My guess is that Conrad can't even tell if something is good quality or not. A totally anesthetized aesthetic sense. And he calls himself a "visionary artist!"

I have a friend (whom I haven't seen in years) who is a marvelous artist. His technique is so good and so versatile that he can paint like the Old Masters. And he can also be as abstract as any modern art aficionado could possibly want. Paintings in all media and styles including book illustrations, outrageous cartoons, sculpture in various media (clay, bronze, marble), you name it.

He was working on a metal sculture once that involved a lot of metal cutting and welding. As we sat in a restaurant one afternoon having coffee, he held up his hands, which were covered with burns and band-aids for many small cuts. He chuckled and said, "Do you think that anyone would ever tell me that I have 'the hands of an artist?'"

When people asked him what he did, he would respond, "I paint."

"Oh. You're an artist?" they would say.

"Well," Ric would respond, "I paint. Whether I am an artist or not is not for me to say. It's for others to judge."

Ric took a dim view of people who claimed they were "artists." "More often than not," he would say, "when someone tells you he's an 'artist,' he's a fraud. It's pretentious to make that claim, and whether they are truly an artist is for others to determine. Beware of anyone who tells you haughtily that he is an 'artist.' Almost assuredly, he's a dauber at best."

He also said something that I thought was bloody brilliant!

"The most important tool that any artist, poet, or writer has is his waste basket. Not everything you turn out is going to be good. In fact, most of what people do, even the most accomplished and famous artists and writers in the world, is crap! Having the judgment to be able to determine what's good and what stinks is a true artist's most important talent and asset."

There are songs that I can't really do very well. So I don't sing them. I leave them to those who can sing them well. For example, my attempts at blues really stink. So I don't try to sing blues.

Richard Dyer-Bennet does an absolutely marvelous job on songs that can take a sort of "art song" treatment, like some ballads (Dyer-Bennet can tell a story well, and that's what ballads are all about), and he's bloody brilliant on songs like "The Joy's of Love." But he really should not try to sing songs like "John Henry," "Pay Day at Coal Creek," or "Drill, Ye Tarriers."

O would some power the giftie gie us
To see ourselves as others see us.
                                  —Robert Burns

"Visionary artist" indeed!!

Don Firth