Yes, but there is a cost.

For a long time, I believed that for me to make what I deem worthy as art, I had to be unhappy. I still go back to this thought several times and ultimately reject it¹. When I look back on my writing, I see only imitations of what I thought was good. On rare occasions, I find an insight into who I was as a person. Just as the art you create informs your ever-changing portrait of you, so does the art you consume.

Paint a Vulgar Picture

Let’s reframe this question as a question of possibility, not feasibility. Should you separate art and artist?

Growing up my family did not own a television for a long time so do not be surprised when I tell you that I have only had access to the Internet for ten years. One of the first things I did in the heydays of Internet piracy was look up what the Internet, a singular entity in my mind then, considered to be the pinnacle of culture. I had had a taste of rock music over the radio and I was craving more. That led me to British & American rock music and eventually to ‘How Soon Is Now’ by The Smiths. The thing that struck me then was the sound and the lyrics caught up later. Heady guitar riff, loneliness, and a simple, relatable sentiment:

the last lingerie mannequin in the dark basement of the store, quoting morrissey repeatedly, "i am human and i need to be loved"

May 29, 2013

‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ is two minutes of indoctrination against Life and its cruelties. “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” is about the inescapable cycle of desire and disappointment. “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” is full of angst, repressed sexuality, general unease and dying with your loved one in a double-decker bus crash.

The possibility of separating art from the artist has changed into the view that engaging with art acts as a symbol of our forgiveness for the artist or perhaps, even our tacit condonation of the artist’s mistake. When did that become the norm?

Ask

When I listen to ‘Shoplifters Of The World Unite’ or ‘Cemetery Gates’², I am really listening to the parts that past-me found relatable and consequently, I am listening to past-me. I can then claim ownership to those parts and those alone and to that part of me which relates to those parts. I find myself unable to sever my relationship to these songs due to the bridge they sometimes promise to build between past-me and current-me. This is the cost. A cost measured out, under the shadow of time, every time I engage with that piece of art³. Sometimes it is easy to pay the cost. Sometimes, the art outweighs the artist.

I must consider my relationship with art along the dimension of time and evaluate if that relationship has changed. I must ask this question every time I listen to The Smiths. Latter-day Morrissey casts an ugly shadow. So, do Woody Allen and Louis C.K. and J.K. Rowling and so many others. Our heroes may still betray us tomorrow.

Reel around the Fountain

It’s time the tale were told / Of how you took a child / And you made him old

As you grow older, I suspect, you start rejecting possibilities for certainties. Suffering accumulates and Empathy becomes harder to reach for. It becomes easier to forget that we are not the only ones suffering, that pain is to be found all over the world.

When I listen to The Smiths, I also listen to the sound and specifically Marr’s excellent guitar work⁴. I’ve seen people say that disavowing The Smiths due to Morrissey would be an injustice to Marr because the music of The Smiths belongs to both Morrissey and Marr⁵. Whenever I listen to The Smiths now, I don’t think about that. I think of a shadow cast by the current-artist over the past-artist. In this case, the current-artist and the current-artist seem to be quite in agreement on their views. This creates a tragic dissonance then for fans because an artist who once spoke to the margins now speaks to those who seek to wipe out the margins.

I wonder about the Morrissey who wrote ‘Still Ill’:

I decree today that life / Is simply taking and not giving / England is mine, it owes me a living / But ask me why, and I’ll spit in your eye

I wonder about the Morrissey who wrote ‘I Know It’s Over’:

It’s so easy to laugh / It’s so easy to hate / It takes guts to be gentle and kind.

As a cliche, “people are complicated” ranks in the hall of fame. We all know that we are flawed to varying degrees. Some of us get the chance to learn and grow and change, some don’t, some choose not to. Some evolve, some don’t.

I write this while looking out at a clear blue sky, bright sunlight, a large green tree, the Golden Gate Bridge, and mountains in the distance. I see the first traces of fog and I knows that this view could change in an instant. Society is in constant flux, much like Nature. We are all capable of good and bad, of rising above our nature and doing good, of giving in to our nature and doing bad, of redemption and retribution.

While the arena of shame is much larger for some, time is unkind to all of us.

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