Lessons from Chris Gaines and others like him

My husband went to the library today and came home with the CD album of Garth Brooks posing as Chris Gaines.  The fact that Dan picked this up doesn't surprise me at all -- this is  a very Danish thing to do.  But for me it took me back to whatever time in the 90s that was when he put that album out, and made me think all over again, "What a weird thing that was to do."

This spiraled into a mental noodle on, "Why, though, was it weird?"  And here's what I think.

From my perspective, there's this fine line when a popular artist of whatever medium crosses over from artist sharing his or her viewpoint into artist believing they are a prophet.  I think this is a pretty common and not incomprehensible move -- if people treat you like a prophet, it's easy to think you are one. I don't know that it's bad to feel like a prophet, or even to act like one, because really, an artist is putting out ideas and expecting at least four or five people will gather around the idea and nod sagely over coffee, or curl up happily and say, "Yes, these ideas make me feel good about myself."  Or simply that four or five people will respond to these ideas and use them in their lives.

But I think the downhill slope comes when the prophet starts using the platform of his or her art as something other than, "here's my idea, see what you think."  If the prophet is saying, "Everything I do is great, so I'm going to explore these weird things which will instantly become great because I'm doing them."  Sort of a Church of Me thing.  If the art is no longer art but ego. 

To me, art is magical because I take something really important and visceral to me and put it out to share with others, and it immediately changes.  I say, 'I'm writing this story, and it's about x," and some people see x, but others see x and y, or just y.  Still others see q or r or whole quadratic equations I hadn't even thought of.  To me, it's this interplay that is magic, that is the real communication.  The real art.  An idea in my head that can merge with different ideas in lots of different heads and become its own living thing -- that's creation.

And maybe this is what that Chris Gaines thing was supposed to be.  Just another way of seeing how far/in what directions he could take his ideas -- would these, take, too?  Hmm, not so much.  Or maybe he got just what he was looking for.  Only Garth Brooks knows.

But what I want to try and always carry with me is the idea that the only place my ideas are sacred cows are when they're still inside me.  Even this blog entry, read by God knows how few souls, is no longer mine.  It belongs to everyone who reads it.  Readers might think, "Dear God, how brilliant!" or "That bitch," and it's beyond my scope now.  It's out there in the ether, its own entity now.  And you know, I want my stories to be that way -- their own entities, free of my chains of neediness and personal hangups.  It does, though, want me to make sure they're as strong and complex as I can make them, so they can be pulled apart and moved around and shot at and still come out looking pretty good, still having substance. 

And that's what I learned today from looking at a CD on the dining room table.  Tomorrow: the cereal box.  (Kidding.  Mostly.)