Reaction to Loudestenemy's post

[Traveller13]

The word "artist" in itself is a problem if I want to go anywhere. Because some people call themselves artists without being artists and vice versa. And that would be in my point of view of course. And so on.
So instead of going around in circles and engaging in a collective "what is art?" mental masturbation, I'll define an artist as what Loudestenemy calls an eccentric in his essay. Or at least what I understood from it.

So an artist, in this thread, is someone who rejects society and it's values, usually because he or she sees the world in a way that most people don't. And tries to express his rejection or attraction to other ways of thinking. But of course artists won't express those thoughts directly through common speech, because exchanging plain ideas with words are what most people do, and most of the time what they want to express goes beyond common speech. Therefore they will tend to use images or sounds. Or words too, but in this case the words themselves matter less than the glittery stuff between them.
But this being studio8, I'm probably not teaching you anything new here.

(In the case of artists who accept society, like your local skater-punk band or whatever, we can call those piss-artists in this thread)

Let us move on. I wrote all that stuff to set a background, there are one or two other things I want to write about, even though I'm not sure of what they are at the moment.

I take it most of us have attended history lessons as kids. On my part I have learnt about the tyrannical French monarchs, the glorious revolution, and stuff like ancient Rome and Greece. I was building mu mold back then, and without realising it was being fed all kinds of moral values at the same time.
Anyway, what does that have to do with art and eccentrism?
Something in Loudestenemy's essay made me react. "Art is usually associated with heavy drug use", or something like that.
Art can be associated with just about anything that is rejected by the masses, if you look closely.

Take ancient Greece. The official version is that the "important" people of that epoch, ie Pythagoras, Aristotle, etc, were very brainy people with loads of ideas like the wheel, complicated math, etc. My senior school philosopher teacher, for one, could quote pages of their work without pausing once. A real brain on legs.
But what isn't officially presented, the eccentric side of things, kinda taints the vision of brainy philosophers debating about maths and physics. Why did Socrates travel to Egypt to be initiated into the mysteries of Isis? Why did Plato play music to his disciples to make them feel the color of frequency?

If you take a look at history as a whole, the examples are endless. Mysticism, association with strange movements, unconventional drug use, clairvoyance or clairaudience, anti-religious views, you name it. Many people who "saw things differently" and stood out, for whatever reason, seemed to use art as a way to express what was in their gut, which was also a way to put in hidden messages that could only be understood by people who were "like them".

Of course, there are artists who are accepted by society.
In senior school, we studied famous authors from the 17th or 18th or 19th century, whatever. By studying I mean reading books and analysing some passages, what the author wanted to express, which ideas he vehicled, etc. Most of the time it wasn't anything shocking or transcending, just the usual load of intellectual you-know-what.
When I later realised that most of those authors I "studied" at 17, were in fact either heavily into opium, head or having a key role in a secret society, secretly worshipping ancient gods, or other, it just made me smile. I think I was reassured too, I mean I'd hate to live in a world where the leading people do nothing but think lol.

Artists will exist as long as there will be a society to show people the guidelines, what to be afraid of and what to feel comfortable with.

Part of me wants to delete everything except the last sentence lol.

If you read my post until the end, thanks. I tend to make synthax mistakes lately.