Broken Life

Warning: Christian-ese ahead.

This morning at church, just before the sermon, the thought suddenly came to me out of nowhere -- did God have to strip everything out of me so there was space for Him to fill me up with grace? Did God have to break me to get inside me? He's done that before, though not quite at the level of the past year and a half. I keep saying I want to touch people. And I know (at least cognitively) that only happens when God is in me. Is that what He was trying to do? It darn near backfired. I didn't speak to Him for over a year. I still barely speak to Him.

The sermon had nothing to do with this train of thought, but right at the end of the service, during communion, one of the interns talked about Jesus breaking the bread and saying 'This is My body, broken for you.' And he talked about what this means if we're living our lives like Christ -- it means being broken before God and the people He loves. All using some of the same words I had thought earlier. It was almost creepy.

But things snapped into focus, if only for a moment: I've been trying to figure out my life, trying to get my proverbial ducks in a row (or at least get them in the same pond), trying to be perfect so I can be loved. And suddenly there was a paradigm shift. This is what the apostle Paul meant when he said "I boast in my infirmities." We live our lives unashamedly broken. We are broken and almost proud of it. We know are loved and this is why we are okay with being broken. We as Christians tend to try so hard to be salt and light and we wonder how we can best do that and suddenly I realised this is how. By being okay with being imperfect, being comfortable in our own skin. People in general are out to fix themselves, improve themselves, get that facelift and keep up with fashion at all costs... but we're not. It doesn't drive us. This is how we are different. That's all it takes. We try so hard to force being different while being sort of the same (in a knockoff kind of way) but forcing an improvement program for our own brokenness is counter-productive.

I've broken myself for this dance dream, for the love of other people -- anybody and everybody. But have I broken myself for Jesus and the people He loves?

Thought Bubble

Maybe I am crazy. What will this life give me in the end? Not money, that's for sure. Does love and passion outweigh money? Maybe I should stay here. Maybe I should move to the city. Can I really be happy doing a nine-to-five? How much long can I last in dance with my ankles the way they are? I should have picked up a second job. I'm chasing a pot of gold that doesn't exist. Now I won't be able to finish my degree. This degree won't pay for itself. I won't make that money back. Where will it come from? God funds the things that are of Him, right? Is this of Him? How do I know? Will He tell me? Do I just guess? How can I prove it? How much stock do I put in those tiny little signs? Am I spinning everything my way? Where is the money going to come from? Maybe I am stupid for trying to pursue this. Is art really needed? Does art really touch other people as much as it does me? Is it my place to try to encourage people who refuse to be? Why am I doing this, trying to help people if I can't even keep myself above despair? Who am I to say I have hope when I don't believe it? Why is money so freaking important? Why can't I enjoy my life without having to field these money questions? Should I get a student loan so I can continue college without having to take a second year off? But the degree won't pay for itself... Why do my thoughts never resolve, just keep running in circles? Why would God put this love for the stage in my heart if nothing could be done with it? What's the point? Was it to mock me? Was it to make other people feel better about their stupid ridiculous dreams? If I died everyone would bend over backwards trying to fulfil their interpretation of my dream without me but they don't give a rip about it now when I'm alive. Life would be easier if I was dead. I wouldn't constantly have to make these decisions and work my butt off for a dream that doesn't make money and a job to fund the dream. Although isn't that what people do anyway? They work their job to fund the American dream. All those hours and there's no money at the end of it and there's no strength left for the dream. Why is the world so stupid? You kill what you need. Or don't you need art? Is that a lie that I've believed in my desperation to avoid the nine-to-five? Is that all this is? Would the pressure be off if I gave up and worked as a secretary? Or would that be a denial of my soul and my God-given calling? But was it even given by God in the first place? How do I know? I should have applied for scholarships sooner. I should have... I should have... I should have... I don't know what I should have done. What is right? Is it right only for me or is it right for the plan of God to be fulfilled? Why do I have this burning need to avoid the nine-to-five? Am I just lazy and justifying it with art? Am I stupid? I must be or I would have applied for scholarships sooner... or given up this dream. Is it just that? Is it just a dream, a cautionary tale for my future self?

Round, round we go...

Another day, another 5600 revolutions of this circle, this thought bubble, this hamster wheel of the mind, spinning its tires and rehashing these questions to death, adding other more complicated questions when I'm least mentally prepared for it?

Welcome to my life.

Music Day - Walk Between The Lines

A year ago today I heard this song for the first time.

It was the morning after my cousin's sudden impossible death. The day after God yanked the proverbial rug out from underneath me and I realised that it is possible for even the family of a dead child to pretend nothing happened and carry on as normal. I had never felt so betrayed in my life. I have never felt so much rage as I have in this past year, over that one incident. I hated God. I hated my family. I hated the platitudes my friends gave me in their efforts to shut me up or at least redirect my attention. I hated myself, for living while she died -- more people loved her than will ever love me; if someone had to die, why not someone who nobody would really miss? -- and for not being able to create any art at all after she died. It was like my inspiration died when she did. My one outlet for frustration was gone, and this only added insult to injury.

And somehow this song gave me something to hold onto even though my entire life was falling apart. It's kind of odd, as the song didn't really speak to my situation, but it just happened to be the only thing that my shocked, broken heart could hold onto without wanting to kill it out of sheer fury.

Maybe it was the mood of it. It was dark and moody and raw and emotional, and those were all things I was feeling. For once the lyrics didn't resonate with me (usually that's what draws me to a song) because they felt so far from what I was feeling. The lyrics are actually kind of hopeful, and I was not hopeful. I wanted to die too, just to get away from the nightmare that was suddenly my life.

Title: Walk Between The Lines
Artist: Russ Taff
Album: Russ Taff
Year: 1987
Label: Myrrh
iTunes here; YouTube here.

This album, by the way, is said to be hands-down Russ Taff's best. I haven't heard all his albums, but since this is the only one I like so far, I'm inclined to agree. (Although the reason I like it is mostly because it's more of a rock album while the others I've heard were country. I can't stand country.) The whole album is largely in the same raw, moody, emotional vein, questioning and yearning and hoping and pleading. It encapsulates my thought life in sonic form more than I think any album ever has. It captures, fairly accurately, the weight that sits on my heart nearly every single day of my life. It acknowledges that life can have pain and hard moments (or years, as the case may be...), and especially at the time it was released, this kind of gut-level songwriting was unheard of in the Christian music subculture. Russ Taff poured his heart and soul out for this album, and my soul is better for it.

Lone Ranger

18 March 2016, 2.08pm.

Apparently I'm reconstructing my entire life right now.

I was re-reading my post about anger and motivation in my art and it occurred to me that the single biggest thing preventing me from going farther in the dance/choreography side of my art is the lack of a dance team. I keep telling myself that's because there are no committed dancers in this entire country (which is partly true), but it's also because I am literally too scared to ask the ones I do know.

I've become so used to working by myself, for myself for so long that the idea of working with another human being scares me. Human beings have differing opinions and human beings can hurt each other, sometimes deeply. And given the (lack of) acceptance I've felt about being an artist so far and the fact that I'm just coming off of the worst year of my life, emotionally, I want nothing more than to hide my fragile heart away. If just one more person dies or leaves us, my heartbreak may become irreparable and in a person with a history of depression, you want to stay as far away from that as possible...

Basically, I've locked myself in.

I never wanted to be a solo artist. I wanted a team to work with, a big, talented, expressive team that can do huge sweeping numbers in perfect sync while also showcasing the unique qualities everyone possesses. That has always been what I loved in dance and that has always been the sort of choreography I strived to create. But with no-one to dance it -- and with no courage to even ask around and risk the rejection -- it remains mere scribbles on paper. Poetry, music, and literature can all survive for centuries like this. But dance cannot. (I'm not going to get into lamenting that music has a more-or-less universal notation system while people seem to think that mere video clips are all that is needed for dance. You don't expect musicians to reconstruct an entire symphony by listening to a few garbled fragments...)

Point is, as of right now I'm a lone ranger.  I create by myself, for myself. And that's not who I wanted to be. But then who do I work with? I get the sense that no-one in the dance world has anything close to the same goals in dance and choreography as I do. In fact, as previously established, I don't even know what my own goals are. But I know what they're not -- they are to not be ugly, pretentious, and unrelentingly bleak, like modern dance.

The Why

17 March 2016, 4.57pm.

Lately I've heard a lot of people talk about 'finding your why' -- why you commit to healthy eating, weight loss, dance, writing, or whatever else. It's something I've always struggled to define for myself as an artist. The closest I ever came to verbalising it was something I wrote on a scrap of paper what I hoped would eventually be a poem. The poem never materialised, but the final line still rings in my head: why do I write? I write so you can't see me cry.

Was that it? Was it simply my coping mechanism, my life support through the deepest recesses of depression? And is that why my inspiration is gone now? Has it served its purpose? Was that my 'why' -- to stay alive? It's very likely that without being able to use writing as an outlet for my suicidal fantasies, I'd be dead now.

Or was my 'why' to prove my relatives that I could do what they blatantly told me I couldn't? I got so tired of them squashing my dreams before they were even fully formed that I started doing exactly what they said I couldn't, for the sheer pleasure of proving them wrong. But now they've (more or less) realised that telling me 'you can't' not only means I will, thank you very much, it also means I get REALLY cross with them, so now they don't tell me I can't do things. But it's left me without moorings. Now they're so afraid of kindling my wrath (I don't blame them) that they have absolutely zero opinion whether or not I'm on the right track, even when I plead and beg for their opinion whether or not they think I'll like it. Basically, they quit telling me I was stupid in favour of ignoring me completely.

So now that the suicidal thoughts are gone, and my relatives don't even deign to tell me I'm stupid anymore, I have no motivation. My 'why' is gone.

The problem is, I still want to make art.

Now what?

I have to find something to strive for, some reason to keep creating things, some goal, however abstract. For someone with my upbringing, the obvious answer is 'to bring glory to God.' Indeed, most people in my realms of influence don't even ask why I dance or write or anything, they just fill in the blank with this answer. It actually irritates me a bit, because I know it's not true. Admittedly that's what it should be, but I'll freely admit I am not at that point. I can say that's my why till I'm blue in the face, but I know in my heart that it's not.

Lately I've been saying I dance because I love it.  This is a perfectly satisfactory answer for friends/relatives/the general public, but I personally need something more specific than that, if only for my own clarification.

Why do I dance? Why do I write? Why do I create? Without an answer, I will likely plateau. The fact that I can't even come up with an answer haunts me.

One Week

Written 8 April 2016, 11.48pm.

Strange week this week.

Last Friday at this time I was in Saskatchewan, visiting my college friends, excited beyond belief to be able to see so many of them, despite the fact that most of my college friends are performance majors wrapping up all their final performances (and rehearsals) for the year -- to say nothing of all the major papers they were still writing.

This visit came after I stayed up late for nearly four straight days in a desperate attempt to finish my final history paper of the semester for my distance course before the trip.

Then we ended up staying an extra day (Sunday) in Saskatchewan. At first this was okay with me, but then Sunday afternoon my parents texted me: 'Grandpa has pneumonia. All they can do is make him comfortable. You should see him Monday when you get back.' Even through the text I could sense this directive was not a mere suggestion.

We bumped our departure time up to 8.30 (from 9.30) Monday morning and planned to drive straight to his nursing home from the college. Sunday night I went to the final choir performance of the year and all I could really think was 'Grandpa will hear real angels sing like this soon.' But I hoped he could hold on.

I woke up Monday morning to see a text sent at 3.30am: 'Grandpa is gone.'

No point in hurrying now. So we moseyed home. It had happened so fast that it didn't seem real. My friend and I laughed and joked on the way home in much the same way we had on the way to the college. In retrospect I'm glad I was with him that day and not at home -- as awful as it was to have missed saying goodbye by one day, being with my friend, stuck in a vehicle together for the better part of eight hours, was what I needed. Of course it wasn't really his decision whether or not to spend those eight hours with me, but he made the most of it -- making me laugh but also letting me question and ponder. He let me feel a lot of emotions but didn't make me feel guilty for feeling any of them. In spite of what awaited me at home, I genuinely enjoyed myself and I think that time of enjoyment cushioned the blow. I would never have taken it half as well if I had been at home, surrounded by it.

Then came the texts from my mother at the funeral home with my grandma and my uncle: 'We're thinking of having the funeral on Friday,' and 'Grandpa had requested that you sing at his funeral. Your choice of song.'

What?

I haven't properly sung in a full year -- and even when I was actively training, I wasn't particularly good at it. Oh sure, I sing in the van when I'm driving to dance class, but somehow I don't think that really counts. And of course, I was in the throes of a full-on chest infection and could hardly talk without drowning in phlegm. Plus I knew my grandpa had never actually heard me sing. Who in the world had given him the idea that I could sing?

We arrived home. Since my grandpa was already dead I simply went straight to dance class that night -- the first class back after a week off for spring break. To wake up at your former's roommate's house in small-town Saskatchewan and end up at dance class in big-city Alberta over the course of one day always gives me a bit of mental whiplash -- never mind the realisation that I would never see my grandpa again, though he had been fine when I left.

Tuesday I drove my sisters to dance class -- which I don't usually do, but my mother was busy and couldn't take them. Wednesday was my only semi-normal day. Thursday I spent two and a half hours at the dentist's getting two of my front teeth essentially rebuilt and am still getting used to the feel of two teeth without any nerves in them whatsoever. And of course, Friday -- today -- was the funeral.

Because of all the divorcing and petty arguments and crap that's been going on over the past year and a half, I hadn't seen half of this side of the family since before my second year of college. I didn't even recognise my cousin. And we live less than five minutes apart from each other.

I've been to funerals before, but I've never been 'the family.' Some of them have been relatives, yes, but more along the line of 'great-grandmother' or 'cousin.' But when it's your grandpa, you are the family, you are one of the people who sits in the 'Reserved' pews at the front and don't have to stand for the hymns. Funerals are very, very different when you're the immediate family. You are the last in the sanctuary -- parading past all those standing people -- and you are the first to leave it -- immediately into the waiting limo to head to the gravesite. You are given first dibs at standing room at the graveside service and you are one of the people given a rose. The people at the luncheon wait for you to go through the food line first and as they leave they come and speak to you. Half of these people I thought I didn't know but then recognised them with shock. When did everybody get so old?

And to think last Friday at this time, there were no funeral plans. I was watching Doctor Who with my roommate, planning to visit our friends later in the afternoon and evening. My grandpa was alive and although frail and weakened by recent strokes, he was fairly well.

How quickly time moves. How quickly life changes.

Music Day Part II - Up From The Dead

This gets harder every year. There are actually so few joyful 'He Arose!'-type songs. I have no problem finding stuff about Good Friday, but there is precious little about Easter Sunday (songwriters: take note).

But one of the few singers whose joy simply radiates through his voice is Dana Key, founding member, guitarist, and songwriter for DeGarmo & Key, one of the biggest Christian rock bands (second to Petra and later Stryper) of the '80s. To me this is the song from my childhood that I never actually knew in my childhood. I've just spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out how or why and I can't. I don't know... it just brings me back to that time. Like the Imperials' Holdin' On and Michael W. Smith's All You're Missin' Is A Heartache.

Title: Up From The Dead
Artist: Dana Key
Album: The Journey
Year: 1990
Label: ForeFront Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

I would love to hear this done with a piano, a string orchestra and a harmony vocal. At the risk of writing the most clichéd statement ever on this blog: the production in this recording is (wonderfully!) dated, but the message is timeless.

Up from the dead
The world has a Saviour
Up from the dead
With power to give...
Jesus lives!

He is risen indeed!

Music Day, Part I - The Messiah

I've always liked the lyrical progression of this song; how the title line takes on three different tones.

Also, those of you who are sick of mushy-gushy Christian radio and mega-church worship-band crap will appreciate this one. Bloodgood was one of the lesser-known hair metal bands that rode Stryper's coattails but were much, much better at lyric-writing than their bumblebee-coloured counterparts (admit it -- Stryper could play a mean guitar and they had good harmonies, but as for lyrics... I'll just leave this here). They also had a bit of a theatrical bent -- I remember seeing a video on YouTube of the band performing this song on a full-on theatre set and the band members as characters in the story. It wasn't quite on the level of Alice Cooper's stage show, but the approach seemed similar (not that I'm an expert on Alice Cooper either). I'll see if I can find it again...

Anyway, before this post becomes a who's-who of rockers whose names I know but whose styles I'm rusty on, here's the song:

Title: The Messiah
Artist: Bloodgood
Album: Detonation
Year: 1987
iTunes here, YouTube here.

Also, I totally found the dramatised live version! It's even more awesome than I remembered. Watch it here.

The live video in particular brings out a little more of the political, earth-bound side of Jesus' death. See, at that time in history, the Jews/Israelites/Hebrews were under Roman rule and generally were not thrilled with this state of affairs. Centuries before, the Jewish prophets had told of a messiah, a king, that would come and save them. Now that the Jews had been exiled from Israel (the land promised to them by God), they assumed that this messiah would be a political one -- that he would free the Jews from Roman tyranny and establish himself as king above the Roman rulers.

Jesus, meanwhile, was born and at thirty He began teaching about God and the scriptures and performing miracles. This of course didn't sit very well with the religious leaders, as Jesus fast became more popular than they -- that and Jesus had some harsh criticism for said religious leaders, in addition to claiming to be the son of God. To claim to be the son of God was not only preposterous, it was anti-scriptural and punishable by death. The religious leaders quickly realised He was dangerous to them, but because of His fame among the common people, they didn't dare take action.

As far as the common people were concerned, everything was going great until they realised that this Jesus character didn't appear to be storming down the emperor's gates and liberating the Jews anytime soon. The religious leaders seized on this discontent and stirred the people into an angry frenzy. In a matter of days, Jesus went from widespread public acclaim to being arrested and winding up in front of a mob of angry Jews screaming for His crucifixion.

Here is where the video comes in.

The Jewish authorities didn't have the authority to sentence a person to death, so they sent Jesus to Pilate, of the Roman court (this is the character in the red robe - the singer). The Romans didn't really care about the Jews' religious dispute and Pilate sent Him to Herod -- who was in charge of the area where Jesus was from. Herod mocked Him a bit and then sent Him back to Pilate. Pilate agreed to punish Jesus and release Him, but this didn't satisfy the Jews' bloodlust. After multiple tries to dissuade the Jews from their wish to see Jesus dead, Pilate eventually gave up, washed his hands of the matter (literally) and said the people could do what they wanted with Jesus. So they crucified Him.

The thing was, the messiah was never meant to be a political one. The messiah God sent was supposed to atone for the sins of all the people in the world. This atonement required the blood of a perfectly innocent man, and this is who Jesus was. That crucifixion shed innocent blood, and because Jesus willingly allowed them to crucify Him though He certainly possessed the power to flatten every one of the perpetrators, God saw it as an acceptable sacrifice. And as proof that the sacrifice (that is, Jesus' death) was acceptable and complete, Jesus was raised from the dead and lives even now, at the right hand of God. Now -- even today -- all that is required for this atonement to be yours is to believe that Jesus shed His innocent blood to cover your sins, on your behalf. This is all that is required to save you from the wrath of God against the sinful nature that every human (myself included) is born with.

For a fuller version of the story, read here, here, and here.

Motivation

15 March 2016; 1.30am.

Is there a place for anger in an artist?

I guarantee I won't figure out the answer in one blog post, but I'm thinking it's something I should consider. I saw a thing on the Humans of New York Facebook page the other day, a quote from an artist, talking about how important humility is in an artist. And I absolutely agreed with him, but it made me aware of whether or not I'm very humble. I don't have to think about that long -- I'm probably one of the most prideful artists ever. (How much do I rail against modern dance and modern music because I think it sucks and I can do better?)

But where did this come from? I don't think I've ever been humble to begin with. There have always been things I hated in art and while I have always wanted to capture what I love about the world, I have nothing but contempt for the things that don't touch me. Is that just me? Or is this normal? Should it be so?

Further down the thought trail I realised most of my art -- indeed, most of my life -- comes from a place of anger. Sometimes it's resentment, sometimes it's jealousy, sometimes it's frustration, but it all fits under the same heading. I always had an interest in writing, but I started writing in earnest in the depths of my self-pity after being told by the church youth group that I was unloveable. So I sat in my room and composed stories, mostly about a lonely, rejected main character who either commits suicide (causing everyone who met her to finally realise what jerks they were), or goes off to college somewhere -- effectively falling off the face of the earth -- and climbs the ranks of society or show business and then runs into her detractors by chance years down the road when she's in a higher social class than they. It was my only way of being vindicated -- in my own handwriting, in reams of looseleaf that no-one has ever seen. Later this started to spawn novels with a more diverse plot range, but it started with my rage against all those who claimed to be reflecting the God of love but spread only hate and favouritism against me.

On a different track: I first realised I wanted to make dances when I was about eight years old. I even made a few false starts in my mid teens. But what finally got a dance finished was this: when I finally grew brave enough to even mention to my mother that this was what I wanted, she took it well -- to my face. But that night, after we were all in bed... I went upstairs to get a drink or something and I heard her talking to my dad about me.

"She wants to be some big-shot choreographer now. I don't know where she gets this stuff from. She'll never do it. She doesn't want it bad enough."

I was incensed. This was my life's dream. For years she had been begging me to talk to her, to tell her what was going on in my mind about something, anything. And I finally decided to trust her with this, my deepest and most precious thought (at the time)... and she calls me stupid?

I don't want it bad enough, huh? We'll see about that.

I made a vow that night. I would finish the next dance I started. And if I couldn't finish it, that would be a sign to me that choreography was not what I was meant to do and I would accept that she was right.

I had spent my entire life being a failure. A nobody. Someone who would be better off dead. I'd already written half a dozen novels by that point in my life, but apparently that didn't matter and I was still a failure. With my vow in mind, I started work on Sing Your Freedom not long after that. I finished it.

And I said nothing about it. I finished several more dances. I'm not sure at what point she realised I was finishing them. But by that time I was beyond telling her about my accomplishments. They were worthless anyway. These were for me now. When they went through my stuff after I died -- whenever that would be -- they would find out what a great artist was in their midst. And then they would be sorry for treating me like that.

Delusional? Almost certainly. But I was blind with rage. I was no longer creating to enrich people's lives. I was creating to prove -- if only in my daydreams -- that I was not as worthless as I felt everyone was making me out to be. And in a final twist of pride, I didn't even talk about my work or my accomplishments outside of this blog and occasionally Facebook. The very people I thought I had gone into art for were not privy to the work that I was theoretically doing for them. My gift -- if I even had one to speak of -- was being used for me only, for my own edification and satisfaction. I told myself 'they'll never love you no matter how great your work is so why bother trying?' So I focused on proving to myself that I was great. And thus I started creating art in a complete and total vacuum.

Power To The Young

Have you ever noticed that in all those Buzzfeed articles and other assorted Facebook-clogging 'news services' posts, they always emphasize it when someone is young?

'Amazing Six-Year-Old Sings Adele Better Than Adele.'

'Worldwide Ocean Cleanup Project Headed Up By Twenty-One-Year Old.'

'This Kid's Eminem Cover Is The Most Inspiring Thing Ever.'

Why? Why are you only good at something if you're young, if you're a prodigy?

This has been eating away at me for some time now.

See, the thing is: I'm not that old. I'm still in my early twenties. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I have another sixty or so years to go on this planet. So why do I already feel so much like a has-been that I actually have flashes of suicidal thoughts? What in the world would possess an intelligent and fairly skilled college-educated twentysomething with a close family and a good group of friends to even have the passing thought of suicide?

I feel irrelevant. Like I'm too old to be of any use to anybody anymore. I don't want my name on Buzzfeed or any of those other crappy 'news' sites (then there would definitely be some suicidal thoughts going on), but I want to be needed. I want to be able to touch people's lives. But I'm already too old. I expected to feel this way when I'm in my sixties, not my twenties. I literally just got out of school and already I'm useless. I haven't even had a chance to prove myself yet. I have nothing to grow into. My life is already over and I never got the chance to live.

Please... stop perpetuating this culture of 'only the young can be good at anything' and 'only the young are worth our time.' The young haven't had time to develop and perfect their craft and/or skills. The old have been toiling for years and know exactly how to get the results they want -- but they've already been silenced. We as a culture don't give them that chance. They have one shot of shallow brilliance at age seven and then we cast them aside before they get the chance to really grow into their promise. Look at... yes, I'm bringing him into this... Terry Scott Taylor. This man has been a professional songwriter for forty years. That's twice as long as I've even been alive. And while, yes, his early output with Daniel Amos (Horrendous Disc; ¡Alarma! Chronicles) was pretty freaking good (unlike most people's early output), you listen to later albums such as Dig Here Said The Angel (2013), the Swirling Eddies' The Midget, The Speck, And The Molecule (2007), or even MotorCycle (1993), and you can't help but notice a rich maturity pervading the entire project -- in the choice of words, in the choice of topic, in the approach to the arrangements, the musicianship, the vocal development, the crafting of the mood... everything.

Are we really so embroiled in hipster culture that we all want to be the first to discover the next Mozart and therefore are trying to promote younger and younger people in an attempt to say 'I knew of them first'? What does it do to the kids whose skill you're exploiting before it's ripe? What does it do to the older and truly accomplished who are consistently ignored? What does it do to normal twentysomethings like me who already feel like there's nothing left for us to give and so we might as well just give up everything?

Everybody loses.

And maybe this is why art is, in general, in such a deplorable state. There's no maturity, only tricks and explosions. And when art suffers, so does society.

Everybody loses.