Sherri Cornelius

There are times I want to know how an artist gets inspired but there are also times I don't wanna know.
Take for example Salvador Dali. The story I heard is that guy got really stoned on something, deprived himself of sleep for a few days and then started painting. The result was that melting clocks painting (Persistance of Time or Persistance of Memory, I can't remind the exact title and I can't be bothered to find out.)
If the inspiration is something really screwy and weird, I don't want to know.
I don't ever want to hear a musician say "So, I was beating up this hooker when inspiration struck and just had to write this song so I stopped beating the hooker, grabbed my guitar and my little tape recorder and poof, got the chorus and a couple of verses done right then and there. Then I went back to beating up the hooker."

I think I'm with WIGSF; if there's something worth knowing, that's interesting and I'd like to know it. If the inspiration is ... let's say less than interesting, shall we? ... then no. I don't care.

Quit copying my posts. ;)

I don't know, I think it'd be nice to know who the hooker-beaters are in the music world so that I can avoid their albums.

It's getting ridiculous, isn't it?

Would you only avoid the hooker-beaters, or the coke sniffers, drunk drivers, and koochie flashers, too?

When I was a kid, we'd often take field trips to old gold mines and Native American sites, places like that. I always wondered about the hands that carved the tools, the pottery, built the canoes. My friends thought I was a little odd for thinking of those things, but I still do it - like when I see antique furniture. Somebody made those things - what were they like?

This is only loosely related, but I read that they finally figured out cave paintings were done by women, too. Duh.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1197680/After-25-000-years-scientists-discover-artwork-created-cave-men-AND-cave-women.html

Let's say, hypothetically, a band was a bunch of hooker-beaters. Does that have any actual influence on the music itself? Regardless of whether or not that was the inspiration, if the music is good, who really cares who made it?

This is getting really off-topic from the original post, isn't it?

Let's use a real example. Gary Glitter is a convicted pedophile. Does that make his music any different? Who didn't sing all to Rock and Roll Part 2 with the "na na naaah na, hey, na na nah"s? Just because Gary Glitter is a monster, it doesn't change his music.

Well there you go!

Kinda figures too. ;)

Actually, I wouldn't avoid any of them--once it's put out into the world, art exists as an entity separate from the artist. I was making a joke there, only I don't seem to have been successful in getting it across. Oh well.

Ha! No, the failure was mine. I was joking, too.

Koochie-flashers...*shakes head* At least I crack myself up. :)

You remind me of when I was younger and liked a singer. My mother was upset because I would listen to a singer who cheated on his wife. I was really young and just looked at her and said, "What in the world does that have to do with the music?" My views really haven't changed much.

Oh, we're all just fooling around. I never stopped liking Michael Jackson's music through all the scandal.

Here via Rachel. I once went to an exhbiit at the National Gallery in DC on Gary Larson;s Far Side comics. The work included drafts with captions crossed out and new ones written in. I thought it was a fascinating iew into how one artist (and I do think some cartoonists are artists) works.

And about your post below - in my sons' school, they sent home an email saying that some teachers would not be showing the President's address and if we wanted our child not to see it, we could have him/her sent to one of the rooms where it would not be playing. I emailed back and asked that our son be sent to a room where it was being shown and it was distressing to me that soem of the teachers were choosing to deny children access to history. It was a speech about staying in school, for God's sake. (In fact, my 12-year-old was disappointed that Obama didn't talk more about the issues and what his plans are.) I would like to think, given that it ws purely a speech about hard work and success, that all the Fox-addled people who were up in arms about it before are embarrassed now, but I suspect they are not.

Like Alice in Wonderland though the mirror and down the hole ... or Dorothy in Oz? when art imitates life ... and art is that life?

Well, on the one hand the art is separate. I want to enjoy a work of art on its own terms--not on whether or not I like/know/understand/agree with the artist. On the other hand, if I knew the money the artist made went to a human trafficking ring, I'd have to keep my money to myself.

Then again, what if the artist gave money to a political candidate I don't like? That is hardly on the same level...but people make judgments like that all the time. If they didn't, they wouldn't boycott Sean Penn or Mel Gibson movies.

It is great to know this stuff if I don't have to deal with a living artist. TS Elliot was a jerk, but he's dead. So, I want to know about the artist but not sure I should. It is easy to say if I'm going to like what I hear...

Indeed, Fantasia. And welcome.

Yeah, if I know somebody is a jerk, it definitely makes me look at their work differently. Like you said, it makes me think twice before giving my money to the person.