Regarding Artists

Tajci

We went to a very interesting and good concert last night. The performer was a woman named Tajci. She was at one time a fabulously popular pop star in Europe, seen regularly on television and with Gold and Platinum albums under her belt. She was a teen idol.

But war came to her homeland, Croatia, and something changed in her. Her webs site says that thousands of young people looked to her for answers, but she had none for herself.

I don't know the details of what she was thinking, and she chose not to share much about her past with the audience. What I did see was an extremely talented musician singing to a small crowd (maybe  300 people) in a church in Modesto, Ca.. This artist had a grueling schedule -- a concert every night in a a new town in a new church. She doesn't charge for her concerts, no admission fee, no charge to the host parish. There is a freewill collection taken near the end of the concert, and there are the CD's for sale, but it's a free concert.

I am guessing that she could have a lucrative career if she compromised a bit. She is talented, she is experienced, she is good looking, a demonstrated superstar in Europe. But here she is in Modesto singing to a small crowd in a church. And although she obviously knows what is popular, she chooses to be obviously Catholic, adamantly pro-life, and modest -- not a formula for success in our culture.

Maybe she's just mining a musical niche. I can not tell you with absolute surety if she is real, although it seems like it. She seems to understand what John Paul II said in his letter to artists:  
 
        "The particular vocation of individual artists decides the arena in which they serve and points as well to  the tasks they must assume, the hard work they must endure and the responsibility they must accept. Artists who are conscious of all this know too that they must labour without allowing themselves to be driven by the search for empty glory or the craving for cheap popularity, and still less by the calculation of some possible profit for themselves. There is therefore an ethic, even a “spirituality” of artistic service, which contributes in its way to the life and renewal of a people. It is precisely this to which Cyprian Norwid seems to allude in declaring that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up”.

There are plenty of good artist out there who are good people. They create because it's in them to do so. They create knowing they probably will never be "discovered." They do so because it contributes to life and makes people grow and maybe even feel good. I would hope that if you have an urge to draw, paint , write or sing, you do it. It is an act of creation.