“Sometime I’m going to do an essay called ‘The Virtues of Amateurism’ for all of those people who wish they earned their living in the arts.” Robert Kincaid, The Bridges of Madison County.

Unfortunately, Robert Waller’s character never did write his essay on the virtues of amateurism. But it’s a good title, even if we occasionally struggle to empathise with the premise. How, we may wonder, can a professional musician with an endless supply of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll have anything to admire of his amateur second-flute-playing counterpart sitting amongst the old ladies of the local big band? Like Kincaid, I believe he can.

The core of Kincaid’s philosophy is that, “Profit dominates art. We’re all getting lashed to the great wheel of uniformity.” It’s a common gripe isn’t it, as old as art itself I suspect; the artistic soul who longs to be more creative if only the audience could keep up. Yet despite the protestation, never have I seen anyone write a piece of music and later remove passages, lyrics or codas that the intended audience might struggle to comprehend. Quite the opposite in fact, the more general objection being too obvious rather than too high-brow as musicians and writers try to get away from their natural imitative tendencies and come up with something more expressive, more personal and less learnt. So the idea that composers are capable of producing works far artier than they do is, to my mind, a fallacy. Yet Kincaid is right, we are all getting lashed to the great wheel of uniformity. But it’s not the consumers or the marketers who are doing it – it’s the artists.

To elaborate further we must begin at the beginning of a process that unites amateurs and professionals as musicians and artists – creating. Inspiration is the light bulb moment, a moment we all know whether solving the problems of quantum physics or deciding what to have for dinner. For anyone struck by such a moment of clarity the focus is then to accurately interpret the idea, to realise the faint hum sounding somewhere in the right cerebral cortex. The word create comes from the Latin for make, and no matter how much the end product may alter as it is prepared it must essentially retain an accurate measure of that initial desire, must be made well for inspiration to have been realised successfully.

The next part of the process is to set the parameters within which your idea will be assembled. These decisions will shape the end product and define the type of artist you are. A crowd pleaser perhaps or a boundary pusher? A challenger or confronter? Do you want to shock the world like The Rolling Stones, or give it melody like Abba?

This is the first stage where the amateurs can consider themselves virtuous, because we are all multi- personas, all complex characters with unique expressions. Some days even Karen Carpenter might have wanted to stick a huge safety pin through her t-shirt and scream obscenities at the public, but there is a level of expectation for professional musicians that the amateur does well without. As a general public our expectations can be constraining – remember George Michael’s attempt at political satire back in 2004 with Shoot The Dog. If not in sync with our wishes, expression of a hither-to unaired personality trait can turn adoration into casual unconcern or even complete aversion in no time at all.

Yet, despite the strain a demanding public command there is another form of expectation that weighs even heavier for artists – that from within. Physiologists call it proactive role schemata, essentially working towards a self-devised image of your occupation. In short, if you see yourself as a rock star you will tend to rule out releasing an album of nursery rhymes because it doesn’t fit your vision of that profession. On top of that, there are perceived responsibilities that earning a living from something assumes; that somehow it must represent more than a plaything or hobby. These are levels of anticipation without which the amateur can move freer, expressing and exploring all the different sides of their personality with greater ease. For them, role schemata become instead self schemata which allow greater licence to express the complex self.

So, we have had a moment of inspiration and we have set the boundaries for the build. Our amateur and professional musicians are feeling different weights of expectation from both their audience and from within, but that is nothing compared to next stage of creating and the introduction of what I call ‘the great unknowable’. The great unknowable is what people will think of your creation, and it is a killer for artistic expression because to nullify it requires self belief that many musicians simply cannot have. In most cases there will be concession to the great unknowable, out of fear of rejection and loss of financial support, and the process of lashing us all to the great wheel of uniformity has begun.

The rate at which ‘popular’ music has gone through its genres in the past fifty years hints at our appetite for fresh sounds and styles. Yet, either we are not sending out the message clear enough or our musicians are not getting it. Whatever the cause, too many people who create carry a certain level of paranoia about the reception their work will receive.

Which brings us neatly to the final stage of the creative process, and that reaction for real. If she has been fortunate enough to get the response she had hoped for, perhaps congratulations as a maestro or maybe disgust as a punk, there is a sense of validation for the professional musician that the amateur cannot experience. She has invested more and the reward in the end is greater. Yet far more often, even when perceived as a success, there will be a sense of despondency at the public’s interpretation of a personal work; a lower ebb that the professional must suffer.

After the success of The Bends, Radiohead decided to adjust their musical direction. Realising that Top of the Pops was not the forum they craved, the band retired to make an album that would both extricate them from the popular Britpop movement and express their true musical values. OK Computer proved that audiences are not mindless cravers of mediocrity, for this slightly different offering went down a treat not only with their current fans but a new audience too. Where they had expected confusion Radiohead found reverence, and singer Thom Yorke was not a happy man. “All the sounds you made, that made you happy, have been sucked of everything they meant,” he said of the album’s subsequent success and regular airplay.

I suspect he partly blamed himself for submitting to the great unknowable. Unsure how far they could go the album was not a full tilt at the band’s original inspiration, it still contained concessions. Radiohead have not made the same mistake again, and from Kid A onwards they refused to pander to expectation. In part they have tried to amateurise themselves, supporting their work with ‘donations’ for records rather relying on album sales and the accompanying record label pressures.

Radiohead are fortunate enough to be able to sustain such creative ideals, however, for most professionals trying to express artistic principles without influence of market forces is a challenge too far. Instead we often get something that fulfils both their personal desires and earns a living – a compromise in other words.

Robert Kincaid is right, profit does dominate art, specifically dominates professional art. When all is said and done the definition of amateurism comes down to that one simple detail – money. But unlike Kincaid, I believe it is the brains of the makers rather than the ears of the listeners that profit lashes to the wheel of mediocrity. Without bills to pay, without role schemata or the expectations and reactions of large audiences, artistic expression can be more flexible and varied. For that reason alone, amateurism is surely virtuous.

Picture Courtesy of David Boyle