the endless learning curve, part 1

The minute you stop growing, you're dead...

As a musician, once you achieve a high level of competency on your chosen instruments, and you begin to get positive feedback from your peers and the world at large; you are encouraged in a thousand subtle and not so subtle ways to stop growing and stay the way you are. This is, of course, the artistic equivalent to the kiss of death. You may continue to work, and possibly make a good living, but your best days are now behind you.

The great, true artists, are the people who continue to grow and piss people off. Miles Davis once said, when asked why he stopped playing the beautiful ballads that had helped make him famous, "I had to stop - I loved playing them too much...". His drive to innovate and grow as an artist was so strong that he would give up playing what he loved, to try and do something new. He would risk losing his sizable audience, who of course wanted him to keep playing the same songs they knew and loved, in order to grow!

Lest you think that what I am talking about only pertains to artists, think again. I believe this principle applies to all aspects of life. One of the things that makes young people so vibrant is their thirst for knowledge and experience. Once you lose that spark, you've lost an important part of what makes life interesting.

Recently, I've been immersing myself in the Internet, trying to learn more about it, trying to learn how to use authoring tools to help me express myself better. Is it art? Is the Internet capable of being an outlet for artistic expression? I don't know, but I do know it is a new mass medium that is still in it's formative years. I do know that I've recently seen pages that are as close to art as I've yet seen in this medium...

www.dhtmlnirvana.com
www.htmlguru.com/guru.html

So once again I'm learning, and I'm enjoying it. I see a connection between the 'net and music, yet I'm not exactly certain what it is. I see the possibility for artistic expression on the web, yet I'm not exactly certain how it can be achieved...

So keep learning, and keep growing. Bend life to your will, don't accept what you are handed. Knowledge is power, the searching mind is a creative mind.

And buy my cd's.

- David Thomas Peacock