Someone needs to hear this. I know I harp on this one issue more so than maybe I should, but it just rattles my cage when I see, hear, and know about an artist who has allowed someone to come in (maybe because that artist needed money, maybe because he or she was promised the moon) and they allow a would be producer to literally erase all that they have worked so hard to achieve and call their own.
You may not remember, or even know who I'm talking about when I say the name Avril Lavigne, but she is a Canadian vocal artist who eventually caved to the pressure of commercialism and big bucks when she recorded her last work, but in the beginning she was raw and gutsy, a bit out there with weird hair and makeup, but it was her weird hair and make up. Her teeth weren't perfect, her nails weren't painted pretty flashy colors, they weren't long and plastic either, and her music was real, it was hers. She owned it. She wrote it. She performed it. She kept it.
There was even a reference to another artist, Britney Spears, in one of Lavigne's songs where Lavigne flatly says she's not "A Britney" she won't give in to the long cold fingers of soul-eating producers who come along (claiming) saying they love your style, but the first thing they do after signing you to their iron-clad unilateral contracts (one sided) is to change your style! They make you write songs with their writers, they ask you to sing their songs over your songs and if they do allow you to sing your songs they force you to change the way you did it before -- it just didn't fit in with their program. Does any of this strike a chord? Would you ever allow it? I hope not.
Well, shoot me twice please, if I ever write a blog claiming that someone, a producer, publisher, writing stylist, or someone else wanting to manage my work, has come along and changed my style. I'll allow an editor, sure, that's a given, I need an editor. I'm a writer, but I'm by no means perfect at the craft - - no one really writes from the heart without making flub-ups. It just happens. We think, we write, we screw up, we laugh, we move forward. If another person thought for half of a nanosecond that I would allow them to take my words and either rewrite them, ask me to redo them so they sounded more commercial, sounded more pleasing, sounded more robotic, stale, plastic, monotone, unchallenging, unraw (is that a word?) and, oh, I don't know -- BORING - - if I were to entertain allowing someone to come along and do that, please just take me out back and thrash me if I ever allow anyone to tell me to write anything I write any other way than MY WAY. (I won't be able to feel you doing it because I would have been in a coma long before I would allow anyone to change a damn word I write other than to correct a misspelling or punctuation mark.)
Every last one of us is formed in the great image of our Heavenly Father. It doesn't matter if you don't believe that, it's still true. We humans are crafted in the image of God the Father and God the Son. We are not like the animals, we did not evolve from animals, we were crafted, we were planned, we were formed and magnificently so! There isn't a one of us born who was made by mistake. We may not like our hair, our eyes, our nose, those freckles, our ankles, whatever - - but can you imagine if God had chosen to just randomly put us together in a way that was more user-friendly maybe, or maybe in a way that would somehow be more marketable, pleasing to the eyes, ears and hearts of the majority?
Our unique gifts are our unique gifts, not someone else's and not for someone else to come along and own or steal from us - payment may have been given for that compromise, sure, but it is a theft to be sure! It robs you of your soulfulness, your edge, your - - you. You sold yourself and maybe you didn't mean to, but you sold yourself to pay a bill, to say you belong, to be able to prove to someone that you could be a part of something "bigger" or "better". Is it? You sold yourself; it's not you anymore, you are now THEM, or a part of them. They tell you how to dress, what to say, what to write, what to perform, how to do videos, what to hold so you look just so -- their image of what just so should look like, sound like. “Clean”. No it’s cardboard.
I don't know. Some people would say it's a good thing to sell your work and get paid to do what you do, but I think you keep it. If someone wants to pay you to perform, great, but you should perform the way you perform, jokes and all - - again, with soul, raw, open, honest, not boxed and placid - - putty in their hands; you should be the you that you were before they found you. They should love you for the you that you are, not the you they think you need to be. That's not you; that's just not you.
OK, well, that's my soap box and it needed to be said, it needed to be seen, it needed to be pushed - - maybe even poured down your throat because right now you're in a coma and need someone to be there to actually give a damn about what it is that you wanted to do in the first place -- you don't seem to be making a stand at this point; maybe I can. They can't get to me. I can't be bought. I may not be rich but I've never thought money was the gauge for measuring my success anyway - - I'm sort of weird like that. I gauge my success by the smile on God's face when He sees that I did what He asked me to do. Let me tell you -- it feels really good to be able to fly freely and write what I want, when I want, how I want, and as I want, my pen is a thousand times stronger than their money - - if no one buys it, I'm not compromised. If I had to sell words to make money I'd find another profession, but what I have isn't work - - it's passion. I can't and won't try to imagine what it would be like to sell that. I would rather die.
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