I think the "v" is important.

And I think that those who don't hold some sort of separation between musician/artist and entertainer in their minds, those who hold it as a false dichotomy, are missing something of the complications and differing definitions of the word performance.

Some artists are drawn merely by a desire to entertain, to enthral, and others merely have a very private and inescapable urge to create. And while both these artists are thankfully rare, as, of course, most have a bit of both in them, I think it's important for any artist to try to assess for themselves how much of each of these very different motivations they themselves hold.

There is a great deal of ego involved and I think it important that artists deal with these conflicts. One could say that the pinnacle of egotism is to hold a desire to get on a stage and entertain people. But isn't it even more egotistical to get on a stage and practice one's art despite the audience? Or taking it to its logical conclusion, to hold a view that an audience would be a distraction to one's creativity? Or to even eschew the concept of audience altogether?

But such arguments ignore subjectivity and the concept of ego doesn't have to descend into the concept of egotism. If we take one's ego to be merely that part of one's self that experiences and reacts to the outside world then we can conclude that our ego is our art. And this, quite simply, is the beauty of art. It is one's experiences and reactions to human traditions.

And the quality of any art can be defined by the depth of the tradition and the level of the artist's respect for that tradition.