"The artist is a mass of contradictions. He sinks from great happiness
to dispair, within hours. H e is confused yet seeks to comprehend his
confusion. He knows not and yet through his art he seeks to let others
know.
He is aware only that he must struggle, aware that he must never give
up. What the nature of his inspiration is, he cannot comprehend and he
must try to attune his mind with the incomprehensible in order not to
limit his art with mean intellect.
It is certain that the artist has a very important role in society. He
has the ability to represent in some tangible form such as music, painting,
writing, the most abstract qualities of the human awareness and thus he
has the ability to reveal to society the nature of its movement, to arouse
thought about societies direction and to humanity the infinite nature of
its potential.
The tragety of the artist is that he is often alienated from the society
which does not recognize the value of his struggle, and which does not
support his livelihood. Hence the artist must live in comparitive poverty
in order to work as he wishes, alone and unaided, or he must compromise
his true goal, and hire himself out to society, as did the artists of former
years , or the many commercial artists and musicians of today."