We all know love is a crazy emotion. It makes us do a variety of things from carving our initials into a tree that will in no doubt be cut down in the next 40 years to make room for a new Starbucks, to spending all our rent money on a dinner to the latest and greatest "fad" restaurant that won't pass the next health inspection. We do these things to impress our potential significant other. The one where I have been pondering drawing the line is when we say we LOVE something they have done, typically "artistically", even though it is absolute shit.
I am currently working on finishing my love's book, and helping him e-publish. It's a novel about a young man who is finding himself, mainly through relationships, and becomes the victim of the common practice of everyone jumping on board with the accuser, rather than listen to the real victim. I began talking to him about what to do for a cover, and the book itself, and how I was the one person who believed in his work. It's sad, but true. But, when he told me about what others thought, I recalled many a friend and boyfriend that wanted me to support them in there endeavors, and how the majority of them were crap. Don't get me wrong, Will's book is great. I just had a TV style flashback to those who's ideas weren't so great.
First example: I studied music and still dabble in my singing (I wish it was more, but getting a classical gig is hard now-a-days). A lot of my friends took composition, and others just wrote their own songs for guitar (the folk style, not screaming, biting heads of bats kind). One guy I was hormonally longing for tried his own career at pop/folk music. He had money from mommy and daddy and started his own "label". He recorded his songs, and took any gig he could get. Paid or not. So, I finally had the time to make it to one of his performances and sat in amazement. His music was about as invigorating as an hour long ride in an elevator with Kenny G playing on the speaker. I soon saw why practically everyone left before intermission. It was not just bad, but Sarah Palin knowing her American history bad. I'm sure I couldn't hide all the cringe from my face. But, when he asked me what I thought, I (of course) said it was great! I didn't want to break his heart. This was all he really had. He spent the past several months working his heart out to do this. But, honestly, it would be enough to turn someone to one-up Van Gogh and go for the left ear too...
Another example: In high school, poetry was a requirement for a term in English. One of my friends, Wendy (name changed to save embarrassment), thought she had found her calling. She had found her medium, and wrote page after page of poems about a subject she knew rather well. Herself. At first, everyone, including myself, thought they weren't bad. But then, when the poetry section was done and over with and we had moved onto Jane Eyre, she kept writing. When a new one was complete, she chauvinistically showed her spiral notebook in our faces. Mainly mine. I would read them, think to myself how horrible they were, and say "That's great", then some up with some disease I would claim to have and say I have to go to the bathroom. It's amazing how someone with Navaho Pseudo-Encephalopathy is still alive today. She wrote about everything from her beauty, hair and looks to her sexual escapades with the drug dealer down the street. All she needed in the end was a shot of testosterone so she could grow a black goatee to match her bongos.
After remembering all this, I asked the obvious: Why do we do this? These people shouldn't be reproducing, let alone in the art world! We feel like we're protecting them from the putrid creation they make, but once someone from outside their support system gives them reality goggles, they will come crashing down like the homes too close to the ocean on Nantucket. We, they're best friends, should just tell them (as gently as possible, depending on the level of shit it is) that it blows like a hooker in Vegas, and not to pursue it ever EVER again. Try nicely at first, but you are more often then not still full of it. Just, grow a pair and tell them. They my cry into their pillow, and cuddle up with their blue blanky that is nothing but a few threads let, but they'll get over it. If not, oh well. Let Sony Records or Scholastic break it to them. And then afterwards, you can send them the bill for the psychiatrist, along with his card. They'll need it.
