In which the author faces up to where he is, what he's got, and gets on with it.
"Principle is not bound by precedent!
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It's funny, because having watched this video and thought about it again, it occurs to me that most of my life has been spent not being happy with what I've actually had. I've always imagined some need for all the fancy means to create something, rather than just making do with the materials I have at hand.
When I was a kid, I can remember my father talking about getting all the "right" artistic materials that would make the "right" art. But of course that was missing the point entierely, wasn't it?
When you consider the greatest innovators of all time, they've made do with what they had. The musicians of the 30s and 40s are a good example of people making do. Folk music has always been made up of very simple instruments, and simple songs about people.
Bob Dylan was inspired by the folk music of Woody Guthrie and the like. The old jazz musicians used to play what they had. Dylan had an attitude, too, of just doing stuff with one take, rather than doing the "polished" thing. Much of The Media is too polished now, I think. Too slick.
Artists have traditionally used what they could to make sound, art, sculpture, plays and film. Even cuisine comes from the creative use of what's there, in the present.
Every great artist understands that the materials for great art are right here, in the NOW. They're in the ether, in the imagination, in the pencil that writes on the paper.
And, as the old Northern English saying goes where there's muck there's brass, meaning that gold lies in the junk, if you care to look for it.
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