Get ready, kids. Fasten your seat belts. The following is something like the raw, unvarnished truth from someone who's learned all of this from direct personal experience. Candor of this sort is rare.
Everyone says they love "art" and culture, but what they really like is conformity, obedience and making money from selling lots of little trinkets and doo-dads. A lot of this takes place underneath white plastic tents in parking lots. The worst sin that is possible to commit in the American Midwest is to actually produce or pursue original ideas. Be prepared. You will be left with few friends. Your work is likely to be alternately ignored, deliberately misinterpreted, and ridiculed; finally it will be stolen once someone recognizes its true merit. You will not be compensated for your loss.
Other artists, not to mention critics and journalists, will publicly slander you or your work. If your work is long and dense, they'll say it's indulgent and pretentious. If it deals in miniatures or fleeting images, they will claim insubstantiality. If it sounds clean and hi-fi they will accuse you of being a commercially-motivated sellout; if it sounds raw and dirty they will get up to polish their university credentials and complain about declining production values. Meanwhile, they're all trying to figure out what you're doing so they can copy you and pretend it was their idea first!
Above all, what they really want is for you to never achieve anything of value for yourself. See how this works?
What you have to do, then, is simple: Ignore them all. Keep working, and when it is done, stand by your work. That is all you have to do. I didn't say it was easy. But that is what is required, if you truly want to do something original or creative in a world like this.
Still interested?
Best of luck!
You're gonna need it!
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