Spider’s have held a somewhat holy place in my world since childhood and Charlotte’s Web. Spiders get ushered out of the house, not crushed in a Kleenex, for instance. Anyway, it occurs to me how knowledge itself is spider-like. One discovery leads to the next in an infinite progression.
Last Saturday night we dodged out of the German-American beer swilling festival, a.k.a. Germania, which had overtaken our lovely Lincoln Square streets, for the somewhat saner climes of Old Town School of Folk Music, where Roy Book Binder and Ramblin’ Jack were performing a late show. Both artists are consummate storytellers–noted weavers of dialectic yarns.
Roy told a tale of how Katherine Dunn’s novel, Geek Love influenced him as a blues player. And also the work of Florida writer, Harry Crews. In this tale told between songs, Roy spoke of how he once asked a young songwriter from Indiana if he had read those books too. The young man said no, which Roy found hard to believe since aspects of these literary lions’ writing were clearly present in the young man’s songs.
My point is there is so much to discover by simply following these threads. It requires that one capture these everyday references and follow them to a suitable conclusion. In the case of writers and performers, the acquisition of their published work is often a suitable conclusion.