Don't look now, but there's that word again. And did you know that we have our own fungus? It's true.
But that's for visual artists. Whoever heard of a musical artist's palette having a shape? And visual artists, you put them in the next room and they disappear completely. But sound artists, at 110dB, they continue to exist for dozens of meters, and beyond several walls at least, we think.
Now when we say Artist, what we really mean is one of those people you read about, and sometimes meet, mum at the buffet table, picking at the cheese plater, who likes to see things their own way. But not generally in a political sense; not in such a way that they would need to go out and convince anyone else that the world they live in is a better world than the world you live in. More like osmosis. That being the state where if you can stomach their proximity some of their brilliance might rub off, or at least make an impression, kind of like a bruise, but more permanent. More like a chronic rash. Or, come to think of it, an incorrigible fungus.
Here then are four categories of what we might call, or have at times called, Artist. The first is that most genuine of artisic-ness, the virtual artist. No struggling with the laws of physics or the laws of nature. What we make it, sort of thing. Second is the Instrumentalist. Generally non-speaking, the only voices you'll hear are the ones in your head, or sampled from non-nefarious sources. The third is the more traditional live, certified birth, all fine lines and grey hairs artist. Be all you can be, without the collateral damage. The final category is the artist that once was, the artist who has moved on, seen the error message of their ways and lived to learn another day. Gone on stage naked, aestheticized and back to work the next day, anti-bioticized.
Those names again then are: