Issue 32: Don't Bother Me, I'm Thinking
By Medulla Vesuvius

The New Archetypes- Part the Second, in Which the Author Jettisons the Idea of a Second New Archetype

Hello again, Don’t Bother Me, I’m Thinking readers. Remember, if you will, at the end of my last column I promised part II of a pair of pieces dealing with the new archetypes.

Well, that idea was ruined by Clive Thompson of The New York Times. In his recent article “Sex, Drugs, and Updating Your Blog,” Thompson said everything I wanted to say and more in an approachable, engaging style, all the while adopting a premise which directly contrasted with my own.

Here’s what went wrong with my article. My basic hunch was that, like “rock stars” are an archetype, (ever-present personalities matching pre-wired expectations in our brains), “artists” are archetypal as well.

I was going to talk about the Romantic image of a tortured, solitary soul, creating art out of a primal, inescapable need, and how this type of artist has no regard for the potential audience for their work. I was going to talk about guys like Beethoven or Van Gogh or Pollock- artists from various periods of history, much more qualified for producing things than relating to people—isolationist, private geniuses who created art from on high and then let the rest of the details, (audience, criticism, meaning), sort themselves out.

Well, it turns out that image, (as much as I might personally like it), is fading into obscurity and is certainly no archetype.

According to Thompson, the new model for artists of all disciplines is accessibility, made possible through the wonders of the internet. Gone are the days when a music fan had to be stealthy and patient to get a chance at the mere hope of a token interaction, such as an after-show autograph with their favorite artist. Musicians are increasingly engaged in conversation with their fans, be it one-to-one, one-to-a-few, or one-to-many. Thompson paints a picture of today’s artists being just as busy with the “people-work” part of promoting themselves as with the more conventional activity of actually creating art work.

So, this is not an article about how the definition of the word “artist” is chiseled into our psyches the way the word “rockstar” (maybe) is. This is an article about how I was wrong. The occupation of popular artists is in flux.

I began to think of this situation when Adrian Belew, one of my all-time favorite musicians, (but one of those whom I previously imagined as larger-than-life, untouchable–primarily because of his long career and association with some pretty big names like David Bowie, Frank Zappa, and Talking Heads), started a blog. The idea of an absolute hero being only a “comment” away blew my mind.

I can’t help but wonder if this new accessibility, regardless of how superficial it may or may not be, is an environment which fosters “artists-as-heroes.” Or does it foster “artists-as-business-associates?” And is it really all that important that we have heroes anyway? Does the fact that we can interact with the creators of artworks diminish our ability to be moved by said art? I don’t know.

As usual I wind this up with more questions than when I started and in this particular case, mostly a non-article, (thanks to Clive Thompson.) But it will all be worth it if you take that time that you thought you would be using to read about a second archetype and use it to peruse the little corner of the internet curated by Adrian Belew, an unlikely “Artist 2.0”: Adrian Belew’s Elephant Blog