Needed and Wanted

One of my goals for the day is to actually write another blog posting and finish it.

As you can see, my blog has been somewhat dormant lately, which isn't such a bad thing. I've been doing lots of writing work lately for paying clients. Although the jobs don't allow me the opportunity to ramble on about songwriting or other artistic activities, they do require concentration and creative effort, which makes them satisfying. The paycheque I receive is important as well. But I suspect that the most important reward for me is knowing that my work is needed. I enjoy making other people's jobs easier, helping them communicate more clearly with their staff and clients. I like seeing that happen in real time.

My music work is needed and wanted as well, but often I don't see the transaction take place. People listen to my CDs when I'm not around. (This is a good thing. Sometimes well-meaning people put on my CDs when I'm at their parties, and I have to concentrate hard to focus on the conversation at hand, instead of my acquaintance's response to the background music.)

I've run into people by chance and they've told me, "I listen to your CD all the time". If I hadn't run into them, I would never have known that. When I reflect on the artists who mean the most to me, I understand this fact from the opposite angle. I can't send a fan letter to an artist every time I listen to their music; that would amount to stalking. We can't do that.

So we don't. We think warm thoughts about them, tell our friends how much we love the artist, praise them on the Internet or wherever we can, and go about our business. And we keep listening to the music (or enjoying the painting on our wall, or reflecting on the novel, or re-reading the poems). Meanwhile, the artist is also going about her business: trying (often unsuccessfully) to attract the attention of influential people; writing songs without knowing when they'll be performed or if they'll ever be recorded or distributed. A profoundly gifted songwriter I know recently expressed her fear that no-one would care whether or not she put out another CD. I was surprised because, compared to many other artists, she's received high-level critical praise: people have told her that her work is valuable, and yet, she doubts it because that validation doesn't happen constantly.

It doesn't happen as constantly as the phone ringing, as my client needs a rewrite on the corporate newsletter. Or as constantly as the kids' interruptions through the day, as they need me to arrange a playdate with a friend or go to the store to buy a new pair of sandals. The validation doesn't come as constantly as the drip in the basement which needs to be fixed, and will require thousands of dollars which can be made immediately by writing corporate newsletters, but perhaps not at all by making art.

As I was driving back from a small house concert this weekend, I listened to a CD that I hadn't listened to lately, by a singer-songwriter named Eliza Gilkyson. The record is called "Paradise Hotel" and it's an excellent collection of songs which will appeal to anyone who also likes Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams and Roseanne Cash. At the house concert, as I chatted with the audience beforehand, someone had commented on how songs (mine in fact) had become the "soundtrack of their life" and another person remarked that he'd noticed that wonderful effect in movies: how songs actually seemed to magnify the small details in the frame and provide more emotional power to the experience. (He expressed it so well, I wanted him to become some kind of public campaigner for the value of art.)

I thought about that as I drove north from Buffalo to Toronto, noticing how Eliza's eloquent words and soothing melodies elevated the scenery, made it all seem like paradise. When I got home, I sent her a short note by e-mail to tell her how much I enjoyed her music. As always, the fanmail paled in comparison to the actual experience. How can I pass along to her the deep knowing that her music counts in the universe...that it's needed and wanted...when that need seems to be best expressed in the moment, in real time, and in personal experience? Even in live performance, there's a distance between the artist and the audience...but never a distance between art and the heart that receives it.

Maybe by knowing, and expressing, how much the art of others means to us, we can become aware of how others are experiencing our art as well. We can be reassured that valuing and validation is taking place, beyond our field of vision and beyond our time and space.