Love the art vs. Love the artist

I am embarrassed to admit that it is only recently that I've learned to make the distinction between these two concepts (as they apply to myself and my own work). In retrospect it is kind of hilarious that I was operating previously with these things conflated.

Happily, I have come to realize that what I really want to accomplish musically has something to do with having people like the work, but has nothing to do with needing people to like me. Ah, what relief. Of course, I do still need people to like me, but that's an entirely separate matter. Understanding that this is an entirely separate matter is a wonderful thing!

At the same time, I am more and more clear about the fact that all people will not like the work. In fact, most people will probably not like it (or at least not care about it). However, there are some people who will actually like it and be enthusiastic about it. This is nice.

Having learned these simple things makes it much easier to swallow a lousy review (like the one that was published on Monday in the Post), because my self esteem isn't all tied up in whether or not people liked the music. People responded quite positively to the show - and I think that has a lot to do with the potential for the group and what we're trying to accomplish, even though I've got some work do to as far as getting the music where it needs to be. Carl told me today that he thought about 75% of the music didn't really work, but the other 25% was really exciting. For our first time out with this project, I'll take that. Ok, so we didn't knock one out of the park our first try, but we'll get there...