Friday, February 20, 2009

I Love the Continuities in Art

It all started with this post.
Nostalgically, I thought about what the first song that attracted me to Dar Williams was - and it was the babysitter song.

She uses here a narrative form I love - the narrator who simply does not get what is going on. It is lovely and challenges the listener to do more than simply accept the surface story. It is a form far too little used. When it cruises to its end it is crushing.
In this song it is brutal and as a result, totally lovely. "She's the best one we've ever had."
Last night I started reading Anne Tyler's "Celestial Navigation". What a self-incriminating narrator in the first chapter. Where can she be going?
I have roughly the same trust in Dar Williams and Anne Tyler. Two great artists in two very different forms.
And they can find different forms, if not themes.

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