The book I that I chose to read is decently long, so our wonderful teacher has allowed me to just read it, in it's entirety. Finishing the book was amazing. The author, Daniel Mark Epstein, has a very engaging writing style (God that sounds so cliche). The entire book is divided into four sections. Each one of the sections describes a concert that the author went to, but in between describing the concerts, the author details his family, social, and artistic life. He describes what affects his creativity, performance, appearance...
One of the coolest parts of the book is when the author describes Bob Dylan's performance at Madison Square Garden, after his motorcycle accident. He was "afraid" of the crowd, nervous, rushing through songs...but he had a reason. Before the concert, he was obviously trying recover from the accident but he wanted his life to be mostly familial. He gave up being the "prophet" that everyone on this earth knows him to be. He just lived for his family; but he did do very occasional concerts. He then describes how the crowd accepts him once again...Bob was playing as if he wanted the audience to take his songs and so they did, they were theirs. The author describes how the artist couldn't even be heard, it was the crowd who owned that performance.
I'm not totally sure on what my thesis will be yet, but I have a lot to work with and I'm sure however I go about it the result will be interesting.
It's good that you found the author to be engaging. That's important. I'm curious, though- what about the crowd scared him? Was it anything in particular? In any case, your post has intrigued me. What is the most interesting thing you learned from this book?
ReplyDeleteThat's cool how that crowed reacted to the performance. Performing in front of so many people with such high expectations would be completely nerve wracking. It takes a truly exceptional artist to be ablso to do something like that, because not many people would be able to.
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