Upon hearing an Eric Clapton guitar solo

[fpb]

At times like this, I really do feel sorry for atheists. One has to be grateful for artistry so miraculous, but they have nobody to be grateful to. (And don't give me any crap about "the human spirit" - that is what we owe the Murdoch press and robotic dance noise to.)

Comments

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

I was about to say that - be grateful to Eric Clapton!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As I already said, that would be most unfair. Eric Clapton did not make himself exceptional. Hundreds of thousands of guitarists have studied as much guitar as he has and ended up ordinary. Being grateful to Eric Clapton for an accident in which he has no merit is an insult to the person.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

Dude, I wouldn't know Eric Clapton from your mom. I have zero appreciation for music, so this is kind of a bad example for me. But there's nothing wrong with appreciating someone's talent and hard work, and usually someone's enjoyment of something has very little to do with how well it was produced. I get just as much joy, or often 5 times as much, from looking at my little sister's magnificent crayon drawings as I get from studying Picasso. I'm sure Eric Crapton, as I cannot stop calling him, spent many hours practicing the guitar anyway, and I'm equally sure that there were hundreds of geniuses who had more talent than him but who never were heard by a wide audience. And that's irrelevant! Eric Crapton made you happy with a stringed instrument! It's not complicated; just joyful.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

This sounds to me like refusal to reason. I am not even going to start unpicking all the contradictions and pointless statements in it. I fail to understand your obvious anger, but as I know that you have a hard life - both on the obvious and on the health side - I suggest you do not throw yourself into a polemic that you do not enjoy and that is doing nothing to make you happier.

[cosmolinguist]

Hundreds of thousands of guitarists have studied as much guitar as he has and ended up ordinary.

Really? Eric Clapton has been performing since he was a teenager, and has been highly thought of almost all that time. Even if he never practiced in between, his recorded output and live performances over the last forty-some years would add up to more time bent over a six-string than most people would like to contemplate, and that's not even counting the unknowable time he plays for his own pleasure or to teach himself something new. Where are these hundreds of thousands of others? And in what way are they "ordinary"? Citation needed, I say. ;)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Do you have the slightest notion of how the music industry works? Or of how many session musicians have spent their lives till they were grey and arhtritic "bent over a six-string" and have nothing to show for it but a small bank account, no job security and (in America) no health plan? Once, just once, one such - Gordon Haskell - managed THE HIT, the one great successful song that changed his life; but for one Haskell, let alone one Clapton, there are ten, fifty, a hundred who never made it. Your assumption that they did not work as hard as Clapton is both false and insulting. To quote the queen, wipe those stars from your eyes, and you'll get quite a surprise.

[cosmolinguist]

Do you have the slightest notion that your endless assumptions of other people's inferiority might quickly turn away anyone who does know anything, as surely they'll know they don't need to be belittled by you as their points are true whether you believe them or not? As a matter of fact I have a pretty good grasp of how the music industry works, and I know that those who "make it" and have the hits aren't always those that anyone would consider most deserving so once again you've failed to answer the questions your commenters are posing to you here.

Again I'd have hoped all your religion might have infused your worldview with a little more kindness, towards me or towards the likes of Eric Clapton. Talk about people with no novel ideas; it seems to me like you've got the notion that all good things are due to your supernatural power of choice, while probably believing that people's bad experiences are all of their own doing. So if you think atheists can't appreciate this, then do tell me why you think God favors Eric Clapton more (especially after all that famous blaspheming Clapton particularly was the subject of in the '60s).

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And all this because, if you please, I objected to your notion that people who do not have the immense success of Eric Clapton obviously had not worked as hard!

[cosmolinguist]

Of course effort is no guarantee of success. I did say, originally, that people and fortuitous circumstances surrounding a person will impact their chances there.

But I never said Clapton had to be successful to be worth feeling grateful to or for; that was your idea. I have listened to lovely music by people you'll never hear of; I feel grateful that I have been able to do that, entirely apart from the fact that they have no more commercial success than session musicians and many have to have day jobs. Still as artists they are as successful in my eyes as Eric Clapton because my response to them is at least (and often far more so) favorable than my reaction to him.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am now extremely angry. ...Clapton had to be successful to be worth feeling grateful to or for; that was your idea. THAT IS A LIE and the total opposite of everything I said. There is nothing whatsoever in any of my answers to imply that financial success is any measure of artistic value, and in fact I quoted the unacknowledged giant David Olney as a classic case of unrecognized genius. I expect an immediate apology.