The Arts

I have an affection for the arts. Music, Art, Literature. All kinds. I wanted to major in fine arts when I was in college, but I never finished. Most everyone in my family is artistic in some way.

My oldest brother, while he is in the ministry, is an excellent writer.

My next oldest brother is an accomplished musician and singer. He teaches music at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. He is a musical genius. Hand him a musical instrument, any instrument, and in five minutes he will be playing it as if he's been studying it all his life. I've seen him do that. It's incredible.

One of my 2 sisters is a singer, too. She used to be a music teacher in Kansas but not anymore. A few years ago she had a stroke and hasn't taught since. She has sung Opera with the great Sam Ramey, now with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. I was there, I saw her. Not at the Met. Sorry. When they were both in college at Wichita State University.

All three of those siblings graduated with honors from their respective colleges.

My brother just 2 years older than me is an artist. He graduated with a degree in graphic arts. He works for Boeing Military Aircraft division now, in the CGI department.

My point is this: I have a special fondness for the arts. Let me tell you what I like and what I don't like.

I like classic country music and classic rock and roll. I also like folk music and bluegrass. Lately, since I have discovered my Scottish roots, I have also discovered Scottish and Irish folk music. Call it Celtic. I love it. I like classical music, too. I also like pop music, like Sinatra and Dino, etc. I like some modern rock, even punk rock. Like I say, just about all kinds.

I don't like Rap. That isn't music, in my opinion. I also don't like Opera or modern jazz. Or ballet. Too boring for me, or maybe, too sophisticated. But then again, I think the only people who like those kinds of music are pretentious elitists. And if the pretentious elitists were honest, they would probably say they don't like them either.

Those are the kind of people that have a lot of letters behind their name and wear the letters as a badge to display for all the world to see and envy.I don't wnat to imply that everyone that has letters after their name are pretentious elitists. Of course they are not all that way. My brothers and sister are not pretentious elitists. Neither are a lot of others, but the ones that are, well, all I can say is, "If the shoe fits..."


Jazz is too discordant. It assaults the ears like garbagemen banging trash cans in the early hours of the morning when you're trying to get some sleep.

I tool a guitar course in college, and my teacher was a world renown Jazz guitarist named Jerry Hahn, He wrote a monthly column in "Guitar Player" magazine on jazz guitar. He couldn't sing a lick. Us class members used to tell him we couldn't get the tune right on songs we were working on just to get him to try to sing. It was funny. He couldn't sing a lick.

Not a lick

Opera? Who wants to hear music sung in a foreign language? If I can't understand it, I'm not interested. Ballet is just boring.

But I, like the pretentious elitists, do enjoy classical music, like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Hayden, Brahams, etc. Not because it's "classy" to like it, but because I appreciate the intricacies of the parts coming together in such perfect harmony, and the talent it took the great composers to put 126 different parts together in one hour long composition. Incredible. I think I got that appreciation from my brother and sister.

I got my appreciation for Country music from my dad. He wasn't who my siblings got their talent from. He was just a simple country preacher. We used to tease him about his love for country music. He once explained what kind of music he liked best and why. This is what he said:

"I like songs that tell a story."

Me too. My dad's 2 favorite songs were, "Long Black Veil" and Six Times a Day". I like them too.

"Six Times a Day"

Six times a day, the train came down from Frankfort.
Six years she waited, never missed a train.
Six times a day the people saw her waiting.
He never came, she never missed a train....

Great, huh?

I like art, too. I had some art talent, but according to my preacher dad, I lost the talent because I didn't use it for God's glory. I agree.

I don't care for modern art like Jackson Pollack or Jim Dine or Pablo Picasso. You could hand a chimpanzee a brush and some paint and get as good a painting. You want to see art that takes real talent? Look here: Those are not photos, they are paintings. Incredible, aren't they? The style is called Photo-realism. I fell in love with this kind of art when I went an exhibition of Photo-realism long ago. One painting was 10 feet high and 8 feet across. It was a black and white painting of the face of a freckled boy. Just the face. And you had to get within 1 foot of it to tell it was a painting. As I said, Incredible.

I like literature also. Mostly I like fiction. But when I read non-fiction it is usually a Biography or History, especially old west history, my favorite subject in that are the gunslingers. My favorite author is Kurt Vonnegut Jr. You may see his influence in my writing style. You may not. I don't know, but I like him and I don't care if he is a liberal.

I have read a lot of books that the pretentious elitist say they like. I read Catcher in the Rye, for instance. It was just OK, as far as I'm concerned. I've read Updike, and Sinclair, and Steinbeck, and Hemingway, and Langston Hughes, the author that is so popular with the pretentious elitists lately. I am not impressed, regardless.

Kurt Vonnegut says there are only two themes in all of his books. One is, "Cleaning shit off of practically everything" and the other is, "No Pain." I happen to think that's brilliant. But that's just me.

Anyway, these are some of the things in the arts that I like and some that I don't like. And now, I've wasted enough of your time, and mine, pretending that anyone besides myself is really interested in what I like.