koolthing

Just read your "airplane thoughts"....Interesting side effects of airplane trips.
I used to think exactly the same thoughts some years ago, when I was working in the advertisement industry: when I started thinking the same not only during idle hours but when at work as well, I finally concluded it was time to quit... I found out later that, although advertising is the activity that asks for the biggest amount of compromising in the world, other jobs ask for lots of compromising as well... Long time I didn't fly: I wonder what I would think of now...

I read back a few days. Using the (sweet!) new SG features, I see you'd added me as a friend...why, thank you. Anyway, as far as compromise goes, I think it's a virtual inevitablility in any artistic medium. I think the group that has the most autonomy is probably writers. They don't have the pressure of seeing an audience react to their work; they don't have to go somewhere, hire out a hall, club, or gallery, and do it. All they have to do is 1) get a publisher, 2) collect the cash.
Of course, that's not totally true. BIG publishers make them do PR and (mis)represent them in adverts, and critics can dog them. And of course, as far as number two, there is precious little cash. It was a real eye-opener for me to read Anthony Burgess's autobiographies...I'd never thought about how authors 1) controlled translations in other languages/countries 2) got paid by foreign publishers. The answers are 1) they don't 2) they most often don't.
Still, I think the other art media have many more audience/ journalism/ business pressures. And if you present art to the public often enough, there are strange compromises to be made.