x.j. this may come a little too late but i recieved your cd and it was amazing...really vastly deep and stimulating...its always nice to hear that couples can compose too....check out jujunamjai.net for my stuff i would be happy to send you the compilation when its finished....

big sonar kiss

I agree with you on the issue of reality defined by communication.

I was mainly questioning the idea of excluding "personal" reasons from being valid reasons to create, and questioning the use of the loaded term 'selfish' in conjunction with 'personal'.

Following this premise, one could then say that communication with others is selfish because it serves the individuals need to communicate with others. With the connotation that 'selfish' is 'bad', and the labelling of communication as intrinsically selfish and thus bad, we are left with people remaining silent at all times, living in caves, or isolating themselves completely from society in some way, as the apparent virtuous path. At that point of Reductio Ad Absurdum, one can see there must be some flaw in the reasoning process. Perhaps then 'selfish' is not the right term to use.

I hadn't intended to catalogue all my reasons, but was just saying that personal reasons are not bad things because they are personal. I believe that the world benefits when a person's mental, emotional and spiritual well-being are improved through their participation in music or other artistic/creative endeavors. Things that truly benefit individuals almost always benefit society as well and thus the issue of the selfish individual vs the munificent society are not so separable. Of course all acts that improve the world tend to be done by individuals anyway. Thoreau said "A corporation has no conscience". I agree with him and observe that 'groupthink' and the behaviour of mobs tell you much about the virtue of groups vs individuals. Who is this society that benefits? Where is this 'world in general'? They are illusions. Your communication is with other individuals, not with some fictional group that benefits from the unselfishness of individuals. I have never seen a healthy 'group', though I have seen many psychotic groups. Among individuals, there are healthy and unhealthy individuals. Groups serve to dehumanize individuals, which is a bad thing that leads to brutality and mass-delusion.

I think this issue of the artistic/expressive acts of the individual benefiting many others is true even in the extreme cases, where the music can serve a cathartic (ahem) purpose in both the creator and the listener -- I'll put out Eminem as a case in point. Rather than toke up on a Zoloft Columbine Cocktail and go nuts shooting his percieved enemies with a machine gun, Eminem doesn't hold back and describes his world the way it is. This is a huge change from people who are merely acting tough while being stupid and from others who just want it all to go away and think that the solution to the world's ills is to deny it all, shut the heck up, pop some Prozac and listen to the "Sound of 1000 Strings Playing the World's Most Beautiful Melodies". After listening to the sociologists and handwringers in Group 2, any kid who isn't brainwashed would wonder if he/she is going insane. But then they hear some Eminem, where he tells the truth about how the world is and the kids think, "Dang, someone finally who isn't talking a bunch of BS." It's art which a kid whose uncle or stepfather raped them while their mother was a drug addict and prostitute (both common occurances among today's middle class) can relate to, in contrast to the 'helpful' people who think the solution is for the kid to shut up about it and take some more pills and learn a trade that pays well and requires little creative thinking, which is the preferred solution advocated by the brain-shrinkers, 'counselers' and PTA set. Screaming, pouring your emotion into your art and telling the truth are FAR more effective than the SUPPRESSION and lies advocated by the brain-disablers and deniers.

I have a friend who was raped by her father at a young age. For many years and at a cost of many hundreds of thousands of dollars, she say dozens of therapists, counselors and others who told her she had to forgive and move on, to get over herself. She was chastised everytime she said she hated her father and wanted him dead. Very similar to the criticism and complaints about what Eminem's said about his mother. During this time, this poor young woman was given happy pills, survived a number of suicide attempts and was in and out of insane asylums. Finally, she talked to a psychologist who told her that it was OK to hate her father and wish him dead. That's all it took -- years of pain washed away like rocks in a New Mexico ravine during a sudden summer thunderstorm. Her mental problems were only that society kept telling her to deny her pain rather than acknowledge it. Once she had permission to tell the truth to someone who would listen, she went on to live a productive and successful life. She asked her psychologist why dozens of professionals had tried to keep her drugged up and in denial for so many years and he said that his years in the industry had convinced him beyond all doubt that 'therapy' was a money making racket run by sadistic lunatics desiring to make the world as insane as their demented selves .

The truth is healthy. Denial is lies. Lies are unhealthy.

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One of the main reason's I have always written music is indeed selfish -- I get physically sick if I do not.