Do you actually know how many people have listened to your music? Do you actually know everything, good or bad, they have thought about it? No. But it's out there, and to be blunt, people are either letting it collect dust on the shelf or they are finding a reason to listen to it. Or they could even tear it apart, publicly. What would be your choices about all of that at that point? And even if it were publicly praised, would you ultimately rather people listen to the words people say about it and you, good or bad, or listen to your music itself and see what they discover by doing so?
Interesting points all. Let's take them one at a time. No, no composer can possibly know how many people may have listened to his/her music. What anyone does with mine or anyone else's once it is, as you say, "out there" is each such listener's prerogative, be they instrumentalist/singer/conductor/composer or lay listener; people listen and respond in their own ways and that's just as it should be. I would rather people just listen to what I've done and make what they will or won't of it; once I've done my stuff, it's out of my hands except to the extent that I might want to revise this or that (although this has rarely happened). OK, bad performances can risk screwing some of that up but, fortunately, I've been very lucky in having few of those.
I and my music are a work in progress. I know there are certain things that I can do, but there is more that I could do given time and the resources to focus on it. Even if I put my best work out into the world today, in 20 years I might wish I could adjust it, or maybe I would be surprised and find something I didn't hear when I initially put it out. My guess is that's how that goes with that kind of thing. What I have done before now is the best I could do under the circumstances I was in and under the belief systems about myself and the world that I held. Does it mean I should never have shown what matters to me at any one point in time before now? What would make now the magic time, vs. 15 years from now? People are always showing *something* about themselves.
Many things are a "work in progress". Showing something of oneself in music and doing so in other ways are, however, very different phenomena, for all that they might have certain common origins; in those other ways, it depends and matters how, when and before whom you do it whereas, when you put out your own music, listeners still know next to nothing of what gave rise to it or of the persona that thought it up - this is where there is a vast difference between on the one hand exposing one's persona in words and providing all manner of details about what might once have been one's private life and, on the other, letting out the music that one's written which says "conclude what you may about this in terms of my private life if you've noting better to do but you'll stand a far better chance of getting more out of it if you just absorb what the music conveys to
you". I do believe very much in the laying bare of emotions in what I do but, at least as it's in music, people cannot readily or reliably identify specific things from it that can be translated into non-musical impressions that wll automatically be shared by all others, so it's a quite different ball game from telling people all about things in words on a forum, Twitter, Facebook or wherever; I could not in any case account in words for those emotions and, if I could, I'd probably write plays and/or poetry instead.
Regarding anything I have formerly shared here, I am still deciding on particulars, but I have spoken from my heart in this post here, and it is something that I believe in. A person could pick it apart and try to make me feel self conscious about this post, too. And there may be people reading it right now that I will never, ever know what they are thinking about it. That is part of the deal.
I'm not seeking to pick anything apart, any more than I'm aiming to "teach" you something here; as long as you recognise and understand that, it's fine.
Best,
Alistair
Topic: There's "whining" and then there's Whining.