My fellow Twin Cities musician blogger Steve Goold posted a well-written thought piece on artistic success.  His post inspired this, which is my response — an expansion on what he started.

I won’t repeat what he wrote, so go read his piece.

I’m not saying this is what Steve said this, but his four levels CAN be taken as “the more people get it, the better.”

Which is not necessarily true, though it can be.

Another factor involved here is not in how may people get it, but how deeply it moves the people who get it.

There are artists out there, some who are considered highly successful, who solicit a strong love/hate reaction from people.  Tori Amos comes to mind, for example.

Not everybody gets Tori, not even close.  But people who get her, she tends to really touch them at a deeper, more fundamental level.

While she may not be Steve’s level 4, that still constitutes a very high degree of artistic EFFECTIVENESS.  Or perhaps it could be called artistic maturity.

Of course, the very ideal is to reach many people AND move a great portion of the listeners.

But more often than not, artists are regarded highly even if they don’t appeal to the mass — especially those with elementary level of appreciation for the craft.  There are deeper realm of the craft that can only be appreciated by those who are more experienced in the realm.

So, here are my four levels of artistic maturity:

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Level 1: Reach Yourself

What you created are satisfying and fulfilling to you, the artist.  You feel good enough about it that you start to share with other people.  This is the foundation of artistic success — of course, perfection is seldom attained, but we must be good enough so that we ourselves think our output is satisfactory.

Level 2: Reach Others

When other people like what you like, then you have created an effective piece of art.  It communicates something.  Now, what is being communicated is in the eye of the beholder — ultimately, it is a self-conversation that is sparked by the art inside the receiver’s head.  But the more people get it, the better, at this level.

Level 3: Reach Experts

Elementary art is easier to understand, but it takes a certain level of mastery to reach others who are experienced/masters in the art.  Now, these “experts” don’t necessarily mean other artists — they can include critics, fanatics, and other enthusiasts.  When you start to reach these people, you begin to be regarded as a mature artist.  But many artists who reach this level, unfortunately, lose touch with the foundation and cease to create art that can also be appreciated by the mass/uninitiated.

Level 4: Reach Everyone Where They Are At

This is the ultimate, and only precious few artists attain this level.  The Beatles, Beethoven, Bach…. they were able to create art that the uninitiateds and enthusiasts alike marvel at, for different reasons.  It has layers that appeal to more people, wherever they are at.

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Most artists do progress from level 1 to 4 in order, though some simply just “have it” and start at level 3 or even 4.  (Mozart comes to mind)  But seeing some masters like Picasso or Miles Davis, you can see the progression through these stages.  I’m not into jazz at all, yet Kind of Blue appeals to me.  And I know it appeals to jazzheads, too, for reasons that may be different from mine.

Now, I realize that the above four levels still don’t address the profoundness of how the art impacts the receiver.  If a songwriter is at level 2 but the people who get it really are profoundly moved, that’s still have to be considered a high degree of artistic success — even if it doesn’t appeal to experts.

So in the end, reality is much more complex than what Steve or I can summarize in these tiered definitions.  Multi-dimentional, really.

The other fascinating and challenging thing about being a songwriter is that a song must be performed in order to be realized.  But the performance can greatly affect the delivery.  An amazing song performed lousily is still lousy, while a mundane song performed superbly can reach a good number of people.   Even for those who are pure songwriters and not performers, they have the daunting task of assembling a demo with more accomplished performers, so that they full might of their songs can be properly delivered.

Musicmaking is a deep, deep art — I do feel fortunate to have discovered something so deep, that I can easily spend my life time pursuing it knowing that I’ll never scale the full depth of it.