Rick, Guest,

I appreciate both of your perspectives. I am grateful to Rick's defense of the folk music thesis,than whom no-one is better qualfied to discuss.

As one of the worst offenders on the BS trail which Guest feels has discolored the original high tone of the 'Cat, I offer my condolences for any offense Guest has taken, but, being in an ornery mood, I will not apologize despite the articulate and well-reasoned condemnation offered by Guest.

First, because Guest has written anonymously. Second, because I have always tried as well as I could to contribute to the core dialogue of the 'Cat -- its focus on the folk process and the many facets of folk music -- as well as I could, although I am but an amateur compared to those who have made it their life, like Rick, Art, Frank and others.

Finally, I suggest that the deeper well springs of the music we all love is not the study of technical issues, although they are vital, but the presence of a creative voice and the wish to use it. The world being what it is there are too, too few environments in which this wellspring is nurtured and tolerated in all the rambunctious and contradictory forms it produces.

This tolerance, whether it comes from principle or genuine benevolence, is the key to the entire process of creating music, especialy music born from the mishmash of life as folk music is. We would dishonor that legacy in the extreme if we sought only to distill its techniques and its academic intricacies without regard to the more profound and (in my opinion) important fires that fed the forge where our favorite works were wrought in the first instance.

What motive would we have for doing such a disservice? To make others seem wrong for not knowing what we know? To nourish some insecure, fragile construct of false superiority? Oh, fie on those foolish impulses!

Make no mistake...I honor the wise and learned here for their insight, their hard work, and their wide-ranging knowledge. I honor and admire the great artists here, like Rick himself, who can make songs sound so beautiful in performance. But above all this, I have to say I honor the spirit of tolerance which allows creative play as a known virtue, however sloppy it gets sometimes. That said, and my thoughts made known hereby, well, go blow a possum.

A