Chris Guillebeau writes:

What If All Your Work Disappeared At the End of the Day? : The Art of Non-Conformity.

No comments section, so I thought I’d respond here: what he describes in his blog post is why I was a musician.  The attraction of music and other performance art for me was precisely the ephemeral nature of the work.  You perform it for a group of people, it goes up into the air and disappears, and just leaves some sort of impression that might last anywhere from a few minutes to the rest of someone’s life.  Recorded music, on the other hand, is really a whole different art form, revolving around permanent artifacts that can be revisited, like painting, literature (the analogy might be to conversation) or (especially) photography.

When I wrote music, I started with the distinction between recorded music and performed music.  Quite different ways to work.