I love sophistocation. And country music has its sophistocation right where I appreciate it the most.
The emotions, lyrics, and storytelling.
Jazz musicians, musicians who devote their lives to musical sophistocation, tend to not like country music.
Us storytellers, that is a different boat entirely.
(As long as it's not a lot of crying-in-your-beer songs. Give me storytelling that is a bit loftier or funner than that. Give me sad songs that soar with fire, like Adele Rolling in the Deep. It's Gonna Take A Lot of River by the Oak Ridge Boys is manna from Heaven.)
(But otherwise, with us storytellers it is a different boat entirely.)
And there is a real big difference between expanding the scope of country music to include rock and roll and squeezing rock and roll into the mould of country music.
The one has the glorious exhileration of discovering something new. The other, not so much.
There is a magic in I Love a Rainy Night by Eddie Rabbitt that can't be found in anything by The Eagles, great as The Eagles are.
But to get there, you first need to get inside country music.
Most of the people who do music like I Love a Rainy Night grew up in country music.
But there is an exception, and that is the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
In the 80s, in their heyday, they played country music like someone who had been born into it.
But they were not. They got their start as an L.A. hippy band in the 60s.
Then they decided to dedicate their careers to old-time country music.
Then they spent months recording with the finest old-time country musicians of the 1940's generation, for their Will The Circle Be Unbroken album.
With the intention of making that music the rest of their career for the rest of their life.
And then they spent years playing that same music on tour.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band learned country music the way someone who is born into country music learns it- through Love and Direct Experience.
And at the end of it, by the 1980s, they played country music just as well as anyone, including masters like Eddie Rabbitt.
By learning country music through love and direct experience, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band learned country music like someone who was born into it.
There are young men from England, as 'white' as a sheet, as 'WASP' as a hornet, who have learned Taoism and Sufism like someone who was born into it, for they learned Taoism and Sufism through Love and Direct Experience.
One is the great Filip Holm, of the Youtube Channel Let's Talk Religion.
Yes, this is the same Filip Holm with the self-titled Arabic music channel.
The other is George Thompson, who has his own self-titled Youtube channel, who is as much a true Taoist as Filip Holm is a true Sufi sage.
For they both learned it through Love and Direct Experience.
And when you teach something to others, or write about it, you really learn it.
This is because when you write about something, or teach it to others, you approxamate the experience of learning something through Love and Direct Experience.
By Devoting a substantial effort to it, in writing or teaching it, for Devotion is a form of Love, and devoting an actual, substantial direct experience in your life to it, namely writing about it or teaching it.
When you write about something, you really learn it, in ways you never can by simply reading about it.
Even more if you write about something or teach it out of Love in your heart like I do.
And so me and Metatron both share the experience of learning of the world of the ancient Romans the best, most thorough, most deep way we can- through writing about or teaching of the ancient Romans out of true, honest Love and Devotion, and not mere forced Devotion, in our hearts.
For you cannot gain direct experience of the living, breathing world of the ancient Romans.
But you can write about it.
Just some thoughts I wanted to share with you!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson