This is a musical number that I cut from an early version of the CUPID & PSYCHE screenplay (the feature-length screen musical that I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN comes from).

One of the main characters, Philip, is an iconoclastic electronic musician who thinks classical music got its head stuck up its own behind in the 1950s. This is his manifesto number. He sings it just before he's manipulated into accepting a commission to write an opera for a small-town opera company.


ANYTHING CAN BE ART

Some people think that to be art,
It must be part
of what they learned in school.
It must be old and follow rules.
It must be boring, dry, and long.
Wrong!

In any craft, there is a raft
of people who love guidelines,
Who claim to have all the inside lines
On how to do it, what to do,
and when and where and why and who.
More than a few will be good artists, too.
They’ll all be happy to advise you
Of what you have to do to rise to
The rarefied air of their glorious level--
Or maybe one glorious level below.

When younger, they hated
their glorious teachers,
And hungered to take all
their glorious places.
Students on glorious bended knees,
Give us your glorious wisdom, please.
Eager young students with glorious features.
The sweetest of egotist fantasies.

So they tearfully embrace us,
And with sad and honest faces
Make their fair and impartial
and unbiased cases
(’Cause everything’s on an impersonal basis):

That we’re doing it all wrong.
That our work will never work.
There’s a way to sing a song.
There’s a way of painting vases.
There’s a way to write a hit.
There are books, and then there’s Lit.

So you’re doing it all wrong.
There’s a way and yours is wrong.
There’s a way and yours ain’t it.
There’s a way and yours don’t fit.
Mine is art. Yours is shit.
Send away now for our kit--
And then you’ll be a registered genius.
You’ll be a certified pro.
Right at the top of this year’s genius crop--
Or maybe one glorious level below,

‘Cause it’s crass to surpass
the kind master, you know.
The kind master won’t like it,
and you’ll have to go.

So you straighten from your bended knees
And thank him for this expertise,
And thinking you should quit, desist,
Or better yet, just slit your wrist,
You’re sapped, forsaken, broken,
By the crap this fake has spoken.
So you hug him.

But there are infinitely wide lines,
And all these people who decide lines,
they’re all just squawking from the sidelines.
Fuck ‘em.

Anything can be art.
Anything - Anything.
Anything can be art.
Anything - anything - anything!

Anything can be art if it has heart!
Anything can be art if it has spirit!
Anything can be art if it
Gets in your brainwaves,
Pushes your buttons,
Makes you imagine things.
Art can be anything.

And when they
gravely say,
“But is it art?”

That’s art.

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