It's Raining Cats and Blogs

The weather is turning of late, as we bid farewell to winter and anxiously await the thaw of spring. The grass is starting to show, the birds are singing in the trees and the rain is falling once again. It is a welcome change, and though it seems like years since last spring, it has likely only been one.
With each new season comes new inspiration, and I have long been fascinated by the effects of climate change on one's creative output. In fact, much of the seminal artwork of the twentieth century is inextricably linked to the season of its creation: Pablo Picasso's cold and bleak Blue Period was no doubt a result of the wintry Paris nights during which he worked. The spring rains in Barcelona affected many of Salvador Dali's surrealist paintings, causing much of his work to drip wildly down the canvas. And the deep reds and yellows of Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli's art (1445-1510) were surely inspired by the summer sun of Florence, impelling Botticelli to ultimately open up a studio in South Beach.
The same holds true for songwriting, with the most influential albums being written during some very influential weather. The constant California sun clearly served as muse for the songs of The Beach Boys, while Nick Drake's melancholic discography was obviously informed by a bleak London forecast.
I have to write a song for an artist today, and if my theory proves correct, the song will start out rather dark and dreary and then clear up in the chorus, with a forty percent chance of it becoming dreary again in the last verse.
One must be at one with the weather to be at one with one's art is my point.
By the way, this correlation may also explain why meteorologists are often fantastic songwriters (check out Al Roker's first two records). Or it may not.
In any event, the next time you walk out in the rain and complain that it is ruining your perm, remember that somewhere an artist is being divinely inspired.
That's all for now.
I end this week's Blog with another interesting musical fact:


-Only one musical note (a B Flat) existed until 940 BC, when King Solomon decreed that popular radio was "getting too boring"-

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