Idea:

(Ryan Adams' "Good-night Hollywood Blvd.") And artist, just beginning to struggle with attaining recognition, is willing to do anything just to continue using his talents but can't find an outlet. He is forced to work at a dead-end job, burning that creative energy he wishes he could spend doing something that would utilize his talent. He imagines that even being exploited wouldn't be so bad if only he were able to hone his creativity. But his dreams diminish more and more as he suffers through the daily grind, and burning himself out after work and on the weekends as he tries to work on new material and get it "out there". His relationship with his girlfriend suffers as does that with his family. He feels the urge to abandon everyone he knows and every dream he holds. He wants to start over.

(Nirvana's Bowie cover "The Man Who Sold the World") Contrast that with a successful artist who comes to despise his industry and the end product of his work, for only his work that seems to fit an agenda gets attention. He realizes that his audience doesn't like him, but rather the messages of the few selected works chosen by people trying to mold his image. He feels as though, despite his success he is not in control of his life. He feels like an automaton, a cog in the wheel of a machine, or a marionette on strings. He finds that if he doesn't supply work fitting to a desire of his corner of the media, that his work doesn't get selected for display. He finds himself catering to these media moguls just to keep feeling the sense of accomplishment, even though he is repulsed by the products of his work. Eventually, even on his own time he can't seem to create an original work outside of his bounded image, as though his creativity was soaked up by his counterfeit efforts.

This successful artist feels that when he broke into the spotlight, he would do anything to get known, but now that he is, he can't break out of a mold that people have put him in. The selling out to get in leads to a habitual compromising of one's own ambitions for another's, until a either a loss of identity occurs or a disillusion clouds their original intent for pursuing artistic expression. But in either case originality diminishes.

The parallel for the successful artist is Kurt Cobain, although he chose to kill himself before the industry was able to destroy his sense of self. The struggling, starving artist was inspired by Ryan Adams and myself. He has maintained an air of being outcast to the music industry because he refuses to be so commercial, however I don't know if that is his own choice or that of decision makers. For me, its the utter failure to get recognition and disappointment that I pour into the first character. Unfortunately I have given up on trying to garner recognition. I have failed and I accept that I lack the courage to speak, so I remain contently SILENT!