Too lazy to dig through my endless stacks of old periodicals, I found myself searching the web for an archived article in Gramophone magazine that featured an interview with pianist Helene Grimaud. I recalled having read the interview and thought that she had an exceptionally healthy attitude towards life and her art and I wanted to write about it.

During said search I stumbled upon an old essay by Lara St. John, the young Canadian violinist who has impressed the world with her talent and turned many gray-haired classical music aficionados into drooling, gawking half-wits with her stunning good looks.

Having always kept an eye (or two) on Ms. St. John and her career, I decided to read the essay, which I had not yet seen.

What stunned me, and always catches me by surprise when I read her words, is the remarkably personal nature of them. Not that she reveals intimate details about her life (that would ruin the fantasies of many fans, young and old alike), but she writes with startling candor. This is both brave and admirable, especially for an artist who has to rely upon patrons to make a living. If she doesn’t get booked, she doesn’t make a living, yet she unapologetically puts her thoughts online in the form of essays for all to see and openly curses, badmouths well-known people and takes pot-shots at Republicans.

As a performer dependent upon “booking the gig” myself, I have often worried that putting anything too controversial online may dissuade some venues from booking me. After this recent election I jokingly (or truthfully, perhaps) stated that I was going to tack a Republican surcharge onto the cost of all of my shows in red states, but I hadn’t actually considered putting such thought online, and thereby risk alienating half of the country.

But here is Lara St. John, classical violinist, immersed in a world that is arguably overwhelmingly conservative, expressing her negative view of the very patrons she serves. And she’s in good company, too! An extreme example from the field most related to my own is Penn & Teller.

Penn & Teller are known for being the “bad boys” of magic, and their stage show is filled with seemingly controversial routines (okay, controversial if you’re a conservative ass). But their outspoken nature extends far beyond the stage, to other professional productions such as their Bullshit! program on the Showtime network and interviews too numerous to name. But the P&T website also features Penn Jillette’s more personal writings, found in the Road Penn section, and these are remarkably in the style of St. John’s (though much more funny) and unhesitatingly “tell it how it is.” These are guys that are not afraid of controversy, and in fact thrive on it.

Other celebrities, from television, film and even mainstream writing, readily express their views online, with the risk that they will alienate part of their audience.

But art itself, and an authentically lived life is more art than not, is naturally controversial. The question is; what are we selling? The product or the person? In many cases it’s one and the same, in others not so clear cut. And unfortunately, an artist does have to sell, in addition to create their art.

I’ve received a lot of flack for my support and exposition of the thought of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was, for a short period of time, a Nazi. Some would have you believe that the output of anyone that is a Nazi can not be free of Nazi influence. But the product and the person in this case are not the same.

If your name is RuPaul however, it is expected that what one is selling is oneself (RuPaul, incidentally, also has a web log), and therefore personal expression in a public forum is expected to influence your career.

I created this web log with the specific intent of expressing my thoughts on a wide variety of subjects; openly, honestly and without concern for censorship. Yet now that it is linked from my professional website and others, and has my name written all over it and will undoubtedly turn up in web searches by fans and potential clients, the concern for political correctness has once again come to the fore.

Yet after reflecting upon the very reason that I have chosen the career that I am in, I’ve decided that I’m more interested in the art and the journey than “making a buck.” I do what I do because I love it, not because it makes me rich. I need to make a living, and my career has afforded me the opportunity to live exceptionally comfortably, but if I need to sacrifice some of that for the greater goal of authentic expression I will gladly do so.

So screw it. I have not only a right but a duty to say what I think and express what I feel, provided that it is well thought through and not simply opinionated bullshit. And if that means that I don’t get booked for the St. Saviourass Catholic University yearly Lent celebration, so be it. I’ll pick up the slack by performing during the Gay Pride weekend at another, more sane college, or for a theatre interested in honest and intriguing art that captures the imagination and encourages free thinking and an examination of our place in the universe.

And if you’re one of the ones that do not wish to book me as a result, please let us know by leaving your comments right here below this article. I’m sure that everyone would love to see your well-reasoned objections in print.

tags: art, controversy, grammaphone, heidegger, helene grimaud, lara st. john, penn and teller, rupaul

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 8th, 2004 at Dec 08, 04 | 8:01 am and is filed under Art, Featured Articles, Just Noumenon Posts, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.