A curious disconnect

I've been thinking all morning about the curious disconnect in the careers of many artists between visible success and actual achievement. What brought this on was a comment by Chet Baker in a bio I'm reading, which is quoted there. In the 70s, Baker lamented that he never appeared on "best jazz artists" lists any more like he did routinely in the 50s even though "I play so much better now." No sooner had I read this than I read a story in one of our alternative papers in which I was quoted and identified as "a writer perhaps best known for his 1982 play..."

Well, I've seen this reference more times than I can count and in my own smaller universe I respond with the same frustration as Baker: why when early success is achieved, and one improves the craft and the vision, is later achievement ignored? This is not a rare experience among artists with early success in my observations. In fact, an early mentor of mine, an artist I met during my critical year in 1967 when I was trying to break into the literary magazines, eventually succeeding, a strong influence was not another writer but a neighbor artist (he's the one who told me to do something positive with rejection slips: so I made 3 huge collages, which I have to this day) who taught me about the actual "living" as an artist. He painted western scenes, had had a brief bit of fame in the southwest right after WWII but now, in Portland in the 60s, was virtually ignored, earning his keep as a school janitor and filling a shack on his property, his studio, with unseen paintings of the wild west. I loved this guy. I thought he had great integrity, which I admired without noticing the personal frustration that went along with it.

The culture has never quite known what to do with its artists, now more than ever. This is why the culture prefers them dead. Plato had it exactly right, and anyone interested in order and smooth sailing would ban poets just as he did in his ideal republic. Artists are a pain in the ass.

But the culture is most inventive and most skilled when turning radical energy into commercial energy. The same wide ties and long hair that once bugged a nation now are worn by corporate managers. The way to de-radicalize artists is to make them "stars", of which there are a limited number, and to get them competing with one another. Anything to distract the audience from their lost function, which is to separate the culture's truth from its bullshit.

Ginsberg's "Howl" does exactly what a poem is supposed to do. It tells the truth no one wants to talk about and in so doing changes everything. And somewhere, perhaps even now, out of the corporate headlights, off the stage of success, some poet is reciting this time's "Howl" which is not going to pull any punches and tell the culture exactly what it's up to with its populace (I suspect this poet is non-white). And 20 years from now, reading this poem, a lot of things will make sense that don't make sense now.

It is a noble action to try and write such a poem. More will fail than succeed but it's a noble act to try to figure out and then tell the truth in a world in which everything is for sale.