I happen to be an artist of sorts. I know a lot of artists, musicians, writers, and generally artsy people. Every single one of them, to a man, and sometimes to a woman, shares the same belief about that mythic creature The Audience.

As an independent-minded iconoclast I’ve tried to show them the error of their belief. As an abrasive pedantic jerk I’ve failed to convince them. I’m always on the lookout for new ways to fail so I present to you the two irreconcilable theories of Audience.

The Egg Theory

Before an artistic work is created, before it is even conceived, its audience already exists, waiting to welcome it. The artist must know this audience, must dedicate themself to pleasing this audience. This requires long late nights of study and research, gleaning the audience’s expectations, wooing them like a lover, carefully and fearfully crafting the work to the audience’s exacting specifications. Trembling fingers, quivering bottom lip, for artistic death is the wage of failure. The audience might reject the work. The work might miss its audience, its one and only chance, gone like true love passing in the street without a glance, wondering as age dims its eyes and life’s evening draws down its black curtain, wondering but never knowing if happiness and joy were once within its uncouth and thoughtless grasp, squandered now forever. Doom! Doom and despair! The rest is silence.

The Chicken Theory

There is no audience before an artistic work is created. “Audience” implies experience and you can’t experience something that doesn’t exist. Once a work exists, its audience may begin to form. But this is no pre-existing entity waiting with bated breath for some nonexistent thing it doesn’t even know about. True audience is the totality of those individuals who experience and enjoy a work. The artist shouldn’t worry about pleasing their audience because the audience is everyone whom the artist pleases. The audience can’t exist before a work exists so it can have no influence on the creation of the work. Different works by the same artist may please different people and so have different audiences. It’s only after creating a work that the artist can look back and say, “Oh, so that’s my audience.”

This is also known as the correct theory.

Notice how elegantly it lets the artist off the hook. If you enjoy a work, that’s great! If you hate it, well, you just aren’t its audience. Clever, huh?