a brief treatise on the nature of fan-dom

Fans. They're a bit of problem really aren't they?

Would you want to be universally loved for everything you ever did by people who would buy your poo and used tissues on e bay if you were only selling them?

Or loathed by a host of people who'll never actually met you for daring to progress musically in a direction that didn't gel with their tastes?

It's a strange thing. you put yourself out there and people love you. they buy little bits of you through your music, or so they think.

From the extreme reactions it seems like they think they bought your soul. But they didn't.
Not really.

There are a ton of artists (musicians,painters, sculptors, writers, poets) that i adore and who have shined a light into my life. But they don't belong to me. I can't influence them in any way.
i can buy or not buy, like or not like. I can feel a true connection to the thoughts, perspectives, tastes and even soft furnishings of artist who are thousands of miles from me but it doesn't mean that they would beat a path to my door or are feeling the loss from not hanging out with me.

So why is it that when someone with a fan base posts online or lets people into their little world in some online way, there's a mass bashing session?
What, because you bought a few records and went to a couple of gigs, they stopped being a person with weird spelling and nicotine stained teeth and a host of stuff they're trying to deal with? i don't think so.

Fortunately for me, i have no readership, thus bashing will be at minimum.
But still. The point of blogging is commentary or sharing or insight, isn't it?

Was it CS Lewis who was told by a student 'we read to know we are not alone'.

That's all this is. Writ large and accessible to anyone with broadband.

Bad spelling gets my goat too but just like entrepreneurs don't tend to pause for business school, musically genius had other outlets of expression too.

More annoying than a few mis-apostrophised 's's, is when you're at a gig that you've had to fight hard to even get a ticket for (touts/scalpers - you're all going to rot, come the hour) and there's a loudmouth behind you who jabbers endlessly throughout each and every song and then applauds whistles and heckles in between, declaring 'that's my favourite' and 'you sing it'.
We were not at a revivalist mission.
But end of the day i just smiled. Because we're all different.
Some people object to the fan dancer. Some people object to the fan.

And on that analogy and indeed frankly v. poor pun, ciao