One picture so contrived, the background sheet placed just so with the side trunk perfectly looking like it was placed there by accident with the artistic little ashtray and the curl of smoke as though it had an art director of it's own. Even the clothes carefully wrinkled to appear the weighty hobo. Even the expression of being lost in the music is a set up. The other picture so ugly to first notice. Bare fluorescent bulbs, stark white walls, recording gear everywhere flaunting tangled snakes of cords and cables and not even your shoes are tied. But the head, bent over the music until even the surroundings evaporate and nothing is left but pure perfect dissonance of those progressive chords you favored. These are the things that brought the changes, made the differences, drove the wedge. What you honored left in attaining the pittance. You almost weren't brave enough were you? Got halfway and bolted. Many try to backtrack to the romance of misery and pain they should have been born into to fully realize their art, searching for the abuse of the human endeavor, crinkling the clothes like the best of the court jesters and earning the long road to the side of the yellow brick road. It doesn't make you a fraud. It's no disgrace. But some are and some aren't and you'd be surprised who'd have been willing to trade places for a little bit of the comforts you learned to hate for the weakness you perceived them to hold. It's a rough business when characteristics get put on pedestals without the full understanding of the whole package. Rough business indeed.