| I enjoyed your rantings on art and beauty. I find it amazingly synchronistic that you and I both witnessed an ad for a paint company this week with the "cover the world" motto, and I felt equally disgusted. ----------------- Wow Joel, What a lovely, descriptive soliloquy! I am going to have to get over to see you soon! Many thanks for the food for thought... ----------------- I just had to reply to tell you I enjoyed reading your thoughts.....or more like an essay. It was thought provoking and gave me some insight into you.......You put a lot of time into it and wanted you to know at least one person read it (and I'm sure you can count on a lot more people reading it....) Wisdom increases with age??????? The book about "Seth" sounds interesting...I may have to pursue that one. ----------------- Excellent words there, Joel. Also, it had the most accurate review of Prarie Wind that I've seen: "Perhaps it is the sparse simple beauty of Prairie WInd " ----------------- Nice ranting. All I want to achieve in life is to be someone my friends and family can rely on, to enjoy the ride that I'm lucky enough to wake up to every day, and to try to stand up against the BS when I should. Have heart my friend, your music is most definitely inspiring, excellent and beautiful. I was asking you about whether you were happy with your 'success' a few months ago at Fratello's. I thought I sensed a quiet skepticism from you, that I was just another misinformed consumer out there, equating numbers to value. No ---- way! I've been playing guitar since 1965. I got barely enough control over it to play top40/gb for about 10 years, always doubting that I had much to offer, but I loved playing, and trying to make the music sound as cool as possible. Way before that, I too was listening to symphony music that my father would crank all the time. Later on, I found that dissecting the music for a 4-5 pc. band in 4/4 was not all that hard, compared to the stuff I heard and envisioned in my head when I was six. My music collection now includes big names, lesser known, and some very unique Joel Cage. I've been passing your name around to everyone for the past few years. Your guitar playing is intelligent, energetic and more than cool. Your truthful and whimsical stories are something that I could never come up with. When I ask you about your success, it's because I think your music is so good, that I assume you should have all kinds of people listening to it, buying it, recording their versions of it, etc. Then I see you playing to the Wednesday night locals at some beat up bar, and I'm feeling really bad for ya, though you seem to enjoy that too. I'm going to send one of your CD's to Allison Krauss. I'd love to see her latch on to some of your stuff and record it, or pass it on to someone else who would to that. Not sure it that would be considered success for you, but I'd feel like I helped to move you up to where you should be. OK, now I'm ranting. If I had time, I'd look up 'success' in the dictionary, then the thesaurus (try singing that!), and I'd try to quantify it all. But, I'd miss the whole thing by a mile anyway. Let me know when that next CD comes out, whenever that is. Meanwhile, enjoy that ride. ----------------- Reading your essay and reflection was a very good break from what has already been a very hectic day of work and stress. I will read it again later on when I have more time to think about what you wrote. If it helps make you feel better as you navigate the tricky road of finishing this new cd, here are a few thoughts: 1. There are few singer-songwriters I listen to who so consistently paint as vivid a picture with their words as consistently as you do in so many of your songs 2. There are no individual musicians I have heard who are able to use a single acoustic guitar to help tell that story in a unique way as you do. There are several great ones who do it, but nobody in the same way as you. Even listening to ìStills AloneîÖ while you may have been inspired by that style, you have taken it in a different direction and made it yours. 3. I have almost 5000 songs on my IPOD so some of my cd collection goes with me where I go. I often find myself skipping songs that pop up when it is set to ìrandom.î To date, I have never skipped to the next song when it is one of your songs that comes on. So, add these thoughts to your self-examination as you keep working on this new cd. I hope to see you soon when I am up in the Boston area to visit. It has been too long since I last saw you in Maynard. ----------------- Take it easy on yourself man. The balance of our Yin-Yang Universe is expressed in everything, on every level. Form versus function, both offer beauty to those whose eyes are open. The corrupt drivers behind the arts in our time do not diminish the beauty that is a quality of artistic expression; they only create a vehicle to bring that beauty (and its commercial value) to the world-at-large. Beauty is far to abstract and personal a quality to be a direct measure of marketability, but we all can see it nonetheless. Would Van Gogh have lived longer, painted better, or been happier had his work been in great demand during his lifetime? I think not: the source of his art, his creativity, his depression, and ultimately his madness and death was inside him, part of him all along. ----------------- Thanks for the entry on your newsletter. I enjoyed reading your thoughts. I think beauty is perfect. Beauty is represented, misrepresented and perhaps misunderstood in manifold ways. To me, music that is not commercially-driven is an example, a representation or a reflection of beauty. Commercially-motivated music moves away from the art, the honesty of it. When the artist demonstrates this, we recognize beauty partly from its honest expression. But I too believe that it's in the eye of the beholder, for not all recognize beauty through the same medium, as not all prefer the same kind of music. I find beauty in your music. Thank you for it! "It is argued that science and its method must be subordinated; that we must return to the logic of Aristotle and St. Thomas, in order that the young may have sure anchorage in their intellectual and moral life, and not be at the mercy of every passing breeze that blows." -John Dewey, Experience and Education, 1938 ----------------- BEEYOOTEEFOOL man, jes' beeyootful. I always figured that if ya died broke & crazy then ya did the art thing just right! The thing with Vincent was he was offering art that the public didn't want during his lifetime. The masses are pretty much sheep & don't want their friends to make sport of them if they go out of the ordinary or against what the masses deem unacceptable. One of the big guys back then was Jean Gerome who was a great artist & he painted the exotic & mysterious Arabic world primarily. Folks liked that titillation not the downtrodden salt of the earth subjects that Van Goh was trying to get them to look at. Safer to keep their heads in the sand & pretend that things were just swell. Shame that Vincent didn't get his due when he could have deservedly enjoyed it. Gerome was a pretty cool guy & coming from a wealthy family he was able to study art with the best & frequently gave his "money from home" to the less fortunate students at the university who didn't have $ for food after tuition costs. He received many commissions from the French government which sealed his success. He once turned down a gov't commission stating that he appreciated the honor but since he already had it made he'd prefer to see a struggling artist get a break. I have a print of one of his famous works "Duel After the Masquerade" which depicts a dying clown still holding his sword being comforted in his last moments by his costumed friends as the victor dressed as an American Indian & his harlequin friend walk off toward a waiting carriage in the ethereal fog of a new day for them & the last thing the loser will see. I've subtitled it "Clown Mouths Off at the Party & Now He's Cut " I've since learned that all the subjects except the Indian were characters in a 19th century morality play in which the clown was a nasty bastard always screwing people over so Gerome paints him finally getting his. Another one he did that I found stunning is called "Golgotha" which depicts a stormy sky over a bleak countryside with people walking down a hill where the shadow of 3 crosses is cast & one lone Roman looks back with a both sorrowful & awestruck expression. Anyway, enough of that. Yup, music don't need to be beautiful anymore (but the performers of the marketable mindless pap better be or their careers are sunk) Beauty is now in the eye of the bean counter & they wonder why the World Trade Towers came down! Just got the word that my gig is cancelled tonite because the place closed it's doors 2 daze ago. Nice of 'em to let me know with plenty of notice! Took time off from my busy knife schedule to practice some new tunes & put new strings on the geetar cuz I care. Was yakkin' with another musician who I sat in with a couple weeks back & said I didn't understand it as the place was packed. He said Thurs. were the only night it did good because of the live music. You'd think that the owner would have figured that out & expanded to Thurs-Sat music but that logic escaped him. Instead his mediocre fare, high priced drinks & sub standard service did the place in. We musicians tried to help but to no avail. I dunno 'bout you but this Sunapee area is the hardest place to play music I've ever encountered & I've played from Canada to Florida & west to Tejas. Sorry the Texas experience wasn't that good for you as you certainly do a great job. For me,I'll take Texas any day over this area & I don't care if it's over 100 degrees. People know how to have a good time down there. Hey, I hear you're playing at the Harbor Gallery Aug 4th. Too bad I'll be in Orlando at knife show. I'm booked for July 7th at the gallery. Did you get the "can't pay but will pass the hat " deal spiel? Too bad 'bout the Whippersnappers thing. Was it poorly attended? Well, lunch is over & I gotta go put all the gear back in it's resting place instead of the car for the gig & get out & rub on metal --------------------- Joel ~ Your music IS beautiful...your writing is beautiful.. thank you for sharing ~ - a fan |