The mizzus came home the other day with some real bad news. It seems she\u2019d been at some soiree or other, schmoozing with the local philanthropists and somehow or other my name was brought up. She loves being guilty by association \u2013 or marriage \u2013 when the discussion turns literary. \u201cHer husband is Skeeter Daddle,\u201d they say and she knows by now there\u2019s no hole on all of the South End big enough to crawl into. Me, I just tell her she swore For Better or For Worse and she got Door #2. Apologies and half assed jokes aren\u2019t good for much after 32 years, I guess.<\/p>\n
Seems there was a gentleman at the soiree who was NOT a fan of the Daddle School of Dark Humor. Hard as it is to believe\u2026. \u201cI won\u2019t read that stuff,\u201d he declared, referring to my contribution to South End Culture with about the same regard as his neighbor\u2019s dog\u2019s leavings on his perfect fescue. Not much room for further conversation after dropping that little buzzkill, but she managed to remain graceful. After all, she\u2019s had practice.<\/p>\n
I have never subscribed to the school of thought that art, whether musical or visual or literary is some kind of popularity contest, although, in full disclosure, I understand that on some levels, particularly the fiscal, it most certainly is. Offend enough of your would-be audience and see how much work you find. Explains why the South End String Band doesn\u2019t play politics. Our fan base is small enough without cutting it in half.<\/p>\n
The trick, you understand, is not to sell out for the applause. Or the popularity. Or the bucks either. Sometimes you have to offend some sensibilities, not necessarily intentionally — well, okay, intentionally! — if you\u2019re going to make Art. Otherwise you might as well work for a corporation. (Gosh, no offense to those of you who did.) They\u2019ll pay you to say the correct thing. They\u2019ll promote you if you toe the line.<\/p>\n
These are polarized times we live in. If you didn\u2019t offend someone most of the time, you weren\u2019t saying anything. To the guy who won\u2019t read this, I guess I\u2019ll just have to live with the weight of your disapproval. Me, I don\u2019t give a rat\u2019s patootie. It\u2019s the mizzus I worry about — and I notice it was her you dropped your criticism on, not me. What do we make of that<\/em>, Ace?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The mizzus came home the other day with some real bad news. It seems she\u2019d been at some soiree or other, schmoozing with the local philanthropists and somehow or other my name was brought up. She loves being guilty by association \u2013 or marriage \u2013 when the discussion turns literary. \u201cHer husband is Skeeter Daddle,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5042,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5041\/revisions\/5042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}