Train-I-Ride wrote:
You're likening kids to adults, likening walking up to kids outside Santa's Grotto and telling them Santa's a lie, to countering adult fans of Bob Dylan who whoop and holler that he sings and puts on a great show when clearly he doesn't. I wouldn't dream of doing the former, but I certainly would the latter (youtube evidence of the current tour would ensure that)
Well, the first thing is that this analogy (thank you, I tend to use the word metaphor in a sort of general, colloquial sense...although the concepts of analogy and metaphor are related in a more nuanced way than you suggest) isn't meant to work from every conceivable angle. In other words, don't read too deeply into the kids v. adults thing.
Why
wouldn't you tell the kids that Santa's a lie? Because it would ruin the experience for them? Why on earth would you feel any different just because the people in question are adults?
Remember, most of the kids are just as smart, aware, etc. as the adults. Actually, if you insist that this analogy must work on every level possible, we can think about it like this. We'll say there are two groups of adults. One group is standing in the Santa line with the kids, enjoying the whole experience, while the other group is standing to the side, saying things like “Santa isn't real!” and “Look at his fake beard!” and “Clearly this Santa is much slimmer than he's supposed to be!” The kids are the people who earnestly think Bob's performances are great, the adults standing with them are the “We know this is crap but we don't cares” and the other adults are, naturally, posters like you.
Why is it wrong to compare people who earnestly like Bob's music to innocents, if we take what you, harmonica albert, etc. say as being true? They are people who earnestly enjoy and find great musical merit in performances that are, in your words, “travesties” and “clearly [not great]”. Why shouldn't their attitude toward Bob's performances be thought of as childlike? This is not to say that these people are childlike in general. Perhaps they are, in every other respect, very adult.
Quote:
An objective rebuttal to my critique of the 2012 She Belongs To Me ought to include musical examples of such phrasing as I have described, in other songs by other singers that have achieved great success and acclaim, to demonstrate that this represents a positive achievment in the singing arts and not a failure to sustain achievment. Simply saying "no, it's great, and you're an old poopy head" is not a rebuttal, however old and poopy-headed I may be. It's just a demonstration of one's taste. The great difficulty for most people is connecting their personal taste to some rigorous critical apparatus. It's a life-long process of self-questioning, at least for me. Not just "do I like this?" but "why do I like this?" and "how do I like this?" and "what is it that I'm liking?
I find it laughable that you claim to live such an examined aesthetic life when then end result is you spending your time writing this garbage. Talk about missing the point.
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I belong to the community of human beings. I'm not sympathetic to communities that build fortresses around their idols and demand everyone bow or leave.
Oh, brother! The stakes are obviously not that high. People who come here and spend most of their time bashing Bob—and enjoying it, apparently—are not different from children peeing in a sandbox. And to think you see it as this noble battle over idols, fortresses, servitude...I mean, it's laughable.
Bruce11, You're more dishonest and disingenuous that you are either PhD or MFA. You are a mess of shifting whines, half-thought out stuff that you just smudge and rephrase whenever it is challenged. Among the mass of petulant rants you've thrown my way, your accusation that I'm misrepresenting your positions (straw man) is my favorite, given on the one hand, the fact that you can't quite even settle on what your position is, and on the other hand, your nasty and hyper-reductive formulations of what I (and others) have written here.
Despite your shifting and bluster in this thread, and despite your insults and vitriol, at the heart of this whole tirade of yours is nothing but a long cry that when people are critical of something you like, it makes you feel bad.
You can dress that up in whatever pseudo-logical costumes you want, it doesn't change the facts. If you still aren't sure about it, just take a look at the chunk of writing you submitted about Santa and innocent adult-children. It comes complete with a "clarification" about analogies and metaphors and an illustration of how, as in everything you say, you tend to favor using words in ways that don't mean anything specific. Nice. It is easier that way. Lazy and pointless and a convenient way of not being held to anything -- but easier.
We're done here. But don't count on the criticism stopping. You'll have to grow up someday.
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