Outsider artists, visionary arts, independent musicians. Not waiting to be told that you’re good enough, self-belief, or perhaps never needing any belief, just a DRIVE. The world knows that if I’d waited for someone to tell me I was “good enough” to record I’d have never bought my first 4-track, and if I’d waited for some popular form of acceptance before the Trip I’d never have seen this country the way I have. I’d just have sat in my Blue State East Coast bubble bleeding my Life away unaware of how big the world is.
It is big. And beautiful. I’ve been bad about watching where I place my feet because I’m too busy staring up at the world around me. One rattlesnake could ruin my day, but they seem fewer and farther between than worriers would have me believe.
The concept of “outsider art” is a strange one. I think at it’s best it’s a way of an art museum explaining that “people who don’t have art degrees or training are valued artists too” but at it’s worst it’s an exploitative term that takes advantage of the mentally ill.
I have very conflicted feelings about the popularization of the autism spectrum through self-diagnosis. People who “identify” as autistic, or who post about their funny little quirks as if they were the terrifying spirals of obsessiveness that lead to things like the paired genius and tragedy of Nikola Tesla or Frank Van Zant (aka Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder).
And yet, I fall into part of those definitions. As a self-taught musician I rely on the recognition that untrained arts are valued, and that the outlet that I’ve found for my obsessions have fiscal value to others.
In the visual arts, however, it’s often not something that is a stable income. And it results in STUFF. Music… performance… we create the thing and it bleeds out to the audience and then we move on. Art… sculpture, painting, it forms mountains around us and reminds us of what we’re obsessing over – whether it’s light or death or the torture of our ancestors.
And so I’m glad to see that this Thunder Mountain Monument is preserved and semi-protected. But it troubles me to see it explained as an “unconventional sculpture garden, artistic playground, and home meticulously created by the late Frank Van Zant” who is given a romantic backstory in many histories “creating structures dedicated to the Great Spirit” and homeschooling his eight children (by a “series of wives”) to Live off the land. One of his sons committed suicide, and Frank also shot himself in the head in his late 60s. It is a stunning, sprawling, beautiful and strange installation. And I’d hate to have had this creative energy stolen by “proper medication” or therapy – but “one framework forms a large handle so the Great Spirit could take the building away after [his] death” doesn’t really speak to solid reasoning.
And so I have mixed feelings exploring Thunder Mountain – which Heather’s seen from the highway a number of times but had never pulled over to look at. Legitimate courage in numbers are perhaps required to wander something so surreal. Victimized by arson and vandalism and time, it is a worthy monument to madness, but is it a church for anything greater? A monument to the “suffering and plight of the American Indian”?
I can’t answer that. I’m probably not supposed to.
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