Artists have the same heroes as anybody
else. They look up to their parents, and
older or younger brothers and sisters.
Aunts and uncles.
Sometimes a grandparent can be close to a
child.
If you have good teachers, thank your
lucky stars. It happens, but it’s not
usual. Several factors work against
getting a really innovative, caring teacher, in the schools. The school, as a bureaucracy, works against
it. Schools of Education select people
who will fit in with the movers and shakers in the communities they will live
and work in, the burghers, the property holders, the people of influence in the
town.
Sometimes a coach can influence a writer,
or a Sunday school teacher, a scoutmaster, a worker with a youth group that
cares for youngsters after school.
A bandmaster if you’re in the band, an art
teacher, or a drama teacher.
Writers look up to the same culture-heroes
as everybody else, except a writer’s hero may be an anti-hero, a hero with
scant resources, a bricoleur, scrounging imaginatively, or an underdog, working
against the system. He may be an
outsider.
An outlaw.
An outcast.
The artist can relate to an outcast
because he feels alienated from the mainstream culture himself, not really a
part of it, a player in it. He feels an
empathy for freaks and cripples.
Oddballs and losers.
A writer’s heroes may have an edge, an axe
to grind, they may not be respectable, they may be a little louche.
The writer himself may be the class clown,
or wise-ass, in trouble with the authorities.
He has a problem with authority.