I’m sorry, @neildegrassetyson.com , but this post is very confusing. Are you signalling your support for MAGA or making fun of it?

Thank you what you do, man! I heard a tiny clip of this song and immediately loved it. I was so happy to find an entire album that is so good front to back, and it reminded why my band needs to make our new album. I only hope it’s half as good!

Such a great song.

You're obviously free to think whatever you like about the cave paintings, but let's not get it twisted. The reason most people think they're cool is because they are some of the earliest recorded examples of humans being artistic, not because the paintings themselves are amazing.

And by the way, I'm also not saying that these things cannot be instructive. I think, for example, that the cave paintings you mentioned are generally appreciated more for their anthropological value than strictly their artistic merit, which is fairly limited.

Well, no you don't actually get the context, then. Nobody is claiming we should be able to intuit details about an artist we know nothing about, apart from the content itself. If we did discover that the 17th century poet was a slave owning rapist that should colour our perception of their poetry.

I feel like you’re not quite picking up the context here. For obvious reasons this a realization that we generally only ever make retroactively.

Also, and it pains me a little bit that I have point this out again, but “being an arsehole” is a different kettle of fish than being a serial rapist.

Haha, well I’d never claim it isn’t complicated. Certainly there is much to be learned from these massive piles of feces. I’m not even necessarily saying that it is impossible to responsibly, but the impulse to defend or ignore a problem because it’s inconvenient is very strong.

You tell me.

You’re working really hard to reduce a nuanced idea down to something simple and dumb, which it’s not. I’m not saying accepting responsibility for what you choose to consume is simple or easy, just that it’s necessary, particularly after the problem comes to light. Retrospect is like that.

I’m not judging you, but I think you’ve already come to the same conclusion that I have hence the fact that you’re no longer willing to support the artist.

The fact that you still enjoy the thing is understandable, but maintaining an accurate perspective of where it came from is a good thing.

No, it’s not. What it is is an extremely hard pill to swallow, and I completely understand struggling with letting go of creatives whose work you enjoy. I’ve struggled with it every time, and I’ll continue to struggle with it, because it’s really effing difficult.

Who can say? How would Harry Potter be different if JKR wasn’t a bigot? Would it exist at all? It would probably contain less veiled antisemitism at the very least, or maybe she would have written something else entirely. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Now that I can see it, it’s on me.

People are complicated, certainly, but there is a difference between a well-intentioned person with flaws and a calculating serial rapist or bigot.

The fact that I may have derived something good from something which is bad at its core is a function of my own intentions and filters.

As an artist myself I decided a long time ago that this simply cannot be done. For art to have any merit it must contain the essence of the artist who made it, and when the artist is a piece of shit, the essence of their art is also.