I went to a jazz BBQ today.
These guys are all jazz musicians the BBQs are always a great time. But, there's always something a little off about them.
Everyone who comes to these things are musicians, and, moreover, they play nothing gut jazz. They talk about nothing but the jobbing bands they work with, terrible charts, terrible gigs and people who just can't play.
These guys have all ogne to really prestigious schools and are very good at what they do, but I always have this weird feeling when I leave. I feel like I've just been to someone's office holiday party.
Today was like all the others, only more so.
Then it hit me. These guys are all artists (at least that's how they see themselves), but they never move outside their own circle in listening or socializing.
I started thinking about how this impacts and ultimately limits them as artists. The skills are in place, sure, but they're not going out into the larger world for inspiration. They all talk, play, listen and breathe jazz. Nothing else. Don't get me wrong, here. I'm a big fan of the music, but I like other things, too.
I was thinking that their collective approach has to take the inspiration out of the art. Imagine what our museums would look like if painters only talked to painters and architects to architects. Everything would homogenize, becoming terrible and bland.
That's what's happening to jazz as we speak. The only American fine art has become trapped in it's own incestuous vaccum. It's future is in the hands of academics and historians rather than artists, people who would rather write a new chart for the same old Ellington tune again and again until it becomes different enough from the inspiration that it can be called an original. Something about that just isn't right.
It makes me sad because music is something I've always loved. These are the people who, to some degree, are going to be responsible for future steps in the evolution of their art and of American fine art. The future of art has been taken from the artists and handed to the academics.
Yeah, you need education to even attempt the forms used in any jazz, classic or modern. The problem, as I see it, is that this education has started teaching those who seek it, that artists who have not taken their path, who have not spent weeks and years of their lives in practice rooms, haven't got the educational underpinnings to create something valid.
Why, then has jazz become stagnant, while other, often (comparatively) uneducated or ignorant art forms have broken ground and pushed their own evolution?
Sure, Bonnard painted, isolated, in his small country house, but he had that country and his wife near the window and in the bath to inspire him. He didn't close himself in a room, speaking only to other painters and reworking their pieces until they became that woman in the bathtub.
Truly, the most compelling artists I have known personally are untaught and just let the work come out of them.
*Their passions remain intact because they have not been sacrificed to a profession.*
Did I go to a BBQ only to bear witness to the death of an art form?
Hope not.
*Something else, entirely*
I've been trying to get some good pictures of my recent tattoos (piercing pictures are available by request only), as there are many that have not yet been posted. I just cant seem to get the right light and angle when I take them myself, so that's all gonna have to wait until I can get someone else can take them.
Patience.
I promise my next journal will not be a depressing affair about the slow death of art.
These guys are all jazz musicians the BBQs are always a great time. But, there's always something a little off about them.
Everyone who comes to these things are musicians, and, moreover, they play nothing gut jazz. They talk about nothing but the jobbing bands they work with, terrible charts, terrible gigs and people who just can't play.
These guys have all ogne to really prestigious schools and are very good at what they do, but I always have this weird feeling when I leave. I feel like I've just been to someone's office holiday party.
Today was like all the others, only more so.
Then it hit me. These guys are all artists (at least that's how they see themselves), but they never move outside their own circle in listening or socializing.
I started thinking about how this impacts and ultimately limits them as artists. The skills are in place, sure, but they're not going out into the larger world for inspiration. They all talk, play, listen and breathe jazz. Nothing else. Don't get me wrong, here. I'm a big fan of the music, but I like other things, too.
I was thinking that their collective approach has to take the inspiration out of the art. Imagine what our museums would look like if painters only talked to painters and architects to architects. Everything would homogenize, becoming terrible and bland.
That's what's happening to jazz as we speak. The only American fine art has become trapped in it's own incestuous vaccum. It's future is in the hands of academics and historians rather than artists, people who would rather write a new chart for the same old Ellington tune again and again until it becomes different enough from the inspiration that it can be called an original. Something about that just isn't right.
It makes me sad because music is something I've always loved. These are the people who, to some degree, are going to be responsible for future steps in the evolution of their art and of American fine art. The future of art has been taken from the artists and handed to the academics.
Yeah, you need education to even attempt the forms used in any jazz, classic or modern. The problem, as I see it, is that this education has started teaching those who seek it, that artists who have not taken their path, who have not spent weeks and years of their lives in practice rooms, haven't got the educational underpinnings to create something valid.
Why, then has jazz become stagnant, while other, often (comparatively) uneducated or ignorant art forms have broken ground and pushed their own evolution?
Sure, Bonnard painted, isolated, in his small country house, but he had that country and his wife near the window and in the bath to inspire him. He didn't close himself in a room, speaking only to other painters and reworking their pieces until they became that woman in the bathtub.
Truly, the most compelling artists I have known personally are untaught and just let the work come out of them.
*Their passions remain intact because they have not been sacrificed to a profession.*
Did I go to a BBQ only to bear witness to the death of an art form?
Hope not.
*Something else, entirely*
I've been trying to get some good pictures of my recent tattoos (piercing pictures are available by request only), as there are many that have not yet been posted. I just cant seem to get the right light and angle when I take them myself, so that's all gonna have to wait until I can get someone else can take them.
Patience.
I promise my next journal will not be a depressing affair about the slow death of art.