2001.
i arrived in North America, the magical place i heard about for so long. in Albania, i grew up believing art is sacred—a spiritual vocation—and i was happy to finally be here, a place where i felt art would be celebrated for the divine gift it is. or so i had hoped.

as the tale usually goes, music kept me alive the first few years. in no time, i felt a conviction to celebrate music, having experienced its magic my entire life, as a listener and pianist. i couldn't afford a piano or concerts but i could afford to talk about the music i loved.

the details are irrelevant but by 2007, i was senior editor on AbsolutePunk ( @chorusfm), the biggest online music community, before Reddit ever existed. it was a community of kids who didn't care about "cool." on the contrary, only music—and our love for it—is what mattered.

i made a vow, when i began to publicly cover music, to never, under any circumstance, "criticize" someone else's art. i would often come under fire, but even though i couldn't fully understand this resistance, it made no sense to "criticize" another human being's self-expression.

instead of reviewing music under the veil of "criticism and its usefulness," i began persuading record labels and agencies to just allow me to stream albums instead. blasphemy! but i had seen how, having grown up on music torrent trackers, magic would happen when people tuned in.

it was an uphill battle. difficult to understand now but convincing the machine to allow album streams (in advance, no less) & let go of their archaic ideas was... a trip. but artists began to blow up from the streams and the rest is history, now streaming is the law of the land.

back to what matters.
my i-love-going-down-the-rabbit-hole, especially re: the human psyche, eventually made me understand the resistance i always felt about criticizing someone else's creative self-expression. it didn't make sense then and it certainly does not now.

an argument can be made for anything under the Sun, but the fact is, you would have to fully understand psychological reality (processes, complexes) in order to be able to make sense of one's self-expression. symbolism too, as the psyche speaks symbolically (art) above all else.

by "art," i mean the genuine expression of Self, which speaks in symbols, not the "i'm on contract and took a scientific method to creativity" which we call "Dr. Luke music,” where everything happens mechanically (albums, tours, you name it), and we are all animals on a farm.

an editor friend once who said, "well, Eda, journalists don't know psychology so how can you expect them to see this?" precisely why my question remained, and still does:

why, then, does anyone feel entitled to publicly criticize art? especially as a "lover" of all that is art?

there is a major difference between speaking on what you love because it is meaningful (real art always is) vs. playing judge, professionally, with another's self-expression. that's not appreciation, not for the arts. it's just an ego game, a psychologically damaging one for all.

artists are not experiencing psychological distress or getting ill cause "the machine." it's you—you are the machine—as everyone operates in a reality where self-expression is factory-like, from conception to audience reception, a mere product to be consumed, categorized & rated.

people have built entire careers with an “art” based solely on judging another's self-expression. forget cultural or historical reasons to justify the madness. simply consuming or making music without understanding to just to shit it out, ad nauseam, is poisoning all the living.

if you "don't take music or art that seriously" "it's just not that deep" or "if it's public then all is fair," it might be time to reassess your own motives.

why you are even here if it is not to celebrate and appreciate divine gifts that breathe life into this cold world?

or are you just trying to "clean up the airwaves" by making sure "bad music doesn’t make it"? it all defies logic, and it certainly defies any understanding of love to be so shallow, with such a superficial understanding about something as real and alive as music.

for years, i’ve seen artists wither, trading their gifts for validation under the weight of the industry. and we are all artists—you, too. but we have created a neurotic echo chamber where self-expression is up for judgement instead of understanding.

can we focus on love?

efforts to address mental health in the music industry are meaningless as none seem to touch on this influence of the old paradigm, where artists have to create for an audience instead of creating to understand themselves (hence "sophomore slumps" "addictions" "psychosis" etc).

the industry doesn't offer anything nourishing, for the artists or anybody involved in the arts, it never has—its practices are neurotic and that's why it is dying, as it was always going to. so that is all well and good. we deserve much better than a self-inflicted neurosis.

we deserve to live in a world where self-expression is celebrated.

full stop.

we need more love, less judgement. for ourselves and others. nothing exists in a vacuum, this is all a mirror for how superficially and poorly we treat what truly matters and is real—our own hearts.

artists talk about how therapeutic it is to create because psychologically speaking, self-expression heals, unlike [insert institutionalized practices]. it is not what you understand about life or yourself that creates a neurosis, it is your inability to. art fills that gap.

art is not to be worshipped or idolized, it is meant to shine light on our own reality and encourage healing. when an artist is able to do that with their own psyche, by undergoing an individuation process through self-expression, what they bring back—art—is medicine for all.

can we nourish the creative process instead of poisoning it with judgements? can we focus on loving what is real and raw instead? can we celebrate the simple fact people feel inspired to create something out of thin air?  and how incredibly inspiring that is in itself…

it takes courage to create in a world where we feel afraid to honour our inner voice, and it takes Godly strength to publicly share the intimate connection an artist has with Self. 

can we celebrate the courage it takes to create the new?

stop consuming
begin understanding

self-expression, art, is magic because the journey of creation itself is healing. but we have turned that process into a contest that leaves everyone shallow, and healing can't come until we begin to understand what art really is, how it affects us psychologically and why.

“artist” is not a title, it simply means to BE, in your full authenticity, and to be able to express that in your own unique way, thereby bringing new life onto this plane and changing it forever. magic.

stop thinking
have feeling
and start believing
you were created to create