My first real text on Substack, it can be of only one topic, music - of course. And if music, only one musician. Everything else would be unthinkable!
Music, let me reach back in time for a moment. I've studied, no degree, among others, philosophy. I was mostly interested in what you can name "Anglo-American" or "analytic" or "linguistic" philosophy – it's more or less the same. I was also interested in medieval philosophy. Thomas Aquinas, Nicolaus Cusanus or Duns Scotus, to name some. But I also attended some other lectures and seminars, in one I wrote a paper about the aesthetic of Arthur Schopenhauer. Maybe I should say first that I see such esthetic constructs as meaningless, but I found it interesting. Especially because of Schopenhauer's conclusion(s).
Music, for Schopenhauer music has a special role, it's the uppermost kind of art. But the pitch is important, and the high-pitched sounds are something exceptional. Well, to name some of my favorite songstresses: Émilie Simon, Joanna Newsom, The Unthanks (with Niopha Keegan), or of course Beth Gibbons. They have in common? High, very high vocal ranges. But one songstress is beyond everything.
I always use her real name, Ms. Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, because of two reasons. First, of course she has a stage name very well known today. But I also love her work in earlier years very much, when she performed using other names. Second, I want to see the woman artist, not only the "singer on the stage". Saying something about her art? Well, I would need quite a long time to do so. I've written literally hundreds of pages about her work on my webpage (water-and-isles.de), and about other artists. But I did it in a "very special" way – but one time I wrote about, whether her latest album is a postmodern masterpiece or not. But I stopped writing about music, and art as such, in that "special" way. This newsletter should give me the space to write about music, and art as such, again, differently, of course. And Ms. Grant? Well, I think the best picture I found, I found in my first writing "My Dark Heart – Itinerary". There I wrote that her music would be like a "labyrinth without an exit" for me. I never found a better description.
Now I look forward to her next album, to write about it. About concerts, for example. Two tickets on my desk, Morcheeba and Agnes Obel, Agnes Obel since two years now! And science, of course, and politics.......