When I was an art history student, we were taught that you have to judge the art on its own and not try to create a facile explanation based on what you know about the artist’s life – or your own.<\/p>\n
So I was amused by the serious question asked, around minute 2:21, in this\u00a0 interview with Robyn Hitchcock and John Edington, who just made a performance movie with Robyn, Robyn Hitchcock: I Often Dream of Trains in New York<\/a>. The young woman who asks the question was trying to read a lot into Hitchcock’s lyrics for So you think you’re in love<\/a><\/em> – he sings:<\/p>\n But the silent majority is the crime of the century.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The woman said she’d been thinking about the words a lot, in light of the current health care debate in the U.S. (the interview’s from early March) – and asked Robyn what he’d been thinking about when he wrote the line. He replied, “I thought it was a slick way of welding two cliches together”.\u00a0 And in fact, “Crime of the Century” referred to the Super Tramp album<\/a> of the same name.<\/p>\n But that’s the point, right? As an artist, you are inspired and create. As an art appreciator, the art moves you in some way, but you can’t assume it’s the same way the artist went.<\/p>\n