Damn Right, Linda! 2016-W13

Recently I was YouTube surfing one evening — as you do — and I can't recollect if the all knowing Google recommended this video, or did I just stumble acrost it? Never matter, the point is I watched it all the same. So what was it?  Near as I can tell, it's an hour of raw footage of living legend Linda Ronstadt being interviewed for TV circa 2012. If you don't know who she is, GET OUT NOW.

Along with the heartbreaking news that, due to her Parkinson's she no longer can sing, I also learned that she is a voracious reader and (I think) has a very good head on her shoulders. But that isn't why I landed on her as today's topic.

More than once in her interview, she said emphatically that everyone should sing. Brilliant artists — and she named several but excluded herself, even though she dropped 8 straight platinum albums, boom — brilliant artists exist to inspire the rest of us. And we enjoy their great talent but that should never stop us from making our own music as best we can.

I sing not so great. Fortunately, as long as my youngest brother is nearby I have plenty of scope to avoid being dubbed "worst singer present". (If not "ever".) And the same goes for painting. I have previously written posts on my painting motto, which is: keep up the bad work!  If you do, eventually you make one that's pretty good. So very satisfying when that happens.

Still, even the bad ones have their charms. After all, I'm the only one who could have created them. I was startled to hear that Linda rarely listens to her own music, because each recording is a static snapshot of art that she feels evolves each time it is performed. She hears all the flaws in her recording of Blue Bayou, which I think most other music lovers would call a triumph. Even baseball fans recognized its genius: "Linda Rondstadt" is now synonymous for a fastball. Because, you know, it "blew by you". Har har.

We all of us should pay heed to Linda's admonitions and keep singing, or dancing, or painting, or whatever it is that you're not world-famous for. Life is too short to worry about how it will be received by others; what's important is that you put it out there.  As for Linda not loving Blue Bayou, well that's just Crazy — which is my favorite of her many brilliant solo recordings even though it was only the B side on the single. Go figure.

Today's subject is a hate monger but ineffectual so I decided to not name her and deny her that empowerment; she isn't nearly as pretty as the painting. I had planned to take today's painting a bit further but stopped here because it felt right. I don't know if I'd call it A-side material, but even if it's a B side I like it and I hope you enjoy it too.

Banshee IX