So you really love this book. Or this piece of music. Or this work of art. You devour all the content about the artist. You watch their interviews. You know their life story. There's just one problem.
The artist is a bit of a tosser.
Maybe they are arrogant. Or a massive egotist. Or worst of all, maybe they don't like dogs.
I've been there. Being somewhat obsessive by nature, I've been there many times. And I was reminded of this when British rock band Oasis recently announced a reunion tour, kickstarting a frenzy here in England.
I devoured Oasis when I was a teenager back in India. I felt my heart soar when listening to Cast No Shadow. I was a complete mess when I heard the guitar solo on Live Forever for the first time. And I have misspent many afternoons listening to Champagne Supernova when under the influence of... er... let's just say while under the influence.
Oasis were as much the thing that made me an Anglophile as Enid Blyton, Tolkien or P.G. Wodehouse did over the years from childhood to adulthood.
Nor was I disappointed when I came to Sheffield to study in 2007. Unlike in London, I found that Oasis were still revered in the north of England back then. I particularly remember sitting up till 2am discussing Oasis B-sides such as Half the World Away and Going Nowhere with the flatmate of a friend whom I had met for the first time.
But being closer to their home turf, I found out more about them as people. They were labelled by many as working class heroes (which was great) and there was a streak of laddishness that permeated the culture surrounding them (which was not so great). There were the tedious conflicts with Blur, the Gallagher brothers' absurd declarations that they were the greatest band in the world and worst of all, the fact that they were Manchester City fans (I kid, I kid).
I went to an Oasis gig in 2009 and it was a monster display of lad culture. "Are there any lezzers (lesbians) in the house?" Liam Gallagher asked at one point as grown men flung beer over each other. "The next song goes out to all the lezzers." Not just laddish, but also profoundly unfunny.
Put off by all of this, I stopped listening to Oasis for many years. Many, many years. But once the reunion was announced last month, I couldn't help but give them a listen again.
Before I knew it, I was sighing at the guitar solo in Live Forever again, found tears rolling down my eyes when the second bridge in Don't Look Back in Anger shifted into the chorus (if he had seen that, Noel Gallagher would have probably called me a soft prick) and turned up the volume when D'You Know What I Mean kicked into gear.
So how does one separate art from the artist? With Oasis, the artists are simply annoying. With some others it's far more troubling. I personally find Harry Potter will never quite be the same for me, for obvious reasons, and you may have your own examples.
But this way lies madness. Put any artist, or any human being for that matter, under the scanner, and you're going to find stuff that you hate. Human beings are multifaceted. I think artists in particular are by their nature sensitive and insecure -- and sometimes this brings out the worst in them. This is not to excuse all bad behaviour, it's to accept that people can be flawed.
And of course, we project our own flaws onto them. If I hadn't been overly sensitive and insecure myself, would I have been so put off by the Gallagher brothers' uber-masculinity? Probably not.
The best way to view artists, to my mind, is through their art. I may want to hang out with
Noel Gallagher. But he also wrote songs that are so soaked with emotion that I feel profoundly moved whenever I listen to them. And personally, that's good enough for me.
As for me, when the next round of Oasis tickets are released, I'm there. Because for five glorious moments in 2008, I sang along to Don't Look Back in Anger with 20,000 other people.
And I want to do it again.
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