ART and ORGANISM
We speak about authentic communications between artists and their audiences—“heart to heart” communications from the greatest depth accessible to the artist to the greatest depth of the audience, Delacroix’s “mind-to-mind”
So what happens
WHEN ARTISTS ARE IN LOVE WITH THEIR AUDIENCE?
Carolyn Burke writing of Piaf speaks to us all about some of the most poignant perils and promises of art:
“She embraced life passionately, even at its cruelest; so long as she could use it in her songs, she felt, the suffering was worth it. Her will to move forward was herculean, but her tiny body wasn’t. After years of failing health, she died in 1963 at 47.
Like Judy Garland, who died at the same age, Piaf still lets us live, vicariously, in a world of emotional extremes that few of us could handle.” ….
“As France’s greatest female star — and one with a burning sexual charisma — she was never without a man. But love, she explained, meant nothing to her unless she could sing about it; music held no meaning for her unless it was inspired by love.” (from “Songs of Herself,” James Gavin’s essay review of NO REGRETS: The Life of Edith Piaf by Carolyn Burke in NYTBR March 27, 2011)
Many, probably most of us like recreational sex … play and all its intimations of exploration and adventure, practice and poignancy, learning boundaries and possibilities. Occasional epiphanies of pleasure … Like, I like to imagine that Evita’s true lover was Argentina … who finds that procreative release as a partner to an audience? Their true lover. The only one that really counts. Related somehow is Louis XIV L’Etat, c’est moi.
“The violinist drew her bow across the strings of her lover’s pleasure and together they pray in their own way like inverted Beethoven’s and deafen the walls. Her lover was the audience, and only then did she remember hearing the applause.” (http://www.peramene.com/post/3644269037/the-violinist)
Gerald Clarke, Writing of Judy Garland said, “But amidst the high drama, the drug addiction, the missed performances, the wasted millions, Clarke also describes a woman who had a marvelous sense of humor, a woman with a generous heart, and a most of all a woman in love with her audience.”
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