Home for the holidays this weekend, I was amused to hear my uncle describe, in disparaging tones, the wild hairstyles and pierced lifestyles of musicians. Pink hair came in for particular censure for some reason. I wondered just how many of these wild characters he has really encountered, and also why anyone would remember hair more than art. But c’est la vie, n’est-ce pas?
I had been telling my cousin Tom (a dear friend of mine and a passionate musician himself) about my recent show at Berklee, and how thrilling it had been for me to perform there. Tom spent some time at Berklee years ago, and I knew he’d be pleased because he knows what a vibrant and exciting place it is. But threaded through my excited description (“I got to sign my name on the wall in the Green Room!”) were my uncle’s comments about weirdo musicians and their outlandish appearances.
I wasn’t too fussed, to tell the truth. I’ve heard all of this before, and my main response has always been that people who focus on this stuff are missing the point. They have ignored art and energy and focused instead on the most superficial aspect of what’s on offer. I have sometimes felt a bit sorry for them because they seem untouched by the great invigorating gusts of life that blow through music and art.
But today, I am reconsidering my rather condescending view. Those people with pink hair and studs in their eye-brows do NOT look like my uncle, and so he draws attention to the difference. But what I think he is getting at – though not in so many words – is that they don’t FEEL like him, either. They belong to a different tribe with different ethos, expectations, desires, priorities. I think this baffles some people who find themselves squarely in the majority and who have never much experimented with new or different identities. Stepping outside that warm central place just seems odd, dangerous, and even willfully self-destructive. Why would you do it? Come inside with us where we know what life is all about – and we’ll tell you in no uncertain terms how to live it!
When I was in high school I took to drawing a black star under my left eye every morning. This garnered all kinds of responses, from the mocking to the admiring, from anger to acknowledgement. At the time, I wasn’t really sure why I did it. But now, many years later, I think it was a non-verbal way of announcing to the world AND to myself that I wanted something more than safety, that I prized the unexpected, that I was already enamored of symbols, and that I saw myself as a creature separate from that consensus way of life.
In short, I think that’s when I began to see myself as an artist.
Now, years later, the star is long gone, but it did its work. It has been replaced by certain quirky garments and habits of mind which, while invisible, nevertheless leave their traces on my appearance and bearing.
J.B. Priestley offers a lively, loving description of the actors he recalls from his youth in his book of essays, Delight. Apply the spirit of this description to artists, musicians, dancers, or anyone you like, and I think you get a sense of that different tribe in splendid motion:
“In those days, actors looked like actors and like nothing else on earth. There was no mistaking them for wool merchants, shipping clerks, and deacons of Baptist chapels, all those familiar figures of my boyhood. They wore suits of startling check pattern, outrageous ties, and preposterous overcoats reaching down to their ankles. They never seemed to remove all their make-up as actors do now, and always had a rim of blue-black around their eyelids. They did not belong to our world and never for a moment pretended to belong to it. They swept past us, fantastically overcoated, with trilbies perched raffishly on brilliantined curls, talking of incredible matters in high tones, merely casting a few sparkling glances – all the more sparkling because of that blue-black – in our direction; and then vanished through the stage door…”
What I love about this is the obvious delight these actors took in occupying a separate role in their society. There are no limp-hearted attempts to “fit in” with the uncles of the world, nor apologies for eccentricity. No, these gorgeous creatures let themselves enjoy what made them different, and in doing so, that enjoyment lent vitality and nourishment to their art.
If you see yourself here, if you have been chastised for your differences, or if someone has told you “for your own good” to take off those bizarre shoes or tame that pink hair, let me encourage you to keep faith with who you really are.
Let me link arms with you and sail up the alley in our billowing coats and huge dreams. And then, pleased with ourselves, let’s vanish through the stage door and get busy making art!
