12 November 2009

Nothing To Say

So,...yeah. The title says it all. Even taking into account my bout with the flu, I'm a bit shocked at how utterly devoid of blog-worthy topics my brain has been for the past several days, even under the expanded definition of "blog-worthy" which I've decided to allow myself this month. With that in mind, here's some public soul-searching of the type I'm generally not inclined to share.

A couple of weeks ago, another musician who I had not known for very long asked me what my "endgame" is. I could not answer the question coherently. In many ways, I think I'm getting worse at answering that question as time goes on. My definition of success has become more about the quality of my work than about where, when, with whom, and for how much $$$ I get to make it. Perhaps what I'm missing is the connection between those two things, the realization that the circumstances surrounding the creation of a work impact one's success in making it. Then again, comfort and contentedness seem to do nothing for artists but make them lazy, ultimately harming the quality of their work, not helping it. So without necessarily turning against career success in principle, I'm quite content to be guided by a more abstract concept of success rooted in the perceived quality of what I've made rather than my general quality of life at the time. It's hard to fit that into a one sentence answer, so I'll probably continue to trip all over myself when people ask me, but it's the answer nonetheless.

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