art and lyrics

I reckon if you know what you like, you know what you need to know about art. When I am speaking about art now I am including all kinds, music, writing, movies, whatever. And I don’t want to make that distinction between whose an artist and who is a performer, or entertainer, or illustrator. That’s pretty much a matter of opinion, and no hard standards there.

There is a thing though, some people have their fingers to the wind. They look about them and see what is selling, and they just try to copy that, and some people who aren’t paying so much attention to that but just going with what makes sense to them. I prefer the latter but there is probably a blend between the two, everybody is a bit one and a bit of the other, and whose to know what goes on in the minds of men?

And then there’s that horse thing. Somebody who is not familiar at all with art, when shown several paintings, if they are a fan of horses they will choose all the paintings that have horses in them. But then if you show them only paintings that have horses in them and ask them to choose which of those they like best, maybe they will choose the red horses, or the close-ups of horses. And then when you show them only red horses, or only close ups of horses, then they have to choose between which of them they like best and when explaining why they prefer them they will have to take into account color and line, and they will be on their way to being immersed in art. Similarly in music. The first time you hear bluegrass it all sounds alike, but the more you listen to different kinds the more you see what is going on.

And so your taste becomes a little more educated, you have preferences and dislikes that you didn’t have before. Is this a good thing? Weren’t you just as happy when you could just look at any picture of a horse or play that Earl and Scruggs record over and over? Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the more you know about something the deeper your enjoyment of it is.

Odd thing about music. Sometimes there is music and sometimes there is music and words. The words have to have a certain cadence, but after that they can mean anything. You could take the same melody (what is the word for the song minus the words, you know I have a hard time understanding the words applied to music) and you could put commie words to it and you could just as easily make it a tea party jingle.

If you are singing it, I guess you have to pay attention to the meaning of the words, you have to sound angry when the words are angry and sweet when they are sweet, but what of the guitarist, does he change anything depending on how the singer is singing? Just curious about that.

I guess I am wondering because the early Bob Dylan, who you liked, was pretty lefty, and the later Bob Dylan, who you didn’t like, was more politically neutral. Was it just a matter then of the words didn’t matter? I wonder if you have listened to the latest Bob Dylan. He is not rock and roll anymore, he is much closer to folk, to my ear anyway.