Self Indulgence: C/D?

Humor me.

Emerson Lake and Palmer should be collected and burnt. Does that answer your question?

Well, it's neither one of the worst crimes, nor completely irrelevant: its relevance is only brought to mind when an artists' vision sucks (subjective, of course)! The rest of the time we are happy to indulge artists' indulgences...in fact, it's what we go to them for...no?

completely irrelevant because every artist is indulgent

If, instead of regarding art as an act of self-expression, one regards it as an act of communication...

Why are acts of self-expression not indulgent?

To successfully achieve an 'act of communication' requires attempt at same, and attempting to communicate with other people is the most self-indulgent thing ever

Why would anyone play music if it weren't self-indulgent? It would just be like any other job, except with shittier pay and hours. Or am I being overly literal?

'Self-expression' cannot be considered intrinsically indulgent because what we traditionally deem 'indulgent' in music is that which we purport to have no value to US as a listener. Since 'self- expression' can be termed as something devoid of these musician- listener restraints, it is not indulgent in and of itself, QED.

Im not get at ELP hate they dressed beeter than the other bands and they hard hard metal riffs with no guictar playner!

Sorry, my post should've been clearer. I meant something along the lines of "My response to the above statement would be that: If, instead of regarding art as an act of self-expression, one regards it as an act of communication..."

And the fill-in-the-blank would be "...then the silliness of statements like that one ('every artist is indulgent') becomes apparent."

attempting to communicate with other people is the most self-indulgent thing ever

That statement is false.

My point in all this, btw, is that I think self-indulgence is primarily a failure of craft and imagination, not a failure of the artist's personality.

The band Mindless Self-Indulgence ([c]rap/nu-metal) is a total dud.

If, instead of regarding art as an act of self-expression, one regards it as an act of communication..." And the fill-in-the-blank would be "...then the silliness of statements like that one ('every artist is indulgent') becomes apparent."

What is art supposed to be communicating? When a work of art gives people conflicting impressions, has the artist demonstrably failed?

'Self-indulgent' is a descriptively useless term. Reynolds applied it to Bark Psychosis way back when, and besides the length of their songs, I have no idea what he was referring to.

My point in all this, btw, is that I think self-indulgence is primarily a failure of craft and imagination, not a failure of the artist's personality.

This implies that every creation is intrisically self-indulgent and that it is the artist's duty to transcend this base fact by means of craft and imagination.

So good art is that which conceals best?

Why is attempting to communicate with other people the most self- indulgent thing ever? Communication skills keep oneself/the family/the pack alive ... 'self-indulgent' is modified by the sense of unnecessary excess, whereas survival is supposedly the instinctual root of all of our actions and therefore the most minimal effort made in any situation.

This implies that every creation is intrisically self-indulgent and that it is the artist's duty to transcend this base fact by means of craft and imagination.

Not at all. If good art is -- as a friend of mine argues -- a way of talking about the world, then one of the responsibilities an artist has is to talk in an interesting way that will (at least potentially) be intelligible to his/her intended audience. If an artist's work seems self-indulgent -- when presented to a reasonably informed listener who receives it with goodwill -- then it means that act of communication has, to some extent, failed. The problem here is that self-indulgence can manifest itself in a bunch of different ways, and the genealogy of the problem tends to be different. For instance, if I see a free jazz performance and find it self-indulgent, I might mean that "collectively, these musicians don't have a strong enough grasp of structure to understand how they need to shape their performance so that it will be interesting to an audience". The underlying cause may be the personal narcissism of one or more of the musicians, but the proximate cause is (I hold) in this case a failure of craft: if you're not a person who is by nature inclined to successfully imagine an answer to the question, "How would I feel if I myself were listening to this as a member of the audience? Would I enjoy this?", then at least you can use craft, etc. to compensate for what "musical empathy" can't manage.

The act of creation is by no means self-indulgent. What is self-indulgent is the assumption that what you made is intelligible and interesting simply because you made it -- and when your creation has qualities that keep it from being understood or enjoyed by (informed, receptive) others, and you fail to do anything about it because you believe yourself to have the Midas touch, then it's fallen prey to self-indulgence. So perhaps another way of putting it would be a "failure of perspective". My friend also likes to say that when we listen to someone's music, we're "letting them lend us their ears", so perhaps it could be said that a creator who succumbs to self-indulgence -- as opposed to, say, incompetence -- is someone who has a worthwhile idea to communicate, but fails to understand what he/she needs to do to make that lending successful.

sometimes when i'm writing, something pops out of my head which i know (obscurely but absolutely) matters but don't yet understand: i think it's (occasionally) better to put that put into the world to FIND OUT what it means, to actually engage the reader-listener in the exchange, by allowing yourself in the course of the piece to be confused or fragmented or unfinished, to explore your "talking about the world" as a dialogue not a monologue

the danger with accessibility is that you censor possibility: your instinct was correct but you couldn't (on your own) get to the "intelligible" stage, so you just dropped it...

how do you imagine being in the head of the "reasonable reader": are they smarter than me or dimmer than me, more passive or more aggressive, more knowledgeable or more innocent, more generous than me or more impatient?

(ok haha they're NOT more impatient...)

(i guess musicians on the whole work collectively ALREADY, so they have each other as models of the "reasonable listener", but the point here is not IMAGINING the listener, but actually already working with them: in other words, you don't have to operate in a world where YOU'RE the only judge prior to "facing the gen.pub.")

"put that put" = "put that out"

I would suggest that any creative act is intrinsically self-indulgent vis a vis one indulges the self to make concrete one's creative impulses.

Let me add that this in no way denigrates the creative process since creativity is one of the most suppressed impulses of the modern human yet remains the most enlightening and liberating, what seems to me a strange and sad paradox.

Anyway, creativity should, in most cases, be indulged - without such indulgence, a large percentage of the artistic statements that we have come to know and love would never have come to fruition. And our lives would be the greyer for it. Perhaps the use of the word 'indulgence' is the problematic here, since to hear the word presupposes a negative. I believe it is reasonable to assert that this is not the case, not least for those reasons I have posited above.

In talking about the artists responsibility to communicate ther's a danger that any non-populist music is written off as self indulgent. Some people prefer ELP to Britney, it speaks to them etc, and vice verca.

Self Indulgence in music is mainly just a punk-era, boo-word to denigrate artists with long (and often very boring) solos.

Indulgence is everything. If the artist doesn't do what he likes because he likes it, then it is absolutely pointless (of course this stands for all art). If you don't feel anything for the work you've completed it will truly show. True art (in my opinion, of course)is about showing a piece of one's self.

As human beings we all experience very similar things. Even if only at the most basic levels we all share the same existence. When we do art and we do it for ourselves other people will be able to identify with what we have put forth and what we have felt. They should appreciate the insight of the human experience from a different point of view.

beg pardon if this has been said

I think the idea is simply whether the artist is putting the song first or putting himself/herself first: and by 'himself' I mean only his desire to demonstrate a particular ability, usually the ability to not end a guitar solo. It's kind of superfluous, as has been said, because all art is self-indulgent, and one can succeed to admiration in making a good song even if they do so only out of the desire to show that ability.

So 'self-indulgent' is just loosing site of the needs of the song: because then our time is wasted, unless we just are in love with the artist in question, and would buy a record if it only consisted of him farting. A misleading word, then, but the use of it is still pretty handy.

There's my take on it, then.

All depends on how much you value the self that's being indulged.