Artistic Merit, Despair and the “Professional Appreciator” Ideal

Sometimes, I don’t understand how serious people can break out of whatever’s holding them back and go out and create something. I understand that there are people in this world who don’t take things as seriously as I do, but I know that there has to be someone out there making it who wasn’t before and never thought they would. The idea of the “professional appreciator” comes from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. Any obsessive music fanboy will know the reference, but to anyone else, “professional appreciator” is a nice way of saying “creep.” The idea that someone could appreciate something to the point of it being almost a profession is saying that you have nothing better to do and that you actually might enjoy having nothing to do besides learning everything there is to know about whatever it is you’re into.

The reason I write about this is because of a particular state of mind that you have to be in to understand: despair. I couldn’t think of a better word for it, and I don’t mean to be so particularly bleak or melodramatic about it, but it seems to work. Just like all other professional appreciators, I dream of once being able to step out from behind the keyboard and be able to do what all others can’t. In my case, I would be making music, but it isn’t that simple. Our lives are lived in solitude and because of that, we are harshly critical of everything. Cynicism and self-consciousness tend to go hand in hand with the particular personality type I’m talking about. If I were to ever get out and put something into the world that wasn’t there before, I’d be absolutely terrified that it wouldn’t meet someone’s standards, let alone my own. Of course, these are doubts that most anyone feels on a day-to-day basis without being a professional appreciator, but if you are one or you know one, you’ll also know the higher standard that we hold ourselves to. Since we’re better than most people and we know more, we should be better and never make mistakes; this definitely seeps into the other facets of life quickly.

I was watching Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation recently and thought about one thing in particular: the use of the song “Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine. I’ve never felt as strange as when I saw that scene in the movie. On one level, there’s nothing particularly emotional about the scene. The cinematography is nice, but there isn’t a whole lot going on in the plot. It’s a damn ride in a cab, and yet there was something else there. Kevin Shields is a solitary man, who, I would imagine, is much like those professional appreciators out there. My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless took over a year and 14 sound engineers to record. You could say that he wanted to get it right. After nearly conquering the world with the album, Shields broke up the band and went into hiding, never to return to the surface again. Of course, occasionally people would see him milling about and every once in a while, he would release a remix of someone else’s song, but he seems to be the archetype for kind of person I’m describing. I got all estrogen-filled at that one moment in the movie because of what Coppola was implying by using the song. I felt that way because I know what it must’ve taken Shields to create something like that and the isolation that was involved. I wondered if I could ever do it, or ever do anything, for that matter.

The moral of the story: be good to yourself and your friends. You know someone like this and all you have to do is reach out and tell him/her it’s okay. What’s good enough for other people should be good enough for everyone. As we say in my line of work, “Know that you won’t ever understand their experience, but be supportive.”

Is this a cry for help? Hardly. I just think that some of you assholes could be nicer, that’s all.