Good Evening Pburger
If this were a game of chess, I'd say you were about three moves from checkmating me. It looks like I nearly backed myself into a corner doesn't it?
Are the first-rounders on American Idol artists or buffoons?
1)I clearly indicated that they suck. But does that mean they are not sincerely infusing what they do, with a search for truth, thereby making their glass cracking efforts art, despite what others - a great many others - might think?
2)I did give you that advice about the next time your at an art venue, and there's a piece of modern art, whose purpose is not readliy apparent. I did suggest it may or may not be art depending on his answer.
3)Surely I can't have it both ways. If something "sucks" then it's not art. Surely the viewer is an important element, otherwise just about anything can be art - I don't favor this kind of easy relativism.
What's my way out?
Let me begin by saying, I would never call anyone a "buffoon." Rather I would say that the creative energy they are using to search for truth is misdirected. I think the vast majority of people watching these first rounders can tell that their singing voices are technically incompetent. They are objectively not singers.
The music of Britney Spears may not be your cup of tea, but I think few honest people could say that her singing voice is technically incompetent.
The situation of these American Idol first rounders reminds me of the situation in the Arthur Miller play, Death of a Salesman. Though he had been a salesman for forty years, Willie Loman was objectively incompetent at that. His energy was misdirected. He literally had the wrong dreams.
Willie was no good at being a salesman and he didn't like it. He only seized on the occupation because he had abandonment issues and he overcompensated by trying to "sell himself," and so forth. Willie Loman was objectively not a salesman, although that is what he called himself one for forty years.
For some reason, these first rounders shoehorned themselves into singing. For some reason these folks feel desperate to be singers. They are overcompensating for something - like Willie Loman. Therefore, their screeching is not art and can never be art. Even if they are infusing their song with the search for truth, that energy is misdirected - they should direct it at sculpting or tree surgery of something, not singing.
