The Art of Being Heard

There are few moments in life that feel more surreal and socially awkward than those times when you’re forced to ignore the effusive confessions of a woman in love because all you want to do is purchase a carton of eggs. If you think yourself incapable of this level of indifference, then consider how many times you’ve ignored the background music playing in your local supermarket. Background music in all of its impassioned, hypnotic, erotic, and obnoxious forms, has always been a subject of great interest to me. It hovers above your head no matter where you go, regardless of whether you asked somebody to play it for you. The presence of background music in public places turns decent, ordinary people like you and me into callous, emotionless vessels — islands unto ourselves without so much as an ounce of empathy to spare. In our careless apathy, we squander passionate music and allow it to grow stale, and we tame those mighty roars into gentle hums that get lost amid the murmurs of idle conversation, shuffling soles, rustling shopping bags, and mere human indifference. As innocuous as it may seem, background music in public places is the manifestation of every ambitious artist’s greatest fear: anonymity.

The sobering reality of life as an artist is that any work of art, no matter how brilliant or inspired, can be subjected to indifference and reduced to white noise. Indifference is that intangible something that allows you to pay more attention to sweaters on a sale rack than to a Led Zeppelin song blaring above your head. Indifference is that impulse that compels you to carry on with your busy life when you find yourself tempted to stop and admire a Van Gogh print hanging in a hallway, or an Ansel Adams photograph featured in a magazine. Indifference is that soothing voice in your mind that quiets your guilt for having lived your entire life without reading even a third of all the books that you had intended to read. Indifference is that force of human nature that degrades all forms of art into lifeless, interchangeable distractions. People have grown quietly accustomed to ignoring the best efforts of most of the world’s artists because, to be frank, the world has more artists than it can stand. Even when you “make it” as an artist, there’s no guarantee that, in time, your body of work won’t be largely ignored. You may toil your entire life only to earn the right to merely blend into the endless tapestry of artistic creation. In light of these unpleasant truths, the prospects don’t look very promising for all of the frustrated and overlooked artists of the world.

Yet amazingly, even despite the discouraging odds, we continue to create. What is it about creation that compels us to carry on when we face the near certainty that our works will fade into obscurity like a dusty footprint on a well-traveled road? Yes, art is a medium for self-expression, but there seems to be little reason to create without the hope of recognition. He who acts upon his creativity does so in the hopes of being noticed, to be recognized for his power to inspire. While the most ambitious of us aim to move civilizations and to ignite the minds of the apathetic masses, so few of us are given an honest opportunity to try. And yet we insist on our right to try, because as depressing as it is for an artist to grapple with chronic obscurity, it’s all the more depressing to imagine life without ever creating again. There’s no joy in being ignored, but there’s also no joy in squandering talent, wasting opportunities, abandoning dreams. By the end, your work may one day languish beneath the weight of endless obscurity, but little good arises out of the assumption that it will actually happen to you. The only worthwhile thing to do is to play whatever instruments you’ve set out to play, and hope your efforts will be enough to distinguish your work from the rest of the background noise. All we can do is to keep doing what we do best. We seem to have little choice in the matter.

So here’s to us, the resolute artists of the world, all fighting to grasp our way out of gentle obscurity. Background music be damned. There must be some way to ripple the tides of apathy before the end. Here’s to loss of vision, the forsaking of rhythm, explosions of revelation, countless pained revolutions, lost beginnings, unsatisfactory conclusions, and to all points in between that bring us closer to the verge of being heard.