Boston Park.

There's a park in the middle of Harvard University which is surrounded on all sides by coffee shops and book sellers. The park itself has benches and a layer of cigarette butts so deep in places walking through the fag ends and discarded filters is like wading through tar soaked snow. I don't think they've been collected since the time John Adams was there. I swear I saw a little clay pipe at the bottom of one pile.

We stopped for a coffee and a sit down having walked through most of upper Boston on our way here.

In the park under a tree was a guy who couldn't have been more than twenty, on his own, singing and playing guitar. Normally buskers will play something instantly recognisable and catchy to get peoples attention. I think that's why they're so reviled, they only play what they think you'd like to hear so they play the most inoffensive dreck and by not offending anyone they usually alienate everyone.

I didn't identify this tune at first but it wasn't unpleasant, so I sat, sipping my coffee, listening to his strumming. It was only after I got past his strong Bostonian accent that I realised what he was singing this beautiful song that he had written about how painful his breakup with a particular girl was. He was singing a personal song about how he himself felt. I could see him pause occasionally and take a small stub of pencil and mark up a legal pad he had next to him.

I don't think it would have mattered if there had been ten people in that park or a thousand. He wasn't there to entertain others. He would still have been singing that song on his own in an attic if he had to. Because he HAD to sing it. Because it was the only way he could process the emotions he was dealing with. And that what I love about good art. Good artists will do what they do not for the pleasure of others or for praise, adoration and cash but because if they had no fans, no crowds, no public, they'd still be doing it anyway.

Somehow I don't think Damien Hirst or Tracy Emin would still be artists if they'd had no success. They'd be turning out copies of quaint Landscapes so fast it would make your head spin.

Real art is passion. Real art is a gnawing desperate need to vent these feelings by singing, writing, painting, or whatever before those very emotions burn you out from the inside.