Re: Low Self Esteem and Looping (It's Ted's fault! Really!)

[ArsOcarina@aol.com]

Hi all,

Mr. Self-Esteem Problem here. Heheh. Actually I got into looping
(way back when, 30 years ago, with tape delays) BECAUSE of low
self-esteem. I was too shy to play with anyone but myself. I hadn't
the native ability to sing and play at once (so "songs" were out)
and the sort of music I gravitated toward was always a little outside
my acquaintances sphere -- besides just being unskilled and BAD.

In other words, I was a misfit. I have often wondered over the years
just how much creative/industrious activity in the West was often
just the result of certain individuals drive/hunger to "compensate" for
a perceived personal "lack" in some other area -- misfits desperately
trying to "fit in" and find/found/forge a place for themselves in a 
cruelly mocking and ever-threatening world.. 

A couple of issues/questions come to mind whenever this sort 
of discussion come up. 

1. Does being a "misfit" generate low self-esteem or vice versa.

(or, to put it another way)

2. Does low self-esteem come from internal sources or external?

(and depending on one's answer to that)

3. Can it be "fixed" by merely changing ones perspective/world view?

(or . . .)

4. What point does REALITY step in? However our perspectives of the
world (and ourselves in it) may change, the TRUE nature of the world 
(reality) generally does not -- certainly not in my experience anyway.

5. How much has (or can) human nature be changed?

5. If EVERYONE is an artist/poet/dancer/architect/sculptor/whatever, 
is ANYONE an artist/poet/dancer/architect/sculptor/whatever? 

A good pal of mine is a REAL (and published) poet -- a friend and peer
of some of the original "Beats" -- and a fine writer of almost anything.
Published or not, he's written several novels too. Anywho, a few years 
ago he wrote an epic (nearly novel-length) poem called: THIS IS MY 
LAST POEM. In it (among other things) he decries the de-evolution of 
poetry and its place of prominence in the West as being specifically 
the result of the naive popular attitude that ANYTHING is a poem and 
that EVERYBODY is a poet -- "even my dog can be a poet." In it, it's his 
assertion that real POETRY (and we're NOT talking about rhyme and 
meter here) has almost ceased to exist in the West.

While his diagnosis is admittedly somewhat curmudgeonly and grumpy
-- yes, and despite the Balinese -- I tend to think he's on to something.
Poetry may not be "gone" but it has certainly been largely forgotten
(in favor of the popular song lyric and the Hallmark card verse) and 
gotten sick to the point of being in a near death coma.

6. Is creativity a gift or a curse . . . or both?

In my experience as a painter/artist -- beginning as a prodigy at age 
seven and progressing through ten years of college and an eventual 
27-year long career as a commercial advertising designer -- it certainly 
has been both. To cop an image from my own previous e-mail, creativity
is like being given the gift of flight (however intermittent that gift may 
prove). But it's a gift that also makes misfits of it's recipients. We live
in two worlds, the one here on the ground, the MUNDANE world, and the
world UP THERE in the sky. It seems only natural to be unhappy in this 
situation. 

Though I am far, FAR from being a musical prodigy, my musical activity/
career has only paralleled and served to confirm this outlook. I live in
two worlds and will only find rest when I only live in just one of them.

'Til then, I suppose I've little choice but to continue as a half-breed, 
genetic misfit, neither wholly one or the other -- leadenly earthbound 
but with heart and soul still longing skyward. As I see it, this is largely 
the reason for low self-esteem among artists (or "failed" artists like me
anyway). Heheheh. It parallels one I also sense among people I could 
only describe as really and truly SPIRITUAL.

Best regards,

tEd ® kiLLiAn

http://www.pfmentum.com/flux.html
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http://www.netmusic.com/web/album.aspx?a_id=CBNM_17314
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