This thread is causing serious flashbacks to the days (not all that long ago, but I’m repressing) when I moderated at several poetry boards.
Damn you, yosimitebabe! I don’t need those memories resurfacing! Aiiieeee!
My particular favorite excuse: “I could make a poem that made sense if I wanted to.”
Sure, sugar. We believe you.
Julie
Different area, but I learned the same lesson in my shitty English class last semester. We had to do “peer editing”, i.e. “read each other’s papers and comment on them.” If you suggested more than a minor spelling change, you’d get a long winded explanation of “what I’m saying here” that usually had nothing whatsoever to do with what was on the paper. I had a new appreciation for editors and the crap they get born in that course.
Too many wonderful posts here—no time to respond to them all!
Cuckoorex, oh, I know what you mean about LADS. I’ve met so many of those types in my life. They think that they’ve arrived. What? Are they blind? Don’t they see so much advanced and sophisticated works around them? Do they think they are really at that advanced level themselves? I never understood these people.
Ironic, you talk about how art colleges break people of that, and it’s true. But for me, it was the opposite. I didn’t realize until I got to art school that I wasn’t really that bad.
My mom (bless her) tried so hard to not allow me to get a “swelled head” that she went overboard the other way. She was constantly telling me that when I hit the “big time,” (college and art school) that I’d be overwhelmed with depression, because everyone would be so much better than me. She told me stories of people she’d met on the bus (it was always the bus) who went to art school, and their work was really good, she thought. And she’d tell me that they were all almost having nervous breakdowns or quitting art because everyone was so much better than them, and school was so tough.
So when I went to art school I fully expected to be the bottom of the barrel. And I was okay with that—I just wanted to learn, okay? Much to my amazement, I was not that bad at all compared to everyone else! In some cases, I was pretty darn good! So, in a way, I have my mom to thank for that. Even though she was a tremendous wet blanket for a while there.
World Eater, thanks for the compliment. 
Lamia, you are hilarious. Thank you for putting it so succinctly.
jsgoddess, sorry for the nightmares! 
Sauron, yes, great story. Thanks.
This is great stuff. I’m learning a lot from all of you. Thanks again for sharing these tales!
That attitude frustrates me so much. I’ve always loved art, I took some practical art subjects in my final year of high school and was top of my form in one of them. I still remember this one comment from the dux (I think that’s the NZ version of valedictorian, it’s the person who achieves the highest overall in academic subjects, not including art). We were studying for Biology one day and she suddenly said, “I wish I did art subjects, life would be so easy, I’d have so much less work to do.”
I felt like slapping her. She did all the same ‘academic’ subjects as me and I achieved higher than her in half of them, yet at the same time my art subjects were the most hard work of any subjects I took, and I took (and got good results in) the top two hardest rated subjects in the country, Chem and Calc. It’s not just about having the creativity, insight, skill, talent or whatever, it’s an incredibly arduous development process where you’re expected to churn out huge amounts of quality and original work to get even marginal marks. There were many people in my classes who, despite putting huge amounts of time and effort in, couldn’t pass because they just weren’t artistic. This girl didn’t have a creative bone in her body. I got over it though, she had one of those, “I’m better than you at whatever I do and even If I’m not doing it, I would be better than you if I was,” attitudes which aren’t worth bothering about.
Heh. Back when I was a music major I had an engineering roommate. He tended to have his weekends and a couple of his evenings free, whereas most music majors I knew were burning the midnight oil seven days a week. Several of us had our own keys so that we could get in and out of the music building to practice after it was locked at midnight, and practicing until 2am wasn’t unusual. Classes began at 8am, so there were some very long days indeed.
Furthermore, the administration devalued several of the required music classes creditwise to prevent music majors from exceeding the maximum allowed 19 credits per semester; many classes which met three hours a week were only worth one credit.
My two older sisters were both in arts degrees (landscape architecture and graphic design respectively) and spent many long nights in their studios as well.
Every time I hear some non-musician comment on how much easier arts majors have it, it makes me want to grab them by the lapels and shake them until their teeth explode.
“What’s your major?”
If I say “Art,” the typical response is, “Oh” in the tone of voice that says, “That’s easy, what are you stupid?”
If I say, “Digital Media” I’m always asked if I’m going to work for Pixar. :rolleyes:
Of course, our Art dept. is strange. Web Design and CAD/CAM are both under the heading of Digital Media.
I don’t think I can add anything to the discussion that hasn’t been said already, so I thought I would just share a story.
I am very passionate about electronic music. Most people aren’t and most people seem to enjoy going out of their way to make it clear. I am an open minded person, so I usually lend them my ear and hear them out for what they have to say. It usually amounts to, “So, you are just mixing records together right, anybody could do that right?” Well, yeah, you’re right, they are “just records” and anybody could learn to mix them. Years later I have seen many “friends” buy turntables, a mixer, and a crap load of records, partly because they could see how much fun I was having and they wanted in on the “DJ” status thing. None of these people foresaw how much work, work, work, it was going to take. I still work every day. They all gave up, many without ever getting to experience the thrill of mixing two records together even once. I have turned myself into one of the better DJ’s (I would love to say in the country, so ok.) in the country. I WAS NOT BORN WITH IT!
Oh yeah, the story. The other almost daily retort, is that techno music is just a four-four looped beat (whoosh, whoosh, whoosh). Naw, I say, it’s music, it is very hard to create the good stuff, and you have to be a creative and technical master to do something fresh.
“No, I go to school and we have the software to do all that stuff, I could make this song in an hour.”
A friend and I pused it a step further, and asked the guy to back up these claims. You can have more than an hour we said, take a month we don’t care, if you make a bomb track, not only will I stand corrected, I will pay you money for it (because I love this music)
Finally the day came when we got to listen to the song he made. (suprise: it was really horrible - of course anybody’s first track is going to be horrible, so it was actually nothing to be ashamed of whatsoever). I tried to ease the tension and made it clear that no apology was neccessary or anything like that. Then it hit me. He thought he was proving to us that he was right (I can’t tell you how off the mark this track was).
There we were, listening to the same thing at the same time, and we both thought it proved our own points. It hit me like a ton of bricks, when this man listened to techno music, he could not even hear what we were hearing.
Not suprisingly now, as I look back, it made perfect sense that his track was just a looped 4/4 beat (whoosh, whoosh, whoosh). ooops! I guess that is literally what he thought we were listening to, I had up to that point, thought it was a kind of joke…
I know exactly what you’re saying here, bookbuster. I have often had that odd sense of disconnect where it seems as if I’m listening to something completely different when the person next to me can’t hear or can’t process or can’t appreciate or can’t identify what a song is doing and why. I’m not by any means the best musician I know, but I like to think I have a pretty refined ear and can listen to pitch and rhythm and chord value of many instruments at once in a very densely mixed piece.
A few years ago I heard a song on an adult contemporary station while at work, and my co-workers were standing in the assembly room, working on their tasks and putting stuff together. I was only passing through, but the song made me stop in my tracks after a few bars, and I asked if anybody realized why this song sounded so odd.
Nobody could hear it until I started singing the lyrics to the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna” over the top of the existing song (I still can’t remember what the original was). This new song was exactly like “Lady Madonna.” It had the same ups and downs in the arrangement, the same chords, it was in the same key. Nobody noticed. But for me, it was like that picture of the gorgeous woman that turns into the picture of the old crone if you stare at it the right way.
I couldn’t believe it. Maybe there’s something to be said for artistic training. It helps to tell you what you’re listening to and what you’re listening for and why. (Or in the case of visual art, looking at—and with writing, reading.) To everyone else, it was just some notes put together. Weird.
I have to imagine it’s like being tonally challenged. You can’t hear if the pitch is correct so you can’t sing the right note, so everything you sing sounds as good as perfect to yourself.
Not to go off on a tangent, but this thread evokes some strong feelings in me.
I’m interested in the fine arts, I’ve taken art and poetry classes, as well as singing and playing the piano. But I suck at everything 
I really envy you artists, you screenwriters, you singers. Yes, you do have to put up with jerks out there but you have something wonderful that so many people would sell their souls to be able to do.
Maybe these people’s rude comments are an indicator of how good you are- if someone has to be snarky and arrogant about your ability, then obviously it is significant enough to make them feel inadequate about their own skills. I have been playing the piano for over ten years, but I really feel like I plateued after doing if for 3 or 4 years- And that what I play now isn’t any better than some ten-year old can play I play the piano until my fingers and my back ache, I have half my peers saying I should give up, and half my peers saying I’m just not trying enough :mad:
For every person who had the heart and soul to pursue an artistic outlet, there are perhaps ten, a hundred, a thousand who put in just as much effort, if not more, and fell significantly short. In all my years of playing, I could never play something that really moved me or anybody else, never was able to develop an aptitude for composing, never was able to build up a very good ‘ear’ for music despite being immersed in it for over a decade
A while back, when Brutus made a crude comment about my poetry, it really struck a nerve in me, because there are some things I try so hard to be good at that amount to nothing. Poetry is also something I’ve spent a long time writing, but I haven’t really been able to do anything significant about it.
I have a friend who complains she has no artistic outlet. She feels everyone else has some ‘ability’ but she has none. Sometimes I wonder if I would be happier like her- not doing any of this and not being aware of how hopeless I was at it.
The trick of it, Poetgrrl, is to recognize that you got where you are by working at it, and to accept that the work you put in has only got you this far.
Sounds like the same thing, I know. I think it’s not. One is an honest look at how hard you’ve worked, the other is an honest admission that there is still work to do.
I could advise you to be satisfied with where your ability has got you, but I am never satisfied, so it’d be hypocritical of me to suggest it. I know how far I’ve come, but I always want to push myself farther. I have come to accept that there are people ahead of me and I respect there are people behind me having a harder time at the things I now find easy.
Just be where you are on the talent/ability scale, even though it’s hard to see how fast you’re moving. Kind of a Zen thing.
You have a very good point, Fish.
Something else I’ve thought of- Yes, I’m unhappy that I feel that I’m not ‘good enough’, but on the other hand, I could be great at something but loathe it because of all the jealousy/snide remarks.
Oh well. At least I kick but at Dance Dance Revolution…moving your legs so fast they appear to be vibrating is sorta an artistic endeavour
Having thought about it some…
I think you/we have to realize that, for a lot of people, “music” was that class in 3rd grade where the teacher played the guitar and everyone sang folk songs (if that!), “art” was when everyone got paints in kindergarden and smeared em all over the paper, and “reading/writing” was that obnoxious thing you had to do in school for a few years. They have no idea how much effort it takes to draw a good picture/write a novel/paint a picture/etc., because all the experience they have is some vague recollections of long-ago schooling.