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Date:         Thu, 10 Sep 1992 09:37:07 EDT
From:         Sonia Kovitz <skovitz@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: thoughts
              "Leonard Watkins" at Sep 10, 92 7:37 am

> (2) Reading a book by Julio Finn called Bluesman he really gets deep into
[....]
> What are your thoughts about Roberts deal could it have happened. Eric
> Clapton spent a couple of years in seclusion and came out playing better
> do you think they both just practised a whole lot.

I just bought the same book but haven't read it yet.  Off the cuff, I would say
that all serious artists at some point "go into seclusion" (whether they
disappear into the bayou or their bedroom); without meeting oneself face to
face in naked truth--in all one's weakness as well as strength--there is
no way for REAL art ever to happen.  "Art" according to this view is the gold
that you mine within--you don't go after it BECAUSE it's gold (that's just a
word, a label) --you go down there and dig around in the dark
because you have to do it, you "obey" something that sends you there, and there
are never any guarantees of what you are going to find.  Then you bring
whatever you come up with into
the light of day and other people go "Wow, hey that's gold"... The various
myths (the bayou, the devil at the crossroads) are just ways of saying the same
thing: they are talking about that same risk as in yesterday's quote by Sonny
Sharrock, "don't be afraid to let go of the things you know; defy your weaker,
safer self."  ("descend into primeval chaos and be at home there")

 (3) The writer also said that a white person could not be a bluesman/woman
> because they have never experienced the "real" blues of an oppressed
> race, that makes me believe that any modern day blues musician can not be
> a bluesman regardless of color because although conditions aren't perfect
> they are alot different that the slave days, which the writer says is the
> real blues, and you can't have them unless you expreienced them. Are there
> any white bluesmen/women IYHO.
>
As anyone who has read my previous posts knows, I have enormous respect for the
sources of pain and oppression in black experience that have given rise to the
various musical forms of blues, jazz and gospel.  But I DON'T believe in
drawing rigid lines like the one in that book, between slave days/modern
life, between black/white, etc.  All such categories fill me with suspicion.
There is no reason to draw lines like that and make categorical judgments about
such things... Differences are differences---there is an INFINITE range of
differences between people of all sorts and they are to be respected,
appreciated, investigated, pondered, etc... but by the same token there is an
INFINITE range of ways that very DIFFERENT people can find a COMMON language (I
don't mean just words), shared ground... This makes me think of a magnificent
stretch of land I saw when I visited Montana last year: I was very moved by it,
and my friend told me that this great valley or plain at the meeting of
"three forks" had been a sacred meeting place for all the DIFFERENT Indian
tribes.  There they set their differences aside and met each other... that is
what I'm talking about.  When Johnny Winter got Muddy Waters excited about the
blues again and they did some serious kicking-of-butt-blues-playing (Hard
Again)--if you had quoted that passage from that book to Muddy--he would have
laughed in your face.  I regard that point as pure pedantry, and real life will
kick pedantry's butt EVERY TIME.

Sonia Ex-Professor Who Told Em To Kiss My Ass
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