Treemo.... and Censorship

Haha. Love the Authenticism:

I have to trust my instincts as an artist, and I really don't give a damn about “the marketplace” as it relates to my music…

To entertain contempt for “the marketplace” is to court obscurity.

If art is communication rather than pointless self-indulgence, then disregard for the audience’s sensibilities is folly. There is such a thing as legitimate expansion of the boundaries of decorum, but there’s also such a thing as perverse opposition to decorum.

I suspect that you are conscious of your audience when you create but that there’s another issue involved. I respect your not being willing to make some craven submission to an arbitrary limitation.

However, the problem here seems more of an incidental one. Probably there’s nothing in your work that is so outrageous that it couldn’t comfortably be aired in many venues, so to speak. The problem is that this medium (zaads) is serving many purposes. The management has decided that it’s a good idea to find ways to extend accessibility. Whether that’s a good idea or not, it involves compliance with certain standards or norms.

It sucks that what you do got caught up in that. I sympathize. However, community standards of decorum don’t amount to “fascism.” I agree that decorum (depending on how it’s conceived) can result in a certain sterility of atmosphere, but I doubt that’s the case here is all that’s forbidden is “overt sexual poses.” I think you’re also being harsh in citing “herd stupidity,” even though I don’t blame you for being irritated.

I would have stopped writing here, but I watched your brief video. For what it’s worth, I got a better impression of you hearing you speaking than reading what you wrote. Anyway, you said something along the lines of being disappointed by the insubstantiality of exchanges in zaads. I’ll take that as a warrant to make a more substantial reply.

I’m interested by your concept of being “only the messenger.” I think I understand the intuitive nature of art, but art involves perspiration as well as inspiration. Talent is one thing, technique another. In the end, the generative faculty and the critical faculty intertwine, but artists still make calculated choices as well as inspired ones.

I take photographs for fun (a few of which you can see at my site). Much of it is just to make a record of where I’ve been, but some of it is an attempt to capture what I find beautiful. My technique is practically nonexistent, so I depend on my ability to see something beautiful, and to frame it for maximum impact. The identification of that beauty is intuitive, but after that, calculation kicks in. I look for the right angle and distance, I fiddle with the context, etc. These things matter.

Wordsworth described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility.” He was the messenger of those powerful feelings. His capacity to experience them was his without any effort and he was, so to speak, powerless against them. But the art, the artifice was the molding of the presentation of those feelings in tranquility, a step away from the original ecstacy.