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Here's the thing: art and its myriad forms behaves like the people it comes from - in cycles, in generations expressed as movements which dynamically create and respond to trends; fashion trends, linguistic trends, and perhaps if the artist is truly a thinking-man, to socio-political agendas in trend-form. These days, art mostly reflects what the puppeteers (who have embodied the artist in such subliminal and devious ways that artists think it's them talking but the real them--the soul them--is heavily covered up and manipulated) dictate. These products known as art behave in relative terms, interacting with the flux of a material world, the material mind, and the false ego of a man who deals only with that kind of world. Sometimes the world an artist pulls from is purely internal, perhaps even spiritual. But if an artist is anywhere near mainstream or immersed in/familiar with life as the masses live it, s/he will not in any way, shape or form have the distance needed to deal with purely internal, radical or spiritual fodder for creation. That's why artists who make it really big, really fast won't last unless they distance themselves from the success. That success will bring them too far away from what's interesting enough to inspire. As a side-bar: that's why love (it's usually actually lust, let's be real) is such a powerful source of inspiration for art. It's a private little world that no one can really get into besides the two lovers. But as we'll see: even then there's a hitch, a glitch and stitch in time to slow down the forward-flow.

Because music is the most popular form of art these days (if you can even call any of the music that's very popular "art") I want to emphasize that as a medium, music is especially a culprit in deterring any sort of interesting and freeing forward movement (notice the themes songs deal with are oh-so-repetitive). So from here on in, I will replace "art" with "music" and maybe one day I'll come back around to address art-at-large but quite frankly, the commercial/contemporary art market is a total joke of a sham you-got-duped game catering to elite wallets, falsely inflating the value of what is usually, quite simply, crap, and placating the egos seeking to obtain said synthetic value as extension-of-the-self. Lots of oohing and ahhing over maybe-pretty, usually uninspiring, definitely never educational objects during cocktail hours where the idea of being artsy and smart is more important than the actual fact. Plus there's free booze, schmoozin and a chance to show off personal (or merely second-handed purchased fashion) style. Zing, ding, ding.

So back to the matter at hand. Unless the art-product in question is dedicated to revealing transcendental and absolute truths, it will keep the artist and his audience attached to narrow and limiting themes for stretches of time, those cycles I was talking about up there. Then there's, what I've coined as, "The Milking It Effect". That takes us into the whole media game. How long can one artist milk the themes and ideas garnered from one album? How far can the smallest input take one whale and his/her hangers-on? The farther, the better.

As a natural progression from The Milking It Effect comes the whole selling-your-soul entrapment. The artist makes an implicit agreement that s/he will stay married to specific themes and feelings regardless of what s/he actually wants to feel or might feel in their present lives in order to deliver on a promise to the fans by, rightfully, convincingly embodying the pieces they are selling. Am I just stating the "duh" obvious? Perhaps through this repeated embodiment, s/he doesn't even have access to any semblance of present, true identity or sense of self.

Let's trace the evolution of a song. At first, it's most likely the artist dealing with a specific theme, situation, emotion in a cathartic way, creating a structure out of what may have been destruction, observation, an unknown that triggered curiosity into further exploration. Then, it becomes a mask, an identity that the artist puts on for the fans to share in. Over. and Over. and Over. All of a sudden, the artist is trapped by the paradigm because it sells. Now, s/he is nothing without this mask, this paradigm, this embodied expression of a stale situation. The soul's ability and mobility is limited (particularly during a tour) and this once-cathartic expression has now enslaved its creator, who is ruled by the senses, perhaps driven to escape the masked self by intoxicating the senses. The desire to remain relevant, appreciated, and understood is all that matters. Perhaps for more shallow 'artists', they're ruled by the $$bills y'all. But, really, no self-respecting artist is only in it for the money. They're in it to fill a space in their hearts, to share the love and feel the high off crowds of people all vibrating to the same harmony. It's powerful. It's real. No doubt about it.

The ultimate bottom line is: what vibration are you sharing? It's this ultimatum that will determine entrapment by self and other (the industry) or true social, personal and spiritual evolution -- Revolution; out of cycles that don't lead anywhere, out of this material body into a realized state of being with fuller and fuller knowledge of the big secrets behind the curtain and simpler and simpler adherence to a regulated lifestyle, to action which does not sabotage and bind. If you want to subvert, to fight from the inside, you better make sure you're well-seated inside yourself and well-versed in that 1 thing far, far beyond what is outside everyman's door.