It's very hard work to be consistently great at what you do. Some people are willing to work that hard, others simply aren't. Njonker, your frankness is laudable, and as it relates to the issue of this thread, right on the money (no pun intended). Everyone makes choices, including artists. As you point out, some people are driven to the extent that they are willing to make certain sacrifices in their lifestyles that might not be acceptable to others. As with so many things in life, there are many gray areas to this issue that aren't easily explained. Most endevours in life can be pursued with an artistic sensibility IMO, so these comments aren't only about artists in the usual sense. One sometimes finds the person who is very driven to achieve greatness; everything else including health or family life be damned. Othertimes you have the person who makes a choice to live a more balanced life and if perhaps not achieving his/her theoretical potential, are happy with the fact that they can have a confortable lifestyle and still do what they do best; if perhaps not at the highest level. Then you have those, and I see many examples of this in the artist community, that really are not particularly talented, but persevere in their chosen profession and are either content with their limitation or hide behind the idea that their inability to make ends meet is not because of any limitation of theirs but rather society's inability to appreciate their "talent". Now, there obviously are many examples of unappreciated talent, but in my experience truly great talent is usually recognized. What's more; and this is what a lot of folks have trouble with, no one including artists has a responsibility to anyone except themselves when it comes to the manner in which they should practice their chosen career IMO. If you don't like the work that someone is doing, move on to someone else. It's that simple really. Swampwalker, you touched upon something that is key in this discussion. That is, an artist staying in the pop field his/her entire career. Things have changed dramatically over the last few decades as concerns all this. The "pop" music of seventy or eighty years ago is the music that many revere today. A century ago most households had at least one musician(if not professional), and one of the favorite family pastimes was to play music. All that has changed; and folks, guess what many musicians who have been around for several decades and even musicologists trace the beginning of this decline to?: the advent of recorded music. Ironic isn't it? Food for thought.
