Proper post at last!

Just got back from a CD launch at a local jazz club. Great musicians, fabulous compositions - all original - and amazingly good. No real surprises there, except that these were all 16-year olds from my eldest daughter's school, performing their own work, across many genres. The biggest surprise for me was when she sang her own composition, with a beautiful pure voice I simply didn't know she had. (She's a classically-trained violinist, but everyone in her school has to sing - I just hadn't heard her sing solo before, although I'd read many of her lyrics, which are very mature and sometimes quite dark). Watching her perform her own work and supplying backing vocals and violin for others in an intimate professional venue was incredible.

Having determined long ago to be a career musician, she may have to live on vegemite sandwiches and spend a lot of time waitressing between orchestra calls, wedding gigs and precious opportunities to play the music of her choice, but the smile of pure happiness on her face tonight while she was performing made me so happy for her.

A creative life may not be easy, but what's so special about easy?

On Rachel Fuller's "In The Attic" the other day, Pete spoke about the frustration that creative people have when their work is not able to support them full-time (actually, I prefer to think of it the other way around, with them supporting their work, but never mind.) However, creative people will always create - it's only the nature and size of their audience which changes. Writing a poem or a piece of music which only you will see or hear doesn't make it any less of a piece of work - (or any more, if it's lousy!). I'm sure literary or musical masturbation is no more harmful than the standard sort.

So if an artist's own work doesn't reach a huge audience, is it a creative problem, or just an economic one?


M x