Artists and Musicians

Why you might want to pay me

Some time ago, I watched an interview with Gene Simmons of the band KISS that included a line that has stuck with me through the years.  The interviewer asked him about a guitarist the band had brought in as a replacement while on tour whom they subsequently let go.  Simmons stipulated that the guitarist was talented, but insisted that he was nonetheless a poor fit for the band.  As he explained, “he’s an artist; we’re musicians.”

By this Simmons meant that KISS (all-caps are necessary, obviously) was all about playing instruments, singing, and putting on a show with the idea in mind of pleasing an audience, preferably as large as possible.  KISS is a business; they sell a product which they fine tune and market with pleasing the customer as the priority.  An artist, on the other hand, is someone with a particular creative vision which he hopes will appeal to people, but he is not primarily interested in money or notoriety as such, being content to attract a core group that values his work for its merits.  He is an uncompromising risk-taker, and such men seldom prosper.

“I would urge all bands that say they only care about credibility and don’t care about money to send Gene Simmons every dollar that they don’t want. I’d be happy to take it off them.” - Gene Simmons, philosopher and life coach.

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There is a lot of nuance in this, of course.  No one is purely a musician or an artist, and one’s status is seldom static over the course of a career.  There are trajectories where one starts off near one pole and ends nearer the other.  One might argue that Elvis began as a musician and matured into an artist, while Jefferson Airship famously moved in the other direction.  Some acts, like Iron Maiden, are consistently commercially successful while somehow remaining niche and creative.  It is important also to remember that neither is inherently good or bad.  There is a place in the universe for the guy who can pack a bar but not a stadium just like there is for someone who wants to play Jumping Jack Flash for the millionth time to boomers willing to shell out $1,000 for nosebleed seats.

Even he has to be sick of Margaritaville by now.

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There is often tension between artists and musicians.  For the artist, the musician is a dancing monkey who never tires of the accordion so long as the bananas keep coming.  For the musician, the artist is an out-of-touch snob resentful of the musician’s popularity and cultural power.  The artist is pretentious; the musician is a sell-out.  Of course, the two need each other, as the artist is a generator of culture, while the musician is its messenger.  KISS could never have invented rock, but rock would not be rock without KISS.

The reason all of this came to mind is that I have been thinking a good bit about my presence on Substack and what I hope to get out of it.  Originally I had no plan other than to comment on some articles I read that really moved me, but in moving me they inspired me, and the response I have gotten to my writing has encouraged me to continue.  In the bigger picture, having spent my life reading, I now feel a kind of debt, a realization that it is my turn to add to the culture that has given me so much.  So what sort of writer do I hope to be, an artist or a musician?

In keeping with the nuance I noted above, my goal is to be a kind of bridging figure between Classical, Christian, and heavy rightist philosophy and the great open space where it does not yet appear.  There are many who would be amenable to great thinkers like De Maistre, Evola, Rose, Guenon, Dugin, etc. but who have not yet made the acquaintance. However, I do not first and foremost wish to be a direct expositor of philosophy, but rather, a conduit for a way of applied thinking. There are a great many people who wish to publish their grand theory of everything in politics, metaphysics, theology, etc., and while I think those things have their place, for my part, I want to be the writer who shows what it is to live those ideas rather than parse them, and how to approach culture with that in mind. I wish to be an artist in the sense that I develop a unique style and original content; I want my articles to be so clearly mine that one could spot them even without my byline. But at the same time, like the musician, I mean to be a transmitter, someone who can make tangible and coherent the remote and esoteric. 

To continue my metaphor, there are two creators on whom I aspire to model myself, Roy Orbison and Elvis Costello.  If you have never heard anything by these men, stop reading now and dive in; I say this at the risk of you not returning.  I’ll wait . . .

Roy Orbison was a musician’s artist.  While maintaining steady though not spectacular commercial success throughout his career, he was always someone to whom the most talented listened to and wished to emulate.  The most intriguing thing about him, however, is that when you really try to pinpoint his genre, it becomes impossible.  His music is not quite country, nor rock, nor folk.  There are hints of rockabilly, Spanish guitar styling, pop, and even R&B; it is none of those things and yet more than any of them.  His melodic voice and introverted presence was all his own, even as he inspired everyone from Glen Danzig to Bob Dylan.  Of the latter, Orbison teamed up with him, Jeff Lynn, Tom Petty, and George Harrison (all of whom were fans of his) as the supergroup The Travelling Wilburys.  Tragically, Orbison died before a major tour, but the album is spectacular.

Elvis Costello is still around and still making music.  While Orbison transcended genre, Costello has mastered them in turn, creating rock, pop, country, jazz, and everything else over a long and extremely prolific career.  He is the musical version of the competent man trope, able to play anything like he was born to it, a man once banned from Saturday Night Live for roasting one of the show’s sponsors and proto-cancelled for infelicitous racial language who could pack any pub on Earth.  While not a household name, he is known among those who like to see a man test the limits of talent, which is a fine thing to be.

Like Orbison, I hope that my work is more than the sum of the ideas and influences that go into it, in a word, transcendent.  Like Costello, I aim for competence and versatility; I don’t want to write everything, but every kind of thing, essays, reviews, poetry, fiction, philosophy, etc.  The Library of Celaeno is no mere literary device.  I really do mean to seek out and bring together knowledge from beyond the stars, to converse with the ghosts, and to make it all available to my readers.

To that end, I have thought about how I might approach having paid subscribers.  Having given the matter a lot of thought, I have decided on the following approach.  I have enabled subscriptions, and I am happy to accept the support of anyone who wishes to patronize my work.  However, I also do not wish to paywall anything, and all of my work will remain open for all to read.  The rationale for this is that I do not plan to make a living with my writing and I do not wish to feel as though I am offering a product for sale with the attendant obligation to write in a certain way or with the expectations of a particular audience in mind.  You should become a paid subscriber if you:

·         Support my work in a general sense, as a patron supports an artist.

·         Wish to help me buy books, a new computer, etc.  All funds earned from subscriptions will go toward purposes related to study and learning.

·         Are FINANCIALLY ABLE TO DO SO.  Let me be clear.  I am no starving artist.  I have a career and multiple part-time jobs.  If you have $8 to your name in discretionary spending money each month, find some extra change in your mom’s couch cushions, go to Planet Fitness, and make some GAINZ before you worry about me.  If you have some real money to support a writer, find one who is really trying to make a living at this and give it to him or her.  Only pay me if it would neither affect your support of another or your own well-being. 

I will interpret paid subscriptions and donations as tokens of esteem for my work and as badges of honor.  To reiterate, I do not at present plan any special access for paid subscribers, though in the future I may have something like a Twitter Spaces get together for any paid subscribers who want such a thing, on the grounds I should be prepared to speak with anyone willing to pay for my work.  But I am open to other suggestions along these lines as well.  Please do not interpret my line of thinking as any explicit or implicit criticism of anyone else’s rationale regarding earning money on Substack.  As I noted, the world needs both artists and musicians.  And of course, I am very happy to continue to earn free subscribers.  I appreciate all of you, and I hope to keep producing content you find useful and interesting.  If you would otherwise pay me but are unable, a like, subscribe, and restack/share is as good as gold as far as I am concerned, the trifecta of online platonic love.

I’ll leave you with one of Roy Orbison’s last hits.  This song became more famous when covered by Celine Dion (musician extraordinaire) and Cindy Lauper (more of an artist, but still a musician), but was first put out by him.  The video features some of the most classic Americana aesthetics ever put on TV and a young Jennifer Connelly (and Jason Priestly for you ladies).  If you want a whitepill, read the comments from all the people who drove all night for someone.