^ Bay Area, CA.

Music is my only drive to carry on living. It's a cathartic career, and it does help ease some of the emotional and physical baggage following me, and I have hopes that maybe if I get famous my parents will love me no matter what personal decisions I make. It's a stupid thing to think, but it's me. Does music justify the pain that produced it? I don't think it has to justify anything. It is what it is. A way to make a lasting mark on the world and have your voice out there. It's cleansing and without that expression I'd go insane.

Whether you like the Beach Boys or not, Pet Sounds...along with the Beatles' Sgt. Peppers... Represent two milestones in recording. So regardless of your opinion on the music personally, I feel Brian Wilson definitely deserves some respect. I myself am not really a huge Beach Boys fan.

Not to mention his story fits in perfectly with the thread topic.

I really believe that a lot of times, leaving a lasting mark on others is one of the most profound things that can happen in a lifetime. Once you're gone, and your legacy lives on through your music, it has all been worthwhile. Even if you're still living, if your music has made a profound impression on someone, anyone, you have succeeded.

If you suffered for it, it was cathartic in some ways. In other ways, it showed a vulnerable side of you rarely seen, and served to humanize the material you produced.

I'm not for suffering for much, but if you suffer for anything, suffer to make an impression on other people, to open their minds, and you are helping towards more progress than most. It is what it is, but it can also change a life. Or many lives. Perspectives can be altered. Progress can be made.

If I was held at gunpoint and brutally beaten, all the while making music which turned out to be widely accepted as some of the best music ever written - even if I had complete anonymity and someone else took credit; even if I died before I ever saw it released, I feel that would be worth it.

Art is always worth it.

Yeah, he deserves respect, but I don't feel he's the musical mastermind that people make out. Costello stating he felt he discovered an equivalent to a lost Mozart piece listening to Wilson's demo?

A little too much credit.

Virtually all of popular music is about hype, it's part of the business of it.