A bit of a conversation with myself

[RiverNotch]

Entertainment is more competitive than ever, and it's also highly segmented. It's the poets responsibility to find a niche... People have always loved fart jokes and naked woman more than Homer or Himmingway, but those forms of entertainment weren't recorded to history.

I agree with this, except on one point: there are more sculptures of naked gods than any of the homeric heroes, and the oldest recorded joke follows (originally in Sumerian):

Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.

Although in the what-should-be highly uncompetitive society that is humanity (as in, it's cooperation and non-destructive competition that's been the key to our species success), it really shouldn't be that the dedicated poet should find his niche, I think, rather that all dedicated poets should be niches unto themselves. Hence the whole find your voice thing everyone keeps talking about.

In ten years of writing music loads of live shows and a few festivals, the most money it's brought me is 30$ and 500 diapers, but then all I've spent on gas, instruments, and gear, I'm way behind.  Since I'm still doing it, though, i think I can say it's just to inspire those that like it.  Or wish they could do it.

exactly! proof, if proof be needed, that the "I/Other" dichotomy, raised by the ludicrous question "who do you write for?", is bogus. that rivernotch fellow raises a valuable point about the ego. society has made us ashamed of our own nature, our own psychology as human beings. we no longer understand the ancient greek aphorism of "know thyself". instead, we are told how we should feel, who we should be, what we should think, by adverts and movie stars, or other authority that thinks they have raised themselves above the pond of human scum, ironically telling us to be ourselves, all the while making basic human emotion something shameful. and god forbid you should actually feel a sense of satisfaction from impressing someone, from occasionally desiring that fundamentally human satisfaction; because we must never ever write for [or before] the other, WE must be singular! WE must run away from ourselves! fuck that noise. We are plexus, rhizomatic, strange, hypocritical, stupid, fucked up, confused, and ridiculous. . . and we're doin' all right.

That issue does feel kinda more complicated though. For one, without society we wouldn't even have language (and without modern society, the means to speak out so; without Christian society, the drive to write, either towards or away from God, or the idea of him) -- for another, I feel like said ancient Greek aphorism is tied to the whole "some people are citizens, some people are slaves, and by people we mean men" thing that the ancient Greeks tended towards -- and for yet another, I'm sure very few people criticized Kate Bush or Leonard Cohen for being happy about performing again in front of a live audience, so few that it could be considered a sort of neurosis. I find myself agreeing, but also sorta dissatisfied.