Call it what you will, it is of the utmost importance to me to compose songs. I have to stand apart from "tradition" to do this and I'm quite angry about it. It seems as though a person might study traditional music, AND be able to express (in terms respectful to the forms of antiquity) the mythological patterns of the present.

How is it going to look one hundred years from now when songwriters who are being chastized today, mannage to have written enduring music considered 'classic folk' by elders seven generations from now?

We must keep an ear to the past, AND an eye to the future.

I must now say, against this stout and coarse hardwood grain, that the encouragement needed to create these 'Legacies of or own generations', are sadly lacking here in the Mudcat. We must do better. The essence of folk is not dead, it is alive, and brisling with effectiveness!!!

Thomas