ARTISTIC AUTONOMY

(Originally published Saturday, September 27, 2008)

Today I went to one of my favorite places. It's somewhere facing the water. I parked my car, took my sandals off, and stuck my feet out the window to feel the cool breeze between my toes. Then, I watched the sun set into a bright red horizon line. From afar, the waters seemed to ready the waves to rush towards me and dash against the shoreline rocks, creating a violent splash right in front of me. At other times, they were calm and peaceful, almost as if the hand of God had stilled them for my amazement. The view was absolutely remarkable. I like going there for inspiration. My first thought was about absolute autonomy. I was completely unrestricted and free to create either something as breathtaking as the view before me or not. I figured I'd write anything that came to mind; there needn't be a point to any of it because, after all, it was supposed to be an autonomous experience. Who cares whether or not I had run on sentences, colons instead of commas, 'but' instead of 'and', fragmented phrases, misspelled words, or even improper sentence structure? Bad syntax? Who cares? I knew what I was feeling, and my writing was merely a reflection of my emotions. So, I wrote. After about two hours, I had used up my entire pad. I was done, and I felt good about everything I had expressed on paper. The point is to capture the thoughts and feelings at that moment without restrictions.


As a creative artist, I have autonomy over my thoughts, their composition, expression, and presentation. Of course, that autonomy can often be compromised when there are elements that restrict and/or alter free expression, be it for business or other purposes. For instance, it is quite rare to be lauded as a great literary writer when your body of work is riddled with incorrect grammar, lack of punctuation, poor syntax and word usage. Likewise, it is almost impossible to produce flawed literary work, at least according to the grammatical rules of Standard English, and safely land in a comfortable spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. While, a literary writer has the freedom to write about anything, he/she must do so within defined constructs of writing formats. As musical writers, there is more freedom to write exactly what is on our minds without a care for word or punctuation usage. For example, in Believe It Or Not, Nickelback sang "Believe it or not everyone have things that they hide." While the use of 'have' instead of 'has' is obvious, it worked. When Aerosmith introduced Sweet Emotion, "My get-up-and-go must've got up and went," they couldn't have said it any better to drive the point home. Erik B. & Rakim did just that in their song What's On Your Mind when they said, "Hello, good looking is this seat tooken" The flagrant use of a 'made up' word almost assaults your knowledge and understanding. You find yourself asking, "what in the world! Is that a word? !@$%^&*" And who can overlook Sly and the Family Stone's song title "Thank U (Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin)" Clearly, the play of words, pronunciation, and spelling lend for a very lighthearted and comical take of language, and that's the point. As a creative people, we maintain artistic autonomy in order to effectively touch others musically, even if it means breaking away from convention.


The time was well spent. By then, the sun had been completely consumed into the ocean, and I couldn't see the horizon anymore. A clear night had come upon me, and it was time to head back home to get ready for tonight's event. But it's ok. I'll come back; I always do.