RE: The morgenseiten of Katharsisdrill 16 - Punk
First, I love that clip with Clapton. I had watched it previously and it is indeed remarkable because when you see him live he rarely speaks, at least not in sentences :-)
It's funny, so many of the things you wrote, for example about Dylan and Coltrane, are things I've thought and said too -- on a lot of this we are really on a very similar wave length. I also see that too about being able to tap into your true self, that is how so many people with marginal voices are able to make great music. They are authentic, real, soulful -- however you want to describe it.
That's more difficult than it sounds -- Lately, I've been feeling pretty burned out on the platform. Your nudging is tempting me to release some chapters of fiction I wrote a while back -- I'm going to think it over this weekend.
Anyway, back to keeping it real and Clapton, that made me think of a great example of someone who is in touch with his inner essence. Check this out, it's so great.
If you look at the comment I made to @steevc I think that there are so many different forces at play. And you can't know the causality behind it! All you can is walk slowly down the road trying to get wiser while taking in the view.
The spoken intro is really interesting. Clapton obviously has this eternal doubt that hasn't left him even in old age. Incredible!
The same professor as mentioned in the other comment totally destroyed me at one of the discussions about our works when I had just started at her school (critizised my art). So I went down to work, the only thing I have ever known to do when the world didn't work the way I wanted it to. A short while later she goes through the atelier and she comes to me and says: again paraphrasing from memory: "The others (the other students that had been in the discussion) work with unambitious things and they receive praise because they succeed. You try to achieve some very hard things and you will be criticised when failing. It is a matter of proportions. Don't compare yourself to other people. Look at what you are doing and make it work. Learn not to be afraid of failing."
I am exhausted by this and all the other internet platforms, but I keep going for the good things like these discussions. I would like to see some of your works now I know your talent for writing about music. In light of how much garbage there is out there you could use it as an excuse to just try it out. We know it will drown in stupid anyway :) I have been at this experiment for 4-5 years now and it all leads back to the same old doubts. I have learned to live with it :)
Thanks for the thoughtful response. The clip caused me to dig a little deeper into Robert Crumb -- I'm going to finish watching this tonight, but it looks interesting.
Clapton's autobiography is a good read in terms of understanding him as a person -- I suppose dealing with his various addictions involved a lot of self evaluation and introspection. In terms of music it disappointed me a bit. In any case, he was plagued by doubts. What impressed me most about him was not his guitar playing, but his development over the years as a singer. If you look on YouTube for him singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" -- wow. In any case, his music and performances greatly enriched our world.
Your professor's comment:
That's so true in music too, although to be honest, when "daring" somehow also manages to be "pleasing", for me that's magical.
There is some abstract or free jazz that jazz musicians themselves appreciate on a level that ordinary people, like myself, sometimes don't get.
I interviewed Carl Mörner Ringström, a Swedish guitarist who studied in Copenhagen, and he's an example of someone who is daring (mixing heavy metal and jazz) and challenging, yet his music also appeals to me melodically.
@shortcut wrote
Connecting that is a subject worthy of exploration. That always brings me back to Vincent v. Gogh. True to his art, combined daring and beauty, never found his audience. A couple of my favorite albums are by jazz musicians I can guarantee you, and 99.999% of people on Earth have never heard of. I have tremendous respect and admiration for people who seek to live from their art -- that is a precarious walk into the unknown.
I seldom read biographies, but sometimes I am interested if artists write about themselves, mostly because I am interested in what they think about art. I never was much interested in the person behind to be honest - artists can be very funny and very boring and crazy and conformist. Crumb is great to listen to because he always talks about his art. My impression of for example Van Gogh or Picasso is almost exclusively from their paintings and drawings.
Van Gogh was dead sure of himself and never sold a thing, Picasso, the prodigy child, was completely unsure about himself. I saw that in the Barcelona museum where you could first see his teenage works that where imature copies of the impressionist - then you move into a large room where you can see a large paper painting in green white and black (a beginners etude) and all the many paper sketches done to make the painting... all of it a person who try to work until he finds himself. That was a revelation!
I enjoyed the Carl Mörner Ringström. I will check him out some more.
I know what you mean. Because music is such a collaborative art form, the biographies have helped me to better understand the influences of the various musicians.
My knowledge of art is so limited, there are certain painters who appeal to me for whatever reason. I don't know if he was the first, but things like Jan van Eyck use of the mirror really blew me away.
I should probably start watching some documentaries on youtube to better appreciate art. For example, Picasso never touched me, but I was always drawn to Dali. I know way too little...
Knowledge is good of course, but I have had a lot of vivid experiences with art I did not understand - then I start researching! As a kid we listened to the Pink Floyd records and other prog-rock bands. The records belonged to the big brothers and parents of me and my friends so it was already historical for us. The soundscapes was sinister and I felt the war, the Atomic bomb and the hippies underneath it all, but I only understood the context and the lyrics when I returned to it a few years ago.
I was reading quotes today from artists, and thinking that could be a fun post. A game, ten quotes and ten pictures, and try to match them ;-) With these three I think I would have guess correctly.
Great idea, I always loved to read poetics and their smaller cousins maxims and quotes. Artists talking about art like in your interviews. When I was a teenager all the grown up women read a biography about Karen Blixen, but they never read her own stories... I was obviously very indignant :)