Friday, September 12, 2014
Musicians as Hereos
I've been thinking a lot about who my hero's are due to college essays and preparing for ACT's. While I'm thinking of these questions I usually can only think of musicians which I do't find that strange. I have grown up with music being a very integral part of my life. I was listening to Green Day by preschool and now clamor to anything I find good or interesting. Most people can attest to the fact that I always am wearing headphones or ear buds while walking around the hallways in school. Music is really important to me so naturally my hero will probably be a musician. While I was thinking of who to list I began to realize how ridiculous it was that a musician would be my hero. Some of these guys (or gals) never finished high school or were drug addicts. If they weren't musicians I would not even talk about them let alone call one of them my hero. Why is it that when someone does something we, as a society, deem worth paying attention we basically forget about everything that came before. This kind of ties back to he first week when we were talking about hero's and Isaak mentioned football players. He even said he realized some of these people were awful. They beat women and some are accused of murder but we still look up to them. It makes it difficult to answer such a basic question of who your hero is because everyone has a past. Some of the things you may never want to associate yourself with but these essays almost force it onto you like it is mandatory to have a hero. or now I will stick with a musician who may have dropped out in 8th grade and is a drug addict. They make good music so that makes up for their downfalls.
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I really appreciate musicians who are totally decent guys but there are a lot of musicians who I love their music and really don't want to find out any more of their life for fear that they beat their wife or were just an asshole to a fan or said something misogynistic or something... separation of art from the creator is a great thing (see Woody Allen & Orson Scott Card). I actually do have a fair amount of "heroes" who are known for being creative but for a lot of people I'd rather just be content to appreciate their creative output rather than having to make sure they have perfect personalities as well.
ReplyDeleteI will say that as far as terrible personality traits go, 8th grade drop-out druggie really isn't the worst... there are some really nasty artists out there.
Totally agree. I was just more referencing artists that I enjoy and what they've done. I sort of brushed over the whole football player thing where these guys are accused of murder even. It's awful.
DeleteI love this connection between heroes and musicians. It begs the question of what kind of traits wipe a person's slate clean. First things that come to mind are sports and music, but there are plenty of other things that can have the same effect. (Such as volunteering, donating to causes in need, etc). I have always asked the question of why. But, I believe I have come to an answer. We as humans love good. We naturally aren't very drawn to pessimism, we love a good outcome. So who wants to dwell on the evil, unappealing past of someone, when you can focus on the good they have done. I don't know if this is just or not, but it's an interesting concept to think of.
ReplyDeleteThat would actually make a lot of sense. There is so much bad going on in the world that we dont want to acknowledge that we just clamor to the good to make ourselves feel better. If we focused on everything awful we would never be happy.
DeleteI think that who our heroes are reflects what our values are. As you say, a good musician (like Shakira or T-Swift) is a hero because you are so passionate about music and they are good at what you are passionate about. The same can be said for me and the Packers. Now, I will admit that many football players should not be looked up to based purely on their physical accomplishments, as many of them are awful people. However, no Packer player is a bad person. When you join the Packers, you don't murder or abuse. You give charity and are genuine. This is obviously me being biased, but rarely do you see a Packer player in trouble with the law. Maybe this is because you can't get into much trouble in the small city of Green Bay, but I find it interesting. The whole culture there is just amazing. I am obviously going off on a tangent here but my point is that we warp how we view our heroes because they are our heroes. Diehard Ravens fans are probably looking for a loophole in this hole Ray Rice case, and I bet you not one of them would ever even consider that Ray Lewis killed a man.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the fact that if you look up to this person you will find any way to justify their actions but I think it is more deeply rooted than that. I have heard people have ignorance towards a player they like just because of their position and it doesn't matter even if they have proof that this person is a terrible person.
DeleteI kind of wish you'd named names in this post, so we could better talk about the artist/private life distinction. Because I wonder how apt the term "hero" is for what you're talking about, at least in a more classical sense. I admire lots of people for the music they've made, though I don't know if I'd call them "heroes" of mine, except in a fairly specialized area (their style has influenced my own playing, their words and melodies have become an integral part of my brain and my life)--is it that the musician's work is "heroic," or that they've produced art I like? But especially in the case of a lifelong career (say, Bob Dylan, or Johnny Cash, or Paul McCartney), there really is something heroic about this degree of dedication. Whatever went on in the personal life (which suffering and trials and tribulations, of course, sometimes produces great art), the mere fact of someone dedicating their whole existence to making art and pushing themselves to keep doing it and making it new really is a form of heroism. It doesn't mean embracing *everything* about the person--but likewise, when we view a firefighter as heroic, it doesn't mean we affirm everything about him, either. So yeah, I guess I do agree--musicians can be heroic. (But much of the time, we're more in the realm of "icon" or "idol." I'd reserve "hero" for a more exclusive category.)
ReplyDeleteYeah I probably should have added names but I decided to play it safe due to the fact that it is a little embarrassing. I was refrencing Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day for the majority of the post. I just feel like these musicians are sort of heroes due to the fact that they shaped who I was growing up. If I was listening to, to let's say, Sesame Street and not John Mayer in preschool I would have been a very different young adult. I think it really changed what I thought the future was going to be like. For awhile these were my only form of understanding life as I got older. I was still into YA novels and so those usually only told you about life up to high school. I think that these musicians really shaped a lot of me to this day.
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