There is a story so perfect, it must be apocryphal, and I have been unable to confirm it with Professor Google, but it is about Bob Dylan's first visit to his idol, Woody Guthrie. I've had a longstanding rule that you should never let the truth get in the way of a good story: The story goes that Dylan hikes up the path to Woody, who is in a hospital, dying of Huntington's Disease and he plays a few songs for Woody, some of Woody's and some of his own and after Dylan has safely departed, Woody turns to his companion and says, 'Well, the kid can't write songs for shit, but what an amazing voice!"
Of course, people always laugh at that for obvious reasons, but part of it is that most people thought Dylan had a terrible voice, and it's true, when he was smoking, it was not its best, but all along, it is an amazing voice, at least as I hear it, and it was especially rich when he stopped smoking and recorded "Nashville Skyline."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S4B6zxIOTE
But it all goes to show, there's no arguing taste.
During his lifetime, Vincent Van Gogh had few to no fans. His brother managed to sell one or two of his paintings, but the powers that ruled the French art scene at the time could not see in his paintings what generations of people all over the world have thrilled to ever since.
Having stood in front of Van Gogh's work in places from Manchester, New Hampshire to Amsterdam to London to New York and Boston, wherever I see them, I'm stunned. And, again, you marvel: how could those French academy of art connoisseurs not have seen and been moved by what I can so clearly see today?
And who is working in song or paint or print today who I am not seeing because the men who control music on the airways or internet, those who curate art for the museums or who select work for publishing houses simply do not see what I could see as wonderful?
The internet, you will argue, should help alleviate this problem: The gatekeepers of public taste should now be vanquished as anyone can post a painting on line or a poem or even a novel or a song.
But the sheer flood of all these works makes gatekeepers or "influencers" as they are now known, even more important. Greatness may be out there, but it is lost in a jungle of other works.
