The Artist . . .

". . . A real artist is not one who has taken up art as his profession, but a man predestined and foredoomed to it; and such an artist can be picked out from a crowd by anyone with the slightest perspicacity.  You can read in his face that he is a man apart, a man who does not belong, who feels that he is recognized and is being watched; there is somehow an air of royalty about him and at the same time an air of embarrassment.  A prince walking incognito among the people wears a rather similar expression.  But the incognito doesn't work, Lisaveta!  Disguise yourself, put on civilian costume, dress up like an attache or a guards lieutenant on leave-you will hardly have raised your eyes and uttered a word before everyone will know that you are not a human being but something strange, something alien, something different . . .

"But what is an artist? I know of no other question to which human complacency and incuriosity has remained so impervious.  'That sort of thing is a gift,' say average decent folk humbly, when a work of art has produced its intended effect upon them, and because in the goodness of their hearts they assume that exhilarating and noble effects must necessarily have exhilarating and noble causes, it never enters their heads that the origins of this so-called 'gift' may well be extremely dubious and extremely disreputable. . . . It's well know that artists are easily offended; and it's also well know that this is not usually the case with people who have a good conscience and solidly grounded self-confidence. . . "
(from Death in Venice by Thomas Mann)

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OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD)

My latest solo release, '2014' of original, instrumental piano music, can be downloaded digitally at:

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