It’s the other one. Yes, I know it’s been a while since I’ve written, but with the being at home and the caring for personal business, I didn’t feel like I had much to say here. But with travel comes material.
Providence makes me really happy. Something about the place puts me in a good mood right when we arrive. It’s a very artistic town, made moreso by the people that rob knows and who we hang out with while we’re here. It’s an inspiring place. Will has been playing us all sorts of new music and showing us new artwork of his as well as Sonny’s new music. Will’s artwork is amazing, full of emotion and grotesque deformity. A stark contrast to Sonny’s fun songs, with their child-like cadences, which some people we met the other night even call brilliant.
I wonder sometimes if a lot of musicians are like visual artists who know how to paint perfect, photo-accurate portraits, but make a stylistic choice to do childishly simple or wildly abstract representations of their art … OR are they actually just people with very limited musical skill doing simple music because it’s all they can do? Is the piece any less brilliant then if it wasn’t made so with directed effort?
People who we know to be talented have a little extra leeway for experimentation. Will’s rendering skills are incredible, and can manifest whether he is cutting fine designs into paper, embroidering, sketching or painting. However, he makes a conscious choice to do much more simplified figures because it is the better expression of his vision and emotions, and I don’t think there are many people who would view Will’s work as in any way juvenile or unskilled.
Fire Dean was recently talking about the City Paper’s trashing of Ian Svenonius, a once-DC-music-maverick whose recent efforts include a track called, “redfuchsiatamborine&gravel,” a spoken pudding recipe set to flamenco strumming. This guy once had a reputation for brilliance and innovation, and is actually credited with originating the visual styles co-opted by currently popular bands like The Hives. Has he gone downhill, or is this pudding recipe track a different kind of brilliant? Is “bad” music made so intentionally tantamount to brilliance and vision while “bad” music just made is mediocre at best and talentless at worst?
If anyone but Leonard Cohen tried to put out the kind of music he does, would it seem absolutely ridiculous? If Rothko (who I’ve never gotten into) had painted those blocks of color because it was all he could paint, would people find them as amazing as they do with the companion knowledge that this is an artistic statement? Someone once brought up to me the potential significance of my keys wrapped in wire … something with the power to open, but in bondage. Interesting. I like it. But I wonder if they would have liked the pieces as much if they knew I was just a semi-creative person who could not sculpt or metalwork, so I just had to find existing 3-dimensional pieces to build from. Does that added information make them less beautiful because they are less intentional, less thought out?
I wasn’t sure if I was the butterfly or the bone (the little charms on the keys) but I knew I was hazelnut, and not caramel.
I think what I’m really wondering is how often we go around assigning brilliance and directed effort to songs and visual art actually done with all the skill and intellectual development of a four year old … or if that matters at all? We like what we like. We attach to what we attach to. We find meaning where we want to find meaning, even if it is not the one the artist intended. And it’s totally a matter of personal perogative, and maybe that’s even what a lot of people would say art is about.
I have no absolutely no idea.
