Artist or Aficionado?

I have been thinking to myself the concept of artist or aficionado. I have always viewed myself as an artist and as a creator, but am I wrong in my views? I think a lot of people I meet tend to see me more as an aficionado rather than an artist. I have a strange obsession with art, specifically with music, and when I tend to really like something I research the hell out of it to know everything I can about it. I did a 50 page thesis paper in college of Bill Bruford, who is someone most people haven't heard of, but over the past six years is someone I've spent a large part of time researching and listening to and analyzing his drumming style.

I use to think my compulsive reseraching on artists I like and of music in general was always a plus, and I thought it just helped me as an artist and made me more well-rounded. Then I started to think would an artist really give a shit about all this shit and care about what all these other musicians and artists have done or are doing? Wouldn't an artist just care about his art? Now it's got me thinking where do I exactly fall into this as far as artsist or aficionado.

People tend not to like aficionados inclduing myself. Aficionados tend to be self-righteous assholes, who feel they are better than you because of their scholarly like knowledge of a subject or thing. They tend to be pompous and pretentious and boring to talk to because they tend to steer a conversation into a realm of talking and thinking that they have more knowledge of than whoever they are conversing with. That's one reason I change my major in college and got out of being a music major, because a lot of them were assholes who thought they have some kind of musical blue blood and it drove me crazy.

I have now come to the conclusion that even in my personal pursuit is to be an artist, what I give off is the personality of an aficionado and that sucks. Most of my friends think I'm pretenious and think that's how I want to come off to people, but it isn't. Even in my band I have been called pretenious, that should have gotten me thinking right then and there, but it didn't. I got into another long winded Beatles arguement with no end in sight, and for me I don't care to change people's opinions with words anymore. An artist doesn't communicate his/her art in words, he/she communicates with his/her art. I think maybe because I was out east and not playing gigs full-time or playing with a band full-time it sort of drove me to communicate more with my words than I'm use to, and I need to get back to focusing on my music and if people don't like it oh well. I'm thinking back on the last couple months when I get into some heated muscial debates that were pointless in making heated and I feel like an idiot for it, I feel more like a pompous aficionado than an artist and that's a feeling I don't like or want to have.

I think what drove me to become a pompous musical asshole is because of the music I play and like. As a musician you want to be liked because you want fans. Nobody wants to play to an empty venue. Is it art if no one is paying attention to it or even recognizes it? I think the wanting to be accepted as a serious and good musician drove me to intensely ridicule music I don't like i.e. The Beatles out of some jealous I have for the lack of my own mainstream musical success. Being a fan of progressive rock bands like Emerson, Lake, & Palmer doesn't help either. Keith Emerson himself said that the reason people didn't like ELP was because they were too good at their instruments. I think I started to adapt that virtuoso like cynicism of I'm too good and play too hard of music for people to understand, and I was really in the wrong and I usually never admit when I'm wrong. A real artist doesn't care about mainstream attention or care about what other people think of his/her art. Robert Fripp one of my musical heroes always said, "Never become so popular that the public take an interest in you." Now realizing my faults in my musical pursuits I hope to become less pretentious in my musical career and in my personal attitude and personality. In making myself more humble I'm thinking about going out on a limb and starting to listen to and feel out music that I would not normally listen to or know much or anything about. I feel the drive to go into unchartered musical waters will be good for me, and hopefully will influence me in a new way and get the creative juices going. Will Bill abandon rock music for some other musical form? Maybe I'll end up abandoning drums all together and focus my energies at synthesizer or chapman stick who knows what time will bring.

I will say this new drive to discover music I wouldn't normally listen to has given me a new foundness for the group Battles and their music. I think they're a great rock/electronic hybrid and could be a window to the future of how rock music can carry on as a form of innovative and creative music. For those unfamiliar with their music, which I'm still becoming familiar with below is a link to what I've seen thus far as their best performance from the tv show Later With Jools Holland. Their use of electronics especially the way they "treat" and synthesize the vocals I think is pretty cool and definitely original. What do you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSkU5GJmtXc