"Anyone who creates something new or does something different artistically is going to be singled out"
About this Quote
The line balances promise and warning: create something genuinely new, and you will be noticed. That notice is rarely neutral. Novelty draws a circle around the artist, making them both visible and vulnerable. Being singled out can mean praise, curiosity, and opportunity; it can also mean suspicion, backlash, and a demand to justify why the familiar must be disturbed. Communities protect their norms, and art tests those norms. The first impulse of a system facing difference is to isolate the difference.
Carlisle Floyd knew this terrain. An American opera composer in the mid-20th century, he wrote works like Susannah that married lyrical, accessible music to stark moral drama set in the American South. At a time when European modernism and academic serialism dominated musical prestige, Floyd chose a vernacular idiom and crafted his own librettos about religious hypocrisy, desire, and communal cruelty. Audiences were moved; some critics dismissed his tonal language as insufficiently modern; others attacked the subject matter for its sting. The result was the fate he describes: he stood out. Notoriety and acclaim arrived together, and he learned that to depart from accepted taste or subject is to become a lightning rod.
Underneath the observation lies a practical ethic for artists. Expect the friction that follows originality; interpret it not as proof of failure but as a sign you have left the well-worn path. Being singled out is the cost of changing the conversation. It requires resilience, clear purpose, and an appetite for complexity, because every new form or perspective asks an audience to reorient itself. Over time, the very qualities that once marked someone as other can become the next generation’s tradition. Floyd’s career suggests that persistence in a distinctive voice can outlast fashionable gatekeeping. Better to accept the spotlight’s heat than to labor in perfect conformity, unseen.
Carlisle Floyd knew this terrain. An American opera composer in the mid-20th century, he wrote works like Susannah that married lyrical, accessible music to stark moral drama set in the American South. At a time when European modernism and academic serialism dominated musical prestige, Floyd chose a vernacular idiom and crafted his own librettos about religious hypocrisy, desire, and communal cruelty. Audiences were moved; some critics dismissed his tonal language as insufficiently modern; others attacked the subject matter for its sting. The result was the fate he describes: he stood out. Notoriety and acclaim arrived together, and he learned that to depart from accepted taste or subject is to become a lightning rod.
Underneath the observation lies a practical ethic for artists. Expect the friction that follows originality; interpret it not as proof of failure but as a sign you have left the well-worn path. Being singled out is the cost of changing the conversation. It requires resilience, clear purpose, and an appetite for complexity, because every new form or perspective asks an audience to reorient itself. Over time, the very qualities that once marked someone as other can become the next generation’s tradition. Floyd’s career suggests that persistence in a distinctive voice can outlast fashionable gatekeeping. Better to accept the spotlight’s heat than to labor in perfect conformity, unseen.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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