Creators and Critics: Married through Art

The debate over an artwork’s cultural worth dissects its successes, failures and ultimately its relevance. In a rather interesting interview I had with folk musician M Ward, we discussed our relevance – to each other. What follows is an edited transcript detailing a few of Ward’s musings on art and its analysis.

The sleeve notes for your album Post-War (2006) feature a ticket to a bull fight as well as the words “war memorial”. What were you trying to express?

Part of the idea of the artwork was to have the empty arena and to have it combined with the title. And it goes in hand in hand with a lot of the things that happened on the record.

If I could put it into words it would definitely allow me not to have to put out the record. I could come up with something but I’m much happier to surrender my interpretation to yours or other journalists or other people who’ve listened to the record. I like opening that up to interpretation instead of spoiling the party and giving you my own take on things. I can say as far as the artwork goes – we talked a lot about Guernica, the Picasso painting and his reaction to war and as it’s depicted in images and metaphors. It’s inspiring.

In a perfect world, would you do interviews?

That’s a good question. I don’t mind talking to journalists about music. I shy away from talking about definitions of songs and meanings but I think the debate between the journalists and the artists is a necessary part of the process. It’s a tricky one. We could talk all day about it (laughs).

If I was to get to the crux of the problem, speaking personally – the whole recording process and composition process passes by you like a dream and the only interesting thing about it is the mystery to it. When you’re in the middle of an interview process you have to rely on putting language on top of something that is beyond language and so as a result you end up creating a myth that probably is not 100% representative of the actual experience. And so the audience gets the privilege of pigeonholing the artist into other artists that they know or have heard before. So, it’s a tricky thing.

I mean journalists – all they have are words – and I believe that music is a hybrid between rhythm and colors. I think Debussy said that actually. I’m absolutely ripping him off. But what do you do as a journalist when the essence of music is rhythm and colors?

Do you mean emotional colors?

Yeah. He said it first. Claude Debussy. He said that music, in its essence is just rhythm and colors and painters I’m sure have the same problem trying to get these things across in interviews – as a result they don’t do them.

I still have hope in the interview, in the process and I think it’s a necessary part of the equation of making things in the same way that I think a song is not compete until its either played live or played for an audience. I think it’s the same way with ideas. You explain your ideas to the journalist, you bring it into the light and the ones that are worth their weight create waves. The ones that are useless will sink into the depths of infinity, (laughs).