July 15, 2025 · Episode 29
48 Min, 55 Sec 

Summary

Does art lose its power if no one sees it?

In this episode, Breallyn and Lyndon unpack the value of unseen work—where it lives, who it’s for, and whether the audience gives it meaning. From Emily Dickinson’s drawer to the Wu-Tang album no one can stream, they ask whether the act of making is enough… and somewhere along the way, Lyndon also demands recognition for being an early adopter of Crocs.

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Transcript

Lyndon: Welcome to Pain In The Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life. I’m Lyndon.

Breallyn: And I am Breallyn.

Lyndon: Visit our website, Pain In The Arts Life, and sign up to our mailing list. That would be fantastic. You can also go to our Patreon, which is patreon.com/PainInTheArtslife. Check out the different membership options there to become a patron. It’s a great way to support the show.

Breallyn: Another way you could support the show is by making sure you follow us on your podcasting platform. Also leave us a review if you can. The more stars, the better. Five stars would be amazing. Couple of words. Reviews help other people to find us.

Camping Adventures and Steak Sandwiches

Lyndon: One of our sons is about to head off on a camping trip in Gippsland. Actually, not in Gippsland. He’s gonna meet a mate for his birthday in Gippsland, and then they’re going to Dargo High Plains. So that will be a good adventure for him.

Breallyn: Yeah. There’s about a dozen young fellas heading off, which sounds like trouble, but I’m sure they’ll be fine.

Lyndon: Yeah, you gotta do that stuff.

Breallyn: You gotta, when he was hugging me goodbye, he was saying, “Yes, I’ll be careful. Yes, I’ll be smart. Yes, I’ll make all the right decisions, Mom, don’t worry about it.” So I didn’t even have to say it.

Lyndon: And in the back of your head, you’re thinking, “I know how spontaneous he is.”

Breallyn: No, I trust him to be the responsible one on the trip. He’s quite levelheaded. Yeah. He’ll be good.

Very glad he is having adventures actually. It’s good for him.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s right. Absolutely.

Breallyn: He’s been going camping quite a bit actually, and each time he goes, he updates a bit of his gear.

Lyndon: The guy whose party it is, he contacted him yesterday ’cause they were working out what food they’re all taking, and they’re each just taking food for themselves. And his mate is taking nine steaks, like nothing else, just nine steaks.

Breallyn: They’re going for about three nights.

Lyndon: I think they’re going for four nights, five days. So he worked it out. He’s got a steak for lunch and a steak for dinner and then just one up his sleeve. And I said to our son, “What are you taking?” And he goes, “Yeah, I’m taking steak too.” He goes, “But not just steak, I’ll be making steak sandwiches.” And I thought, there you go. You’ve just put a bit of, you just put a bit of carbohydrate around it.

Breallyn: Yeah. There’s the upper class.

Lyndon: I don’t know if he’s gonna put any, in a thing, like exotic, like a lettuce leaf in there.

Breallyn: Bit of sauce. Bit of sauce.

Lyndon: I think it was his mate’s brother, wasn’t it? That had that, now legendary story of every day just raw meat sandwiches that had, was it just stra in it?

Breallyn: It was stra and sauce sandwiches.

Lyndon: Stras and sauce. Well, you tell the story because we heard,

Breallyn: Yeah, these are friends that, you know, been, we’ve been friends with them since before the kids were born. So our kids grew up alongside each other and this boy came home. How old would he have been? Prep or grade one. And he, had a regular diet of stras and sauce sandwiches every day. But one day his mom didn’t have the stras, so there was cheese in the sandwich and he’s come down, thrown his bag down on the ground and put his hands on his hips and just gone, “What’s with the cheese?”

Lyndon: My memory of that story is that she actually thought maybe she should mix it up a bit and not just be stra, and she put cheese in with the stra.

Breallyn: No, it was,

Lyndon: I thought that was the story?

Breallyn: I think it was a replacement. I might have it wrong.

Lyndon: “What’s with the cheese?” I don’t think he’ll be on this trip.

Breallyn: No, he is. He’s going, yeah.

Lyndon: Is he going?

Breallyn: So he is, yeah. One of the older brothers.

Lyndon: Oh, that’s good.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. He helped me yesterday put on the awning onto our Tarago. So that’s, that was good. So now, yeah,

Breallyn: You’re one step closer to doing your solo man trips. In the Tarago.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: My solo lady trips are going to be a little bit more, let’s say, comfortable. ‘Cause I’m just gonna go to places, not just sleep in the car.

Lyndon: I was excited when your brother came over a couple of days ago. On their car was an awning. So I was like, “Ooh, I’d forgotten that he had an awning,” and, they were saying they use it regularly and how great it’s been. And I was like, “Yes! Validation.”

Breallyn: Indeed.

Lyndon: Which is always important.

Breallyn: I’m glad that was the highlight of your day on that day. ‘Cause we had another VIP on that day.

Lyndon: Yeah,

Breallyn: Which was our very first great nephew.

Lyndon: Really? It’s our first?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Wait, you’re a great uncle.

Lyndon: And I’m a great uncle. I did realize that while we were sitting around holding him. Yeah. I was trying to work out all the relationships and lineage and that, and I was like, okay, so Bri’s brother is a grandfather, so hang on a minute.

Breallyn: What does that make us?

Lyndon: Hang on. What’s that make me? I’m sure I was in my mid to late thirties, if people have kids young these days.

Breallyn: Luckily, I’ve got an excellent role model as a great auntie because my auntie, which is, which is this baby’s great auntie. Yeah. She just wins the hearts of kids by swanning in wearing a leopard skin,

Lyndon: Anything.

Breallyn: Leopard print like dressing gown. Yeah. Anything. Coat, dressing gown. And she’ll just say, “Right, here’s the lollies, come over, kids.” And she’ll be funny. She’s got the lollies. She used to say to Birdie, “Come here. Come here. It’s auntie with the diamonds, diamond auntie.” She’d flash, flash her diamonds, and just bribery is a big thing.

Standing in the Waiting Room

Lyndon: I was standing in the dentist’s waiting room the other day. They always tell me to sit, and I never do. I’ve just

Breallyn: Really? You just stand up like a weirdo?

Lyndon: No, I just stand up like a person standing.

Breallyn: Why are you standing in a waiting room?

Lyndon: Because I’ve just sat in the car to drive there, and then I get there early. I’m there pretty much five minutes before the appointment and I end up standing there. I do stand there for probably 10 minutes at least, but I don’t, and then I think I’m gonna sit down in their chair and then I’m gonna sit down in the car on the way home, and then when I get home, if I’m doing work in front of the computer, I’ll be sitting down. So I just think this is my chance to stand anyway. It’s not the point of, the story isn’t about whether I stand like a normal person or sit down.

Breallyn: It would just freak me out if I was sitting in the waiting room and someone’s standing there. I’d be wondering why the whole time.

Lyndon: Really?

Breallyn: Yeah. I’d be like, “What are they doing? They planted a bomb and they’re about to run out the door.” But

Lyndon: Look at me.

Breallyn: I won’t have time.

Lyndon: Look at me. Do I look like someone who’s planted a bomb at a dentist?

Breallyn: I’d just be like, “Why are they standing?” So you’re standing there like a normal person. Yeah.

Lyndon: And they have daytime TV on and it was reruns of The Nanny, and she was wearing leopard print.

Breallyn: Ah, yeah.

Lyndon: Stuff all matching with leopard print, handbags, and stuff. And I thought, “Is that where Auntie got it from?”

Breallyn: No. She’s just. Got her own.

Lyndon: Like, where do you get an affinity with leopard? Leopard skin? Yeah. It’s really quite a, it’s leopard.

Breallyn: Yeah, it’s leopard print.

Lyndon: Yeah. Leopard print. Yeah. Or you, it’s a real, an

Breallyn: Animal print. Yeah.

Lyndon: She hasn’t gone to the Serengeti, and

Breallyn: No, there’s no animals been harmed in this process.

Studio Cat and the Elephant in the Room

Lyndon: If I get distracted, it’s ’cause there’s a cat running around the studio. Got the studio cat before my headphone. Lead was, jiggling, and it really attracted it. So I had to shoo it away with my Croc.

Breallyn: And now it’s hiding behind a stack of amps and I’m not sure what it’s up to.

Lyndon: She’s on the window sill, looking out at birds and

Breallyn: Hiding behind the curtain there.

Lyndon: Yeah. Hiding behind the glass away from all the neighborhood cats that are, I think they’re all on heat and, she feels very threatened by them.

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: She cowers and

Breallyn: She’s not a fighter. This cat.

Lyndon: No, not at all. And there is a cat getting around here that is so large, and it had gross things hanging off of its fur as well. Oh yeah. Sheep dags.

Breallyn: And the one next door to us who we call Kitler because of an unfortunately placed black smear on her upper lip or his upper lip, and a very military bearing.

Lyndon: Oh yeah.

Breallyn: He’s tough. He will,

Lyndon: That cat looks almost alien when it moves around the place. Yes, it’s very strategic.

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s athletic and very lithe and very strong.

Lyndon: Scary looking.

Breallyn: Yeah. Does look like a certain famous military figure.

Lyndon: But yeah. And that military figure, why can’t we say his name? It’s not Voldemort. Oh, said his name, but Hitler, if you take him out of context, the historical context, and you just look at him as a man, not that threatening.

Breallyn: Very similar to Charlie Chaplin looking. Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.

Lyndon: Yeah, there you go.

Breallyn: You heard it here, Hitler, not that threatening.

Lyndon: Oh, wow.

Breallyn: Cat’s back.

Lyndon: Cat’s back. Speaking of animals. We should address the elephant in the room.

Breallyn: Oh yeah.

Lyndon: The big white elephant. Last week I had enthusiastically.

Breallyn: You did.

Lyndon: Heralded the arrival of Brett Wood coming to visit us this week.

Breallyn: I am aware that I’m only looking at you. There’s no one else here. There’s no one else in here.

Lyndon: You are sitting right where he would be sitting.

Breallyn: Where’s Brett today?

Lyndon: I knew last week it was gonna be a bit risky announcing a guest coming on, so literally yesterday, he’s got back from a tour. He goes on tour again in a couple of weeks time.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: He’s got a music video to, to make. It was just amazing that he’s making time for us. Yeah. But a spanner was thrown in the works, of scheduling.

Breallyn: Of scheduling. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. Lots of, which is totally fine. And oh, let’s hope that it does align and we can see Brett soon here in this year. Oh, he’ll definitely be coming.

Breallyn: Yeah, that’d be great.

Lyndon: That is the elephant in the room, is that Brett Wood isn’t here. But luckily, I am fleet of foot and highly organized.

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: I am attuned and experienced in pivoting. Thinking on my feet, going with the flow. Nothing phases me as

Breallyn: Great.

Lyndon: Just put a little asterisk, ‘see liner notes for truth.’ But I have

Breallyn: You got a backup plan.

Lyndon: Oh, I am the king of backup plans. I’m

Breallyn: Got Plan A, B, C, D, and E.

Lyndon: I have contingency plans. This is the irony. I’ve had a con, I have contingency plans for everything, but when I set out in this brave world, I had Plan A and nothing else.

Breallyn: Here. We still are.

Lyndon: Hilarious. Yeah. Yeah.

Breallyn: It’s gone so far. I know.

Lyndon: I think we’re doing all right.

Breallyn: I think so.

Lyndon: We’re doing all right at life.

Breallyn: Yeah. You looking official with your iPad and your pencil?

Lyndon: My glasses? Yep. Yeah, I know.

Breallyn: Headphones on.

Lyndon: Are you taking a photo of me?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Sweet.

Breallyn: Put it in the socials. Everyone can picture you. Should I take it with your Crocs in it or not?

Lyndon: I, let’s talk about these Crocs. Okay. These Crocs are an example. Get ’em. I don’t care. These Crocs are an example of me. Embracing items that have then later become. Fashion. And I’m so annoyed that I’m not credited things that I’ve

Breallyn: What? There’s no credit coming, dear, you for Crocs. I can tell you, old Crocs that like these predate the current very short-lived, I’m sure, fashion trend of Crocs.

Lyndon: Okay? Without a word of a lie. These are the original Crocs.

Breallyn: They are.

Lyndon: These are the, these as in, not these aren’t Crocs. Like 18 years, ago, Crocs came are image to the original and the original color. These are literally the original. If you have a look at the sole, Brea, there is none. There’s no grip. These are a hazard, and I’ll tell you what I liked about these. No, I won’t because everyone loves ’em.

Breallyn: Please don’t.

Lyndon: Have a look at this. This, you probably can’t see that.

Breallyn: No, I can see where you’ve burnt it in the fire. Yeah.

Lyndon: Front of this one is all melted. Yeah. And, and they’re still going strong. And did I throw ’em out? No, I didn’t. Anyway.

Does Art Lose its Power?

Breallyn: Now that we’ve gotten rid of all of our listeners, tell us what the topic is for the day.

Lyndon: Yeah. So here’s something I’ve been thinking about. Does art lose its power if no one sees it or reads it or hears it?

Breallyn: Bit of a deep one.

Lyndon: If you write a book and never publish it or make music that just lives on your hard drive, does it still matter? And so that leads to a bigger question. When does art actually lose its power?

Breallyn: And

Lyndon: Over to you.

Breallyn: I think that, I think when I’m writing, what, what I’ve become more aware of over the years as I’ve become better at having a better skillset at writing, is that I, the person on the other side of the words who’s reading them, is as important or more important than me writing them. So I definitely feel like it’s always this mirror image flip side of the, receiver is as much a part of the art as the writer or, yeah.

And I’m obviously speaking about writing in particular. I, I think it, yeah, it is really important, and the reader of a book or a piece or poem brings all of their own life experiences and expectations and preferences and so on to the piece. So when they’re reading it, they’re gonna receive something very different to what the writer intended.

Not entirely, not completely different, but yeah, they’ll experience it in a certain way that the writer couldn’t have foreseen, because each person is different and has a different way of perceiving. So I think that the receiver of the art, or the viewer, the listener, is really important.

Lyndon: So you think that’s like the other side of the equation?

Breallyn: I think it is, yeah. It only in one sense, obviously, I think art is important for the artist to make no matter what, no matter whether it gets seen or never gets seen or experienced, never experienced that side of it. Like the giving of, and the pouring out, and the creating of something, that’s, that’s really important for the artist to do.

And it doesn’t, in one sense, it doesn’t matter where it goes from there. Like that job has to be done. That experience has to be done. For the artist’s satisfaction, but where it goes from there, yeah. I think it’s a whole other side of the equation.

Lyndon: Yeah. And I suppose, it’s something, you wouldn’t even really be mindful of that when you’re creating something. You would know that is the case. You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna be, have that in the forefront of your mind while you’re making something, surely.

Breallyn: Yes and no. I think, I think when I’m writing stuff, and this has, I think has improved my writing, is that I always have audience in mind, like, who’s the intended audience? Who’s going to read this? Who am I writing it for? So if I’m writing my fiction, the project I’m currently working on, it’s for middle grade, which is 10 to 12 ish, nine to 11 ish.

So it’s a certain age group audience, obviously, knowing that books appealed to a wide range of people. It’s always more applicable than that narrow kind of audience, but even more focused than that, I’m writing it for the child that I was at that age and what stirred me.

Lyndon: Okay.

Breallyn: So yeah, I always have a very specific audience in mind when I’m writing something and that bleeds through to my work writing as well as a copywriter. If I’m writing a blog piece, it’s for a certain. Customer of my client that I wanna reach.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. So I’m really very meticulous in visualizing that audience and writing very specifically to them and their needs and their, their fears and their, all that sort of thing.

Audience vs. Pure Creation

Lyndon: I was just watching a YouTube video where, Nuno Bettencourt, so he’s a very famous guitar player. Often touted as like world’s best guitar player. Oh wow. Anyway, he was, and still is, in the band Extreme.

Breallyn: Oh yeah.

Lyndon: And if you remember back in the nineties, early nineties, gosh, it was probably 1991, they had a massive hit with a song called “More Than Words.”

Breallyn: Oh yeah.

Lyndon: Extreme were a quite a heavy guitar rock band, and this song “More Than Words” is more like it’s an acoustic song. With two vocals. Yeah. That’s it. So more reminiscent of something from decades earlier, like the Everly Brothers or even

Breallyn: Oh, okay. Even

Lyndon: Perhaps like “Blackbird.” Like they wrote it pretty much in half an hour, and they believed in the song, but it was just a, it was a headache for marketing. It was a headache for the, to try and get basically the label on side to promote it, because it just didn’t fit the narrative of the band. It didn’t fit the narrative of the times. It didn’t fit what was being played on pop radio. And this was the era of the big hair bands.

Breallyn: Right.

Lyndon: You know, Guns ‘n Roses and Mötley Crüe and whatnot. It was like no one knew what to do with it. But, he was just talking about, other songs that came before that time that were really little works of art, where you had guys sitting down that were really good at their, at their craft. They had a chemistry between them, and they were not. Thinking about the audience at the time, they were literally just creating something.

He calls it ‘Simplexity,’ which I thought was really cool. He goes, “I’m a high school dropout, but I’ve coined this word Simplexity.” He goes, “Where, like, it’s a really simple idea, really simple song. But there’s layers in it that, when you put the headphones on, you just keep hearing something new.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: It’s like a different experience every time you listen to, to, to the song. I’m trying to think of one that he, it was a Queen song that he referenced.

Breallyn: So if they were just thinking, oh, we’ve got to write to this certain demographic or this style or whatever. Yeah. I think,

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. I

Breallyn: Guess that’s, yeah. Then there’s no room to play.

Lyndon: The way that their song ended up getting backed and getting promoted and becoming a number one hit. Worldwide. And this is before MTV Unplugged as well, so it was before that was even a thing where you had these, big bands coming in and playing stripped down versions of their songs. This wasn’t that, this literally was an acoustic song first.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Unlike anything else that you would find on their albums.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: It wasn’t like they did an acoustic style album or a Led Zeppelin Three album or anything. It was just this song was just like, “Where’d that come from?” Yeah. He thought that the label was blowing him off when they said, “Oh, we’ll test it in a couple of markets.”

Then, when he’s gone and really put his case forward to say that, “Hey, would anyone of these A and R people, if they heard this song on radio and another label owned it, would anyone actually go and buy the song? Would anyone buy the album?” So I think his point was saying, “No one here would buy it. But it’s just your opinion, and you are not our audience.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Okay. So that was his point. So they go, they’ve said, “Oh, fair enough. We’ll test it in a couple markets.” He didn’t even know what that meant. What it means is you pay a radio station somewhere to play a particular song three times every couple of hours or whatever, however they do it. Yeah. So you pay ’em to do that.

The reason they do it is because it was a way for labels to get some hard and fast numbers on, “Yep. What’s going on?” And they do that every day for a week and see whether listeners are requesting it. And “What was that song? We want to hear it again.” And so by the time a week went round, on that particular radio station’s charts, it got pushed up from number seven, which is where it would’ve been paid to come in.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: It got pushed up to number one.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And it did that in a couple of test markets.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: And then they were more comfortable of going, “Alright. Yeah. Okay. So you’ve got, it’ll find

Breallyn: A, it’ll find an audience. It’s got, yeah.

Lyndon: So I’m just bringing that up as a, just as a, counterpoint to what you’re saying, so yeah, both, are true. But I guess today what we’re really talking about is the power of art. Does art lose its power if no one is there to consume it? There is a bit of a fear, isn’t there, being someone toiling away at art and not having it seen? So like the fear behind obscurity, does my art still count?

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: And I guess even if someone is thinking that way. Perhaps they’re acknowledging what you are saying, which is, “Yeah, I’m making something, I’m toiling away at it. But it’s not complete until it’s been made visible.”

The Nuance of Artistic Creation and Reception

Breallyn: I think it, yeah, there’s a, I think it’s a nuanced question because the creator, once you’ve finished the piece, it depends on the, maybe the medium that you’re using. For instance, if you’re a musician, you might, like, rerecord stuff, do different versions of it, or whatever, right? So you’re still working with that piece.

But, if you say a fine art painter or something, and you finished a piece, it’s finished, and your relationship with the creation of it is finished. And then it goes on to have. It’s other life of, being seen and having that interaction with an audience.

So yeah, the creator at that point might choose to know about how that’s going and, or maybe not. There’s, I know there’s actors certainly that never go and see the movies that they’ve acted in and don’t wanna really know what’s going on at the box office, and they just wanna do their side of things and not really worry about how the audience is perceiving things. So yeah. There, there is certainly two halves of it.

Lyndon: There’s a lot outta their control, I think is nearly like the sort of underlying kind of message in that.

Breallyn: Yeah, true.

Lyndon: Like for an actor. Yeah. I think that’s why you get actors that will talk really highly of certain directors, and they wanna work with them again, and because there’s a trust there. They’ve, they know that there’s not gonna be any compromises during the rest of the process that happens after the acting’s finished.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And, that it’s gonna result in something that they feel is like worth giving, a year of their life to, or however long it took.

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s a good question, and I know like your, you’ve posed the question like the power of. We’ve got a good friend of ours, Hannah Bertram, who is a visual artist who was wrestling with a similar sort of question throughout her, some of her work, especially I think for either her PhD or a Master’s she was doing, it was a question she was posing. I don’t know if it was about the power of art, but maybe the worth of art, of is it worth it, or is it meaningful enough?

Is it only important if a large audience sees and experiences it and, gets to have that experience? Or is it just as meaningful if no one at all sees it? And she works with dust. She actually collects dust from different places.

She sieves it and gets rid of like bits of sticky tape and whatnot and, gets the fine powder of dust, and she’ll, in certain places she’ll use different ways of sieving it and so on to get different, slightly different textures, slightly different colors in the dust. And then she makes these really incredible elaborate patterns.

Lyndon: Very intricate patterns.

Breallyn: Very intricate patterns. Yeah. With her work. So it’s almost if you were to go and see one of her exhibitions, it would be like seeing a Persian rug on the floor, but it’s just literally made of dust that is not stuck down at all. So over the course of an exhibition, the breeze of people walking by will stir it. Sometimes people will touch it just to see, “Is it really just dust?” or, ’cause it looks like it, it looks like

Lyndon: You wouldn’t know when you just,

Breallyn: You wouldn’t know. Yeah.

Lyndon: First walk into the room.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah, she’s done all sorts of variations of, this idea. And it’s, about her work, like, in total, it’s about, things that are ephemeral and beautiful and, transient and the worth of that, and what, does permanence have a place, or is impermanence just as worthy?

And I, I know that for one particular piece that she did, she did something that took her like hundreds of hours, like just so long to create this piece. And then she only had one person view that piece, which was like her supervisor of her masters or, the person that was writing her assessment.

And then she wouldn’t let anybody else look at it. She swept it all away. So all of that work to have only one viewer and one set of eyes and one person to experience it. What’s the worth? What’s that equation of, importance and worth. So I don’t know if that’s quite related to power, but it, almost to me feels like the power is increased in that instance. Like that one viewer, the fact that they’re the only set of eyes that gets to see this amazing piece of work.

It’s like there’s more weight on them that they get to see it, that they alone get to experience this thing that won’t last. It’s fragile. It’s very beautiful, and it’s about to go. And I think that is really powerful.

Art as a Statement: Wu-Tang Clan and Banksy

Lyndon: That reminds me of the Wu-Tang Clan, who I, I was talking about a couple weeks back. Yeah. So they put out an album, I don’t know if I told you this. They put out an album called

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. It was an album that they produced one copy of and they sold it at auction.

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: And so I think to date, so basically in the course of the last decade, 600 ish people have heard it.

Breallyn: Wow. Wow.

Lyndon: Yeah. So it was auctioned off as a unique work of art. And it, its intention was to critique the devaluation of music in the digital age.

Breallyn: Yeah. Interesting.

Lyndon: Yeah. The public couldn’t hear it. And of course that sparked outrage. Was it still art if it was locked away?

Breallyn: It’s almost like it’s the art of the recording itself, but then the locking away of it almost becomes its own exhibition and its own, artistic statement.

Lyndon: Imagine if it was nothing on it, or it was just the, just them standing around a microphone laughing. Yes. Or something.

Breallyn: It’s crazy.

Lyndon: It came down to, I, I think it came to the, to Mona.

Breallyn: Oh yeah.

Lyndon: But I don’t know how people would’ve heard. I think they’ve just saw it. Maybe it was just an exhibition.

Breallyn: Wow. So they’ve seen the physical,

Lyndon: Because it was sold, it was a work of art maybe.

Breallyn: So when you say 600 people have heard it, is that because they’ve listened to it and then sold it to someone else? I don’t know.

Lyndon: No. This is what happened, just really, briefly. It sold at auction to a guy. You’re raising your eyebrows at me. It sold to a guy that was purchasing some very unique items, right? He became the infamous Pharma Bro. So basically he was an evil person. He increased the price of pharmaceuticals by some absurd amount. Yeah.

Breallyn: What an a-hole.

Lyndon: Martin Shkreli.

Breallyn: So he doesn’t deserve to listen to any album.

Lyndon: Yeah, I know. So this is in answer to your question, what happened was he got jailed. And the US government seized the album. And they later sold it to a crypto art collective. So I don’t know how many people were in that collective. So I think somehow in that it’s been heard, maybe it’s an estimated 600 times.

Breallyn: Yeah. Wow. Okay.

Lyndon: But as of now, like most of the album remains unheard by the public.

Breallyn: Yeah. And I feel like there’s something, really beautiful about that. Like the idea of there being an album that exists that you can’t hear, even if you really want to, potential and the possibility that kind of resides in like what you might hear is a very powerful idea, I think.

Lyndon: Yeah. The scarcity of it is, is a kind of power, isn’t it? The thing though, I think about that is if some unknown person did it, let’s just say they genuinely toiled away at an album and they were relatively unknown and they said, “I’m only going to make one copy and I’m gonna sell it at auction.” For the exact same reasons. To critique the devaluation of music and it’s gonna be sold as an art piece.

Would it have the same impact? Because, the Wu-Tang Clan already were well established. Their credentials, yeah. Were well established by then. They were, already in the public eye. So yeah, I think you can, it wouldn’t make that same statement of No, it wouldn’t, wouldn’t at all.

Breallyn: It, wouldn’t have the impact and Yeah, I th, I think that’s true. I guess when artists have done certain things, they can push those boundaries further.

Lyndon: Yeah. If you are obscure, hiding your work doesn’t build any sort of in intrigue. Yeah. It just guarantees more obscurity.

Breallyn: Obscure. I’m thinking about Banksy now who famously has stenciled art, on buildings and, isn’t, no, no one knows who Banksy is. And but there was piece that went to auction. It was, “Finally, you can actually own a piece of,”

Lyndon: Was that the girl holding the balloons?

Breallyn: Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, so you could, if you’ve got enough money, you can buy this piece of Banksy art and the minute that the hammer came down and somebody owned that piece, the frame. Had this mechanism in it where the thing got shredded and the whole piece got shredded half in half.

Lyndon: That’s awesome.

Breallyn: Yeah. So it’s still a piece of existing art.

Lyndon: I didn’t know that.

Breallyn: Yeah. But it, literally did it.

Lyndon: So it became performance art.

Breallyn: It became performance art in the middle of a live auction. Hang on. So that was,

Lyndon: But that’s, that was a prank.

Breallyn: It was more than a prank, like I would say. It’s, that is, as you say, performance art. Yeah. That is a statement of, “You don’t get to own this, you don’t get to have this.”

Lyndon: Right.

Breallyn: Nice piece hanging on your wall. You can’t buy everything. Yeah.

Lyndon: With this Wu-Tang, stunt, it proved the opposite of what they were trying to say in a way, because it didn’t disrupt the system. It relied on it.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s interesting.

Lyndon: That’s weird, isn’t it? Because you think about the power of art, and you don’t like that to be framed within cultural sort of norms and systems and, institutions. When you think about some of these things, especially like if they’re trying to make a statement without all those trappings of, the corporate world, even, there’s no statement to be made.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yep.

Lyndon: And so then you go, would the power of that been?

Breallyn: Deep.

The Power is in the Making

Lyndon: It is a bit deep. I wanna move on to what might be the heart of the matter, and that is that power is in the making.

Breallyn: That’s interesting.

Lyndon: Art actually loses its power only when it isn’t made.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah. True.

Lyndon: And there’s a lot of advocates for that sentimentality around at the moment because you just need to jump on social media, certainly on my feed, there’s always people saying, “We need art now more than ever.”

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: Whether you view yourself as a creative person or not, put some art into the world, write a poem. Just do it because if it changes you and everyone’s doing it, then it’s gonna matter. And some are even saying it’s, it’s an act of rebellion.

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: And you can look at that as large or as smaller sort of, dynamic as you like. You could be rebelling against your own fears, or you could literally be, rebelling against your day job. There is a tangible power in art just by you making it.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And that’s a really interesting kind of, thought.

Breallyn: It’s an interesting idea because once you’ve, yeah. While you’re creating and, who you need to become to create. And how it changes you in that process. They’re very powerful things and they almost can’t be done by any other thing other than creating something. Yeah.

Lyndon: And that’s right. ‘Cause you can be a creator of something that even you yourself, might not view as art. Like for instance, cooking

Breallyn: Is

Lyndon: Probably a really common good example of that. Yeah. And, I know lately with myself, the meals I’ve been cooking up, not that some of ’em haven’t been good, but I certainly haven’t been putting my creativity into them and into their planning. I’ve been relying on fallback plans. Yeah. And just going, okay, I know that we’ve got this and we’ve got that.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. I’ll just make this meal. It’ll be tasty and job done.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Whereas actually what I would prefer to be doing is the mindset that you get in, into when, you’ve got visitors coming over and you’re gonna cook for them. I, yeah. How much more pleasurable the whole experience is. Yeah. Yeah. Even something like cooking, you can do it with the heart and the mind of an artist.

Breallyn: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you’re onto something if, everybody was, creating slash expressing, in those ways. In their lives more. Yeah, I think that there is a lot of power in that, in, it changes the individual so therefore it changes their family and the people that they come into contact with, and therefore it then has that follow on effect of changing their community.

And then communities change one another and yeah, that is how people change from the inside out and affect change. Yeah, that’s it. We all need to drop everything and do a bit more art.

Lyndon: Yeah. Do you remember that saying, dance, like no one’s

Breallyn: Watching.

Lyndon: Like no one’s watching. Is that, what’s what we’ve just been talking about? I hope

Breallyn: Not. That’s not gonna be on our t-shirts.

Art’s Transformative Power and Scarcity

Lyndon: Art is created, does the lack of visibility of that art, for want of a better word, does that make art less powerful.

Breallyn: It, I guess it doesn’t make the creation less powerful, but if no art’s visible or heard or seen or read, then yeah, we’re definitely all missing out on, the receiving power of art and the, the power that art has to transform you when you do experience it and you do, view a painting that just really stirs you for some reason.

You just can’t believe that someone’s created something that, that means something to you, even though you had no idea that, it would do, or, you read a character or you watch something that you just go, “Wow, I, I actually really relate to that, and I could never have said that.”

In that way myself. But now I know what I’m thinking because somebody else has said that in better words than I could have said. So yeah, we, I think, that transformative power of art. Yeah. Would be lost if we didn’t have the means to receive it and, be able to, all be creators, but also all be audiences.

Lyndon: I wonder how much of it relies on the creator being able to remove themself from the equation. So for some people, they’re able to, make their art and the visibility is a bonus. It’s not where they, it’s not the source of value for them. Whereas other people, they, they need that validation. They put value on that. But then, that’s more about them then, isn’t it? Yeah.

Rather than the art itself. And I guess you could just broadly look at fame, and go, yeah. Some people who aren’t in that world, they want fame, ’cause they want some sort of validation for their work. That’s not where the power arguably exists. Yeah. In a, it’s not really anything to do with the person at the end of the day, is it?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Or is it,

Breallyn: I don’t know.

Lyndon: I think they, these are questions that there, there’s no definitive answer. Yeah. They’ve really,

Breallyn: Yeah. I, and I was just thinking of scarcity and how, a piece of art is more valuable when it’s perceived as scarce. Yeah. And like some of the most famous paintings are actually famous because they were stolen or feared, missing for years, or, things like that. And that’s right. And then, they’ve been returned or discovered, and now they’re very well known and highly prized.

But yeah, it’s that thought of this thing has gone, this very precious thing now, it’s very precious and we may never see it again. Yeah. It’s much more valuable once you have that back.

Art in Obscurity: Emily Dickinson and Henry Darger

Lyndon: Yeah. And someone who wasn’t seeking recognition or didn’t need validation clearly would be Emily Dickinson.

Breallyn: Ooh, I like this.

Lyndon: Yeah. Do you like Emily Dickinson? I thought you’d like this.

Breallyn: Of course. I love Emily Dickinson.

Lyndon: Did you know that she wrote nearly 1800 poems, but only a handful were published?

Breallyn: Really?

Lyndon: In her lifetime? Yeah.

Breallyn: In her lifetime. Yeah.

Lyndon: And often without her permission.

Breallyn: Yeah, that’d be right.

Lyndon: Most of her work was discovered after her death.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So that’s someone you would argue that’s creating art for the sake of creating it.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: ‘Cause she’s now considered one of the most important poets in

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: American literature.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: She’s an example, art made in obscurity.

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: So she must have had, this is something I was gonna ask you about earlier, is when you were saying, when you’re writing, you’re aware of the audience that you’re writing for.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: And I was gonna ask you when you are aware of the audience, surely that makes you a better writer not just because of an audience that you’re trying to target, but because you’re trying to elevate your work because there’s a result that you’re aiming for.

Breallyn: I guess I would say I hope that it is one of the ingredients that makes me a better writer. I think it just makes, it’s just one of the things that goes into my preparation for writing. So whether if I like just sat down and started just free writing and, doing stream of consciousness, something or other, maybe I’d come out with something that is better. Who knows?

But yeah, it, so I don’t know whether having the audience in mind makes me a better writer, but it certainly is a really important ingredient into what I find myself doing and what I want to spend my time doing. Yeah.

Lyndon: And then, where does the power exist in that then? Is the power then transferred to the audience and then it becomes more powerful obviously if it reaches more of that demographic, then you would go, it’s having a more powerful impact. It’s interesting because clearly it’s not just horses for courses. It, just, it depends on where you find yourself at any point in your life. I think,

Breallyn: Not only that, any point in history. You’ve mentioned Emily Dickinson, and I would say that I’m very privileged because I’m a woman who can, think of an audience and I can think about who I would like to try to publish to.

Lyndon: That’s true.

Breallyn: Whereas for many

Lyndon: Many centuries.

Breallyn: Women writing, like of course they couldn’t think of an audience.

Lyndon: Lucky not have been burnt at the stake.

Breallyn: Absolutely. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, pretty much. They wouldn’t have been able to write to think of an audience. They weren’t allowed to be published that, if the few that were allowed any publications had to change their names to men’s names, and, certainly wouldn’t have been able to think about, “Oh, I’m creating this work for my audience and this is what I wanna put out next.” How dare they.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: It wouldn’t have been possible. For many centuries, women in particular, certainly some men as well, especially in lower classes.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah, they didn’t have that privilege at all. I’m glad things have changed, but I would hope that retrospectively those writers and, those artists, the power goes back to them because we are now able to read their work, see their work, and realize what a contribution that they’ve made to the world and, what a talent, what they had to give. So yeah. Even though posthumously they get that recognition, at least it comes.

Lyndon: Often the, it, it seems to me that often the power of art is realized retrospectively. Or something even that may have been powerful at the time becomes more and more powerful. And, yeah. And I don’t mean legendary, like it’s folklore or legend. Like it actually is noted to be a real turning point. Oh, there’s enough history, ahead of it if you like, that you can see how much it’s influenced so many different people.

Breallyn: Yeah, that’s so true.

Lyndon: So sometimes things, sometimes we miss stuff when it’s happening. Have you heard of Henry Darger? He worked in isolation for decades on a 15,000-page illustrated novel.

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: And he was completely unknown during his lifetime. Wow. And the novel was only discovered after his death by guess who? You’ll never guess.

Breallyn: I can’t guess.

Lyndon: His landlords.

Breallyn: Oh my Lord.

Lyndon: And so now he’s celebrated as, as a visionary.

Breallyn: Yeah. A visionary outsider artist. Yeah. That’s the thing. I’d say outsider art is, this incredible sort of, quite untapped stream of art that, it hasn’t been created for a specific audience. It hasn’t been created in the, contextualized sort of framework that, artists that, that are maybe more educated and understand where they sit. It’s not created in those spaces.

It’s just this thing that comes out of people. And sometimes finds an audience, but oftentimes, yeah. Is locked up in attics or, chucked out when people go through their relatives’ things after they die or whatever. And some of it, it could be that transformative piece that really reaches somebody that, but it might never get that chance.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s right.

Breallyn: Now I’ve gotta go and look up Henry Darger’s illustrated novel. I no, have a look at it. Yeah, that’s right.

Lyndon: So I think that art doesn’t lose its power if no one sees it. It loses its power when we don’t make it at all.

Breallyn: Yeah. I think that’s, I just think there’s too many examples.

Lyndon: A really clear takeaway. Historically of where like I was saying, where over time art gets recognized.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yep.

Lyndon: For it being something really powerful.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And for, its impact on whether it’s its impact on individuals or on completely shifting a genre or shifting the way art is perceived or whether it’s has an impact on society as a whole. Yeah. And there’s even, obviously there’s examples of songs that got rereleased as part of a campaign or a movement, a song that was written for one thing becomes,

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Becomes something much, much greater. But yeah. And then of course there’s all those, reasons we were saying before of, there’s power in creating. Art itself and not to be fearful of obscurity.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Necessarily there’s, and I think, yeah, if you are creating art because you need an audience for personal validation, then perhaps that’s a long road.

Breallyn: It’s a very muddied motivation. Isn’t it? Yeah. To create for, any number of other reasons is, I don’t know, it just comes from a more pure place and arguably you’d get, a different result, hopefully a better result. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. So what are you not making yet because you’re worried that no one will care?

Breallyn: That’s a good question.

Lyndon: That can be a rhetorical question.

Breallyn: Yeah. Taking it as a literal question and thinking about it.

Lyndon: I’m, saying we’ve, had a lot of questions.

Breallyn: To, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things on my to-do list to create. So I’m not really thinking about whether there’s any validation at the end of it. I just, my, I’m more fearful that I won’t get to do ’em at all. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s ’cause also we, know when we create something that we’ve been wanting to create for ages.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And then we finally finish that thing. Large or small, it spurs on, it just fires off so many other possibilities of things that we can do. Yeah. I know I’m like that even when I just sit down and just noodle around on guitar and it’s going, “I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna practice this one idea that I’ve got,” and then, it just cr, I’ve just created more work for myself every time.

Breallyn: Yeah. I think, Yeah. Ideas tend to give birth to other ideas, so they never end. Yeah. It’s almost like the finish of one project can. Definitely give you the, first inklings of the next. It, might not necessarily come just out of somewhere different. It might come right from the same place you left off.

Lyndon: Yeah. Speaking of power in art and does art lose its power if no one sees it or hears it or reads it or consumes it in some way or eats it, but the power mightn’t be there for everyone else’s benefit. It might be there for your own benefit.

Breallyn: That’s right. Yeah. I think either way, we, what we have discovered is art is really powerful. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the creator or the receiver, I guess.

Lyndon: The creator or consumer. Yeah. True.

Breallyn: Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.

Lyndon: Bye. Bye.

Lyndon: Pain In The Arts is a Creative Life Chronicles production. Support the show, access exclusive content, or explore our free tier on Patreon, www.patreon.com/PainInTheArtslife. For more from Creative Life Chronicles and The Pain In The Arts Podcast, visit our website www.PainInTheArts.life. Pain In The Arts was recorded and produced at Morning Phase Recording Room, and the original theme music was written and recorded by me, Lyndon Wesley. Thanks for listening.

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