Casio drum pad being run through a high-reverb karaoke machine.

But now, now I'm starting to get a tiny bit of appreciation for the
nigh-impossibly complex CRAFT that is music making. Each song is like
an expanded haiku, a formal challenge to pack as much meaning and
feeling into as little space as possible. And if the listener doesn't
"get" it, its MY fault, not theirs. Art is a service, a duty, a
calling, an obligation, not a narcissist's passion play.

Word.