Artist & Individual

I've been turning over in my mind something this morning. Its the situation that I find myself in now, and I believe that it must be a common experience for other artists (particularly in music) who use the internet as their chief portal for distribution and promotion.

There is a curious balance that has to be obtained it seems when attempting to reach, define, and sustain an audience between what I should represent as an artist and who I am as an individual. By virtue of my chosen portal (or rather the one which is enforced upon me by circumstance) the two are entwined. If I write a personal, candid and at times all too revealing journal here, it makes accessible information about me that may in some-way damage the other branch of what I do on the internet as a burgeoning musician.

I've recently got really into running a myspace.com page http://www.myspace.com/tommatchett, which is growing every day in terms of the number of "friends" who are associated. In the last week - on a few days - the number of my contacts there has increased by 10%. For me as an artist, this gives me tremendous exposure and it will continue to grow - or so I am convinced - enabling me eventually to reach out to the kind of sized audience which makes blogcasts and such like a really good investment of my time and energy.

But I have also provided a link from that page to this one, therefore the two are interlinked. Am I setting myself up for some-kind of fall here? A personal one, maybe rather than an artistic one.

On my computer at home I have about a thousand promotional images archived on my computer from a very famous band who came from the 1960s, survived the 70s and are still a huge industry today. They can now indulge in candid, revealing insights into their personal lives. But when they started out, the images that I have reveal the history of a carefully managed identity that was designed specifically to establish them as neither an artist nor individuals but as a product. They later defied the usual constraints of pop stardom, in fact, they redefined it. There was at that time - a space between the performer and their audience, dictated by the refined though relatively (to today) unsophisticated portals available to them to promote and reach their audience. They fought - often in vain - to become closer to their audience. Live performance was the catalyst which enabled them to achieve this, and at times through the substance of their art they achieved a spiritual connection with the crowd...largely through the unique symbiotic relationship that they had with them.

Today, I am in possession of a far more complex portal which enables me to reach out with my art, with - for what they're worth - my thoughts and emotions. Yet, by virtue of this I am also a very tiny island in vast ocean. It will be easy for the majority of people to sail past me, and never think about me once again. That said, I can make and distribute my music quicker...and to potentially more people than The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and host of other legendary names ever could. And it costs me very very little to do this - though it can lead to classically English cock-ups on the quality front at times.

But to paraphrase...I guess that quality talks and bullshit walks. Or maybe that should be "sincerity and quality". There is no hiding for an artist such as me on the web today. If others are to trust me, to take an interest in my 'product' for the long term, enough to be able to patronise my work in some manner (finanically or otherwise), then I must be candid and transparent...and I hope that what I attempt to share with them in posts on blogs is of interest or strikes a chord in some way.

On we march, and into 2006. I hope, pray and promise that it will be a good year for myself musically.

I will be getting some photographs up here soon, and wherever you are, and whatever you do, thanks for taking the time to read this far down in my post.

Tom.