gift of prophecy -- the artist’s curse

So why do artists have to die before they receive recognition, art’s oldest cliche, and the first thing people say when they find out you’re an artist. There must be a reason. Artists could be seeing the future, but that seems a bit far-fetched. Artists can’t pay their bills, live in substandard locations, and are exposed to myriad bad habits any of which saps the impulse, so it's unlikely they'd become time-travelers. The secret may be that they’re simply detached, not on the corporate ladder even at the bottom, and this free-floating independence leads to a kind of unblinking objectivity, and being down on the ground they sense the rumbles first. Most of their siblings and classmates went out for as much pie as they could carry home, burrowing into some secure niche in society’s broad fabric, but artists struggle along with menial occupations that don’t pay extra for loyalty, and they feel none. Artist are confronted with and react to things as they are, and it gives them a head start.

There’s a lot of insulation between the well-to-do and things as they are, and for the most part the rich don’t even want to know. In terms of awareness, this level of comfort creates a lag-time, a persistent gap that follows a culture’s real-time meanderings, but always a few steps back, and the general public usually rides with them. As the world turns over, as new mentalities advance past obsolete and faltering systems, people find the artists have been there already, saying something that relates to how they feel, in that moment. It happens over and over -- it’s a cliche, the biggest cliche there is about being an artist. Artists sometimes have to die before they receive recognition because their life-span doesn’t quite cover the lag-time in public awareness, and there it is, the curse of artistic prophecy.

It might even be a more active process, and art might be more than just the reflection of its culture, even if two steps ahead. It’s art that spreads the word, that carries the message mind to mind, a new point of view, an attitude, a way of seeing the world that never occurred to the previous generation, even though they’re still dominating public discourse. From the art that's available now, it’s possible to buy a piece of the future, a zip-line to a changing world view, in your town, in your state, on the whole planet. Textbook art history, sad to say, and its legions of state-supported administrators and sly marketeers, together touting a pantheon of ‘tongue-speaking’ savants, have become just last century's fairy tale with an unhappy ending, good bye.

Go find art that’s just beginning to speak, that makes music in your inner ear and pulls at your attention, even when displayed with other art. Just as the fruit that tastes the best turns out to be the most nutritious, the art you’re apt to like might help you keep your feet, as new realities arise. Prophetic, detached, totally independent artists are everywhere.