Current mood: IT!!!
Category: IT!!! Music
'What do you say to someone with a degree in Cultural Studies??
'????'
'Big Mac & Fries Please!!'
T Nadir 2001
From being an elitists calling card, a university education has mutated into a wide ranging service business, that's aim, first and foremost, is to make money.
I remember my first show and tell at art school.
My course had a heavy ammount of creative writing in it, so our first task was to do a piece of writing, to bring it in and read it out to the group.
It sounded like a stupid fucking idea to me, but I did it and there we all were, sat in a big circle, like recalcitrant alcoholics, and one by one we read out our pieces...
Now, at the start, I thought I was probably the biggest fucking written cheese since someone noticed milk split into curds and whey and wrote it down.
Yes boss, I basically figured that all I needed to do was turn up and I'd be feted and handed a publishing deal WITHIN WEEKS!!!
But as the spotlight went around the room, I realised there was a lot of talent about...
Yes boss, my piece was knocked up the night before and it didn't fare too well. Meanwhile others had clearly put as lot into theirs and it showed..
All this was slightly embarassing for the strategists on Planet Paul, but I did learn something that day:
That there are a hell of a lot people with talent and that it's therefore other things that make the cut between those who make it to be professional and known writers and those that don't.....
About the only other thing I learnt at art school was during the 'Myth of the Artist' module...
The 'Myth of the Artist' module set out to debunk the idea artists were inevitably crazy, mad impulsive fools.
It instead suggested that artistes could be normal rationale folk, who loved their wives more than their work and returned their library books on time.
It was a strange idea and I guessed that the teachers on the course (who'd already ballsed up their chances of artistic immortality or realised they simply 'didn't have IT') wanted to give themselves a little solace or future hope that their safe and steady life was the right move to some kind of future greatness...
In fact, I quickly realised the whole set up at art school was based far more around the lecturers than the students.
The college was their rock face and if you were a good worker and courted their favour you did well, and if you weren't, you didn't....
Anyway, ever since that module, I've always wondered about the truth of the 'Myth of the Artist'
I mean it's all very well saying that artists can be balanced folk who pay their mortgage on time and only go to the pub for a quiet half, but is it really true??
Well, I really don't think it is...
Sure, there are some like that. But by far the larger majority that I've seen, who actually have inspiration and motivation to seriously try and make their creative talent into gold, are crazy in one or several ways...
They nearly all DON'T pay their bills on time - if they even know what bills are.
In fact artists, musicians and writers very rarely seriously think about anything or anyone else other than their projects, what it takes and how they're doing and whether ANYONE IS LOOKING AT THEM?!?
But then I also wonder if the wheeling madman image isn't just a myth perpetuating itself?!?
That the media and critics love to see that side as being an inevitable and intrinsic part of an artist, and that knowing this, artists themselves see the mad boozing spontenaity as being a necesary thing to replicate to make IT??
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