If you are going to tell the truth, don't water it down. If you have to water it down, you might as well tell the entire lie, and stop calling it truth.

To seek to charm, focus on pleasing, being liked, looking hot, licking the adoration of applause and appeasement, bask in vanity-stroking, or use other such forms of seduction for safe, predictable, self-praise through the arts, creates nothing but hedonistic masturbation shared between the coward performer and narcissistic audience. Art must hold no compromise, no censorship, must be unapologetic, and fueled by the need to explore and express a complete truth fully despite the audiences reaction and overall social outcome. Stubborn purity and self-sacrifice rides the wave of true artistic expression.

Art requires the courage to create and express an independent, authentic truth, through a personal vision, despite what others think, or want you to think. It comes from a place of deep empathy and curiosity delving into the unknown and the known. Artistic expression is always fueled by a fierce independent mind, courageous heart, complete independence from the status quo, an intolerance for abuse, and an unconditional love for the audience - even if the audience is composed of idiots, morons, criminals and bigots. In fact, those are the audiences that need art the most!

Growth of self and culture will not happen, when narcissism, opportunism, and ego is motivating choice.

When artists succumb to the pressures of culture, or cult, rather than defying those pressures, they become part of the criminality that's accepted as normal; a deception shared as tolerable behavior within the hedonist culture we presently live in. In that space, the image of someone matters more than the depth of that person, and market value supersedes human value. Living within that kind of self-chosen lack of consciousness. they do not see the greater purpose beyond their one personal life or how the arts feed their mindless needs, or, the one era they live in that the arts can provide witness to. They block it by muddying the mess with their glossy limitations, because they are focused more on what is known rather than what needs to be discovered, and they continually pull back from new ideas rather than forge forward. Limited, safe ideas and choices, that fuel their narcissism, become the only forms of expression they know played to audiences who have embraced them - and it becomes its own paradigm of useless stupidity, passed off between those involved as great when it is trash. Nothing could be more dangerous because they have joined forces with the problem rather than the solution.

The arts only side with solution to open doors to possibility. Entertainment always sides with the problem to soothe the pains the problem cause.

Perhaps one day cultures will stop listening to their Politicians and start listening to their Artists, and the primitive torture going on in nearly all walks of life, will cease.

We are at a crossroads in 2020 - one between our long struggles from primitive existence, and a huge potential for learning and growth beyond anything we've ever known before. A transcendence to important new heights of human potential is possible but must remain grounded in the humane, not materialism or simply the technological. The Arts, if allowed to be Art, if supported fully and unconditionally, if its power is understood for the long term changes they offer, can be embraced by all people and holds the real key to transformative human evolution - though higher consciousness. Because Art, is truly what we mean by "Unconditional Love" when we use those words meaningfully; not vain or conditional love - but the kind of love that moves one to nurture, sacrifice for others, and not resent it but instead to feel honored to serve the full acceptance of all that is nurturing, kind, beautiful, and mysterious. That is where art lives, because it has something urgently important to share, to gift transcendence to both artist and audience through it's creation, and presentation.

Anything less is a destructive, de-evolving travesty, despite the costuming, long-winded rhetoric, clever psychologically manipulative sales pitching, endless propaganda, and evil marketing finesse involved.

We must say NO to all of this nonsense, because if we, the artists do not say NO, you can forget those running the show saying NO and instead will continue to throw fuel on the fire.

That lot are seeking dollar signs, not consciousness, like all good Chimps lunging hungrily after a banana.