Solipsism

Solipsism - "the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist."

I first encountered this word in a review of my first cd that appeared in the Illinois Entertainer.
Somewhere in my filing cabinet I probably have a photocopy of it included in some vintage press kit.
You, dear reader, have not likely heard my first cd.  
I thought it was good.
What strikes me in hindsight is that I would not have characterized it as being self-absorbed and I'm not sure why this journalist experienced this specific correlation.
While true that I played all the instruments on it, I didn't record it myself nor did I mix it or master it.
The friends who did so are Cary Schoeppach, Dave Miska and Steve Metzger.
And the lyrics were derived from various personal experiences, granted, but they weren't meant to be so specific as to be exclusive.
As purveyors or stewards of work, many of us struggle with the course of making the content therein "universal".
Over the many years of submitting my work to the market place I learned a lot.
One thing I learned is that my personal feelings, in general, do not correspond with others', much less the "mainstream".
It is also convenient to assume the brand of "selfish" or "self absorbed" when the public does not respond favourably to one's work.
But it's all just messages in bottles if I may borrow a popular allegory.
Sometimes the bottles just float infinitely and one has to come to terms with the universal reality of that pointless destiny.
Because in all forms of human wrought Art, there is no destination for the work as a whole.
There is the doing of the work and the being of the work and the life in the work and the life outside that frames the work.
Unless each of these components are containers for the terms of humanity there is not work at all.