They say you should separate the art from the artist. I can’t do that. My childhood heroes have become monsters. Now I read that the song “I Am A God” by Kanye West should be played at your funeral. How the hell can you listen to the song without seeing the scum of a human being that Kanye has become?

Dear Jörg,

Numerous letters have come in expressing, in no uncertain terms, disapproval of my fondness for Kanye West’s music. A lot of time and energy has been spent explaining the evil of Nazism, the harm of antisemitism, why it is wrong to sell t-shirts emblazoned with swastikas and why it is unacceptable to coerce one’s girlfriend into standing naked on the red carpet at the Grammys. On that matter, it seems, we can all find some common ground. I agree.

However, I want to challenge the notion that we can separate art from the artist.  I’ve written on this subject before (#149), but I thought it might be worth revisiting. From reading your recent letters, it appears that some of you assume I hold this belief. To be clear, I do not. The idea of an artist being divorced from their art is absurd. An artist and their art are fundamentally intertwined because art is the essence of the artist made manifest. The artist’s work proclaims, “This is me. I am here. This is what I am.” However, the great gift of art is the potential for the artist to excavate their interior chaos and transform it into something sublime. This is what Kanye does. This is what I strive to do, and this is the enterprise undertaken by all genuine artists. The remarkable utility of art lies in its audacity to transfigure our corrupted state and create something beautiful.

When I make a song, I do not draw from a pocket of purity isolated from the rest of me; a song is torn from all of me, the mess of me, becoming the best of me on its alchemical journey to its realisation. This is the very definition of hope – that we are not prisoners of our flawed nature but can transcend it. We look to artists and their art to convey this exact thing. In his brokenness, Kanye is an exemplar par excellence of this notion, the braided dance between sin, transcendence and genius.

We are all broken, flawed, and suffering human beings, each a disaster in our own right, each with the capacity to cause great harm, each brimming with misguided notions, perhaps the most deluded of which is the belief that we are somehow exclusively and morally superior to everyone else. Many of you might be thinking, “Well, speak for yourself! I’m not like Kanye! I could never behave like that!” Yet, given the circumstances, we humans are capable of anything. To be human is to be flawed, yet it is also to possess the potential to achieve staggering things – beautiful, brilliant, inspiring, wild and audacious things; things to be cherished, despite our complex and compromised natures.

As odious and disappointing as many of Kanye’s views are, and as sickening as antisemitism is – in its sadly always-present, ever-morphing forms – I endeavour to seek beauty wherever it presents itself. In doing so, I am reluctant to invalidate the best of us in an attempt to punish the worst. I don’t think we can afford that luxury.

Love, Nick

Ask a Question