I can see for miles

Interesting interview with Bill Callahan at Pitchfork, two quotes struck me:

I cannot tell you exactly what is going on now. I look at my hands and I don't know what they wrought in the past. Are they the hands of a bad man? I used to be an artist. I don't think I am right now. I don't know if I ever will be again. I am something else. I was a student of personal strife. I ran with the wrong crowd early on. I tortured myself for a song. I thought it was the way.

I equate being an artist with impaling yourself on your art. Only feeding, feeding the thing always. And it being starving. That's what that old forgotten song "Strawberry Rash," was about. As I said earlier, I don't yet know what I am now. Any talk of "craft" makes me laugh. My music looks outward, it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for Cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar it's like the first time. There's no craft in that. Although I do often think of working out a guitar part as "carving." There is the huge block of silence and you carve little bits out of it by making sound.

I like this idea of an art that looks outward, rather than inward, and the equation of this with a lack of craft. And yet the way he tells it, the artist impaling himself on his art, is of course very insular. The outward looking art must be created with a certain (self) sacrifice to that art. And yet, with the refusal of craft, this insularity becomes something other than a traditional view of the artist as genius, as troubled soul. Can we not suggest some sort of extimacy of the artist: it is the world looking in on itself, rather than the individual artist? Can this notion allow us to leave behind authenticity when talking about selling out?

But then the change from Smog to Bill Callahan - what is this? On the one hand it seems to say that as he loses his identity as an artist he must attempt to fill the void with some idea of himself, "Bill Callahan", the real thing, the authentic voice.

But on the other hand, he gives away control: "I gave Neil free reign to arrange and produce the record. This was a first for me, to give over control completely. It was a relief".

And isn't this reinforcing the point. The artist is not "Bill Callahan", the artist is somewhere else, so with the change of name comes giving up control over the art.

I should add that I do like the Bill Callahan record, it is just, perhaps, a little too straight, a little too conventional.