What goes up but never comes down?

 

I read this in an art review in last Friday’s metro:

‘ Success can do strange things to an artist. If it comes early, there’s a danger you might get cocky, or indeed just lazy: disaster. If it comes too later, your moment may have already passed, your ideas grown stale, unnurtured through years of neglect.’

What does that mean exactly? Is it ‘What smells stale?’ or ‘Would you like some toast as the bread is a little stale?’ Or is it like stalemate, you haven’t won or lost, you just have run out of places to go. If that’s not enough, the reviewer adds to that a special brew of fear and loathing: on one side, stoking the belief that there really is one moment, and that if you miss it it will never come back again, and on the other side blaming the artist for the missed opportunity, the bad nurturing which caused the art to die and I have to say boo reviewer, boo.

But worst of all, it wasn’t about me so why am I taking it personally?