Aesthetic Experiences for Artists

Sean,

I think you put your finger on something interesting where you suggest that it's easier to admire a work of art when one's own fingerprints are not the only ones on it. I think you're right that Vinnie might have an easier time admiring Less Than Jake's output as a result of its collaborative nature. But more on that in a second.

Likewise, I accept your correction regarding the chronological perspectives (short versus long term) from which Vinnie and Joey, respectively, were speaking. As I was wrapping up my last post in this thread, I think I had come to the conclusion that, really, that distinction was less important than the one between Joey speaking as an artist and Vinnie speaking as a promoter, but I never got around to saying so.

But let me go back to what you said about it being easier to appreciate other people's work than one's own. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if it's even possible to have an aesthetic experience of one's own work. I mean, I can talk about liking or not liking "Beer Goggles" using the same language that Joey Cape can. But if I say that I don't like it, do I mean the same thing that he means when he says that he doesn't like it? I don't think so.

It seems to me that as a listener, when determining whether I like a song, I determine how much awe it puts me in. (Of course, I'm using that word to cover more ground than it ordinarily would). But as a writer of music, if I ask myself whether I like a song I've written, I determine how much pride it induces in me. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems to me that there is a qualitative difference between pride and awe; that is, a difference other than whether the emotion is self- or other-directed.

To put it in particulars, to the extent that I admire a poem that I've written, I don't think that my emotions are so much different from those of a contractor who admires the building he's just erected, or of a mechanic who admires his handiwork in repairing a broken engine. With respect to my own work, I can't get past the pre-aesthetic level: the level of craftsmanship. My emotions when reading my own work bear no resemblance to my emotions when I read Tennyson's "Ulysses" or Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium"; those works elicit a tingle in me that my own do not, and I don't think it's only because they are much, much better than mine.