Meditation on Assumed Purpose and Intent-Finale

I hope you have enjoyed this most recent series of articles.

I will be out until Monday, while I am recording with my band.

I will return on Monday, with an article on 'Mrs. Kitty'.

Enjoy the rest of your week and your weekend.

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Have you ever seen those flat bed trucks full of flattened cars?

One time one of those overturned on I-35 in Austin. It looked like the worst wreck our time had ever seen. All these flattened cars all over the road. It looked way more grisly than it really was.

Things don't always seem what they appear. They always are what they are.

At the turn of the 20th century there was an interesting composer by the name of Charles Ives. He approached music composing from a unique and non-standard point of view, and has influenced every major 20th century composer from Aaron Copland onward.

The idea of using American folk music in symphonic music, for example, was certainly used to great extent in the music of Copland, but he got the idea from Ives.

Ives also composed music that sounded like two bands passing by each other in a parade.

He would ask, in the introduction to his 200 Songs, "Why must a song always be a song?"

Why must anything be what it is? Why must we follow the accepted norms for any created thing?

This seems to be the question that a lot of 20th century art has asked, particularly the abstract, which seems to go as far as to ask why does anything have to be anything at all?

Assumed purpose and intent.