Now that was really nasty spaw. For God's sake don't post the male equivalent.

It'd be great if the good stuff came from the good buys, and the arsesholes produced rubbish. But it ain't like that.

I suspect that folk music probably does relatively well - we all know examples of great performers who are also really good people. So I think it's pretty clear in our corner of the forest that while being a shit needn't stop you producing beautiful stuff, it isn't a prerequisite.

But in lots of types of music, and types of painting and types of writing, there really is an unspoken assumption that the price of being really good at the art is that you have to be pretty nasty at most other things in life, and that if you aren't an arsehole you must be secondrate. It's as if the old legends about selling your soul to the devil in order to get the power to make music or whatever really were believed.

I suspect for lots of people there's a fear that if they guve in to the temptation to join the human race, they'll break the spell and lose the power. That and the business KathWestra suggested about how performing etc can be a way knotted up feelings can be enabled to emerge - the two go hand in hand, and wreck a lot of lives of people who produce some beautiful stuff.

I'm glad this thread hasn't lurched into people listing artistes who are or aren't arseholes.There's a horrible fascination in that kind of thing, but no, please...