Enuff with this Silly "influence" th-thing!!

Is this "influence"? Or if it isn't, what is it? What do we use to describe somebody's creative relationship to somebody else? An accretion of styles? An evolutionary process whereby fitter styles and concepts drive out the less fit? Appropriation? Absorbtion? Infatuation? Conversation?

1) being a musician myself, I can safely say that that pretty much everything you hear on a daily basis, from pop radio, to records you buy, to the buzz of your fridge, engrains itself into the pop culture soup that becomes your creative resources. So in a way, *everything* influences *everyone*.

So maybe it is absurd to talk about "influences" with regard to musicians. Yet when musicians themselves talk about the "influence" that other musicians have had on them, or else they express their admiration in other ways, such as covers, yes, I think it *is* valid to talk about the influences that one piece of music has had on another.

2) The other assumption that people make is that "sounds like" equals "influenced by". Sometimes I will play a piece of music for someone, and they will say "Wow, you must have been really influenced by... [names an artist or piece of music I've never even heard of]" In this case, we are projecting sound similarities that *we* hear.

However, isn't the whole idea about this forum- and talking and intellectualising music- as much about *our* impressions as listener, as about trying to work out the motivations and/or influences of the artist? What *we* hear in the music is often far more interesting to discuss than what the original artist had in mind the morning they wrote the song.

So I still find this influence idea interesting and worthwhile to talk about. So long as it's not the ONLY bloody thing we talk about, which, clearly, it isn't...

whoops, sorry, my mum called, and I have now completely lost my train of thought.

Though I think I'm slightly less ponderous, and I get my points over quicker. I *hope*, anyway ...

The only woman I can think of with a muse (or a few) is Polly Harvey. Can anyone think of others?

A curious thing is that I don't think a musician is necessarily influenced by what they *like*. Believe it or not, I don't write songs that sound like Lloyd Cole songs.

The capacity for objectification (inherant in the idea of the muse) is fundamentally human- not purely male. The reason it is so bad when men objectify women is because men hold *power* over the women that they objectify- not because objectification is bad in and of itself.

Sorry, I've argued this vehemently with Old Skool feminists, and been completely misunderstood every time.

- women *do* objectify men. I am not saying that this is good or bad, I just think it is something fundamental to the way that human sexuality and attraction works.

- yes, the concept of a "muse" is slightly more complicted than that, in that one projects not just one's own sexuality, but one's own creativity onto the body or mind of another. This is kind of a grey area because many artists (myself pompously included) report that the creative process is almost like something that happens externally, and is actually produced by the muse, and all the artist has to do is write it down.

The way Kristin Hersch for example (damn, second time I've brought her up this morning) describes her creative process was something along the lines of she would have characters and stories and songs that would take on a life of their own, and get her up out of bed to write about them. I would be so presumptuous as to say that that is a very muse-like situation in itself.

(BTW, I have a muse. He's a fucking bastard, he takes up residence in the most inconvenient and annoying of people, which causes me great distress.)

I would like to try another one, perhaps, by suggesting that the biggest influence on an artist is... themselves. Is that sophistry, or just obvious?

usually i write new music as a reaction to what i did last, employing a different process/collaborators if possible or as an attempt at pastiche - much of the 90s music i liked now bores me once ive captured its essence and reproduced it - this is why i see bowies changes of style in a different light than many people.

Actually my idea of artists as influence on themselves is not total dud. Isn't the dynamic of an artist's (long) career a lot to do with their responding to their own work and how it later seems? Possible examples - *apart from* Lloyd Cole: Stereolab, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris.

(Did you see what I did there?)

BITCH !

so ILX2, is this question resolved ?

Not until mark s comes back.

Mark v Influence: http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/364498.html