Art is Devotional -The Cowboy Song

If one begins with the premise that all great art is devotional, and this is a good premise, for great art infuses spirit into itself through the artists sense of devotion, through her sense of the sacred and her acute awareness of the profane; one begins to look for the sacred influence in all art, not just that which is explicitly spiritual in its foundation.  And, one becomes often aware of the deficiency of a potent spiritual force in work when it is, sadly, constructed by mere technicians.  Any draughtsman may produce fine, pure art.  Every artist is on some level a draughtsman, but, art without spirit is a poor, weak draught. :-) 

 One can find the sacred element in all beautiful works and, happily, this brings us to Cowboy Songs.  What are the sacred underpinnings of a cowboy song?  I would say a diffuse devotion to those things wild and free. The animals, the people, and the ferocious natural forces of the wide plains.  Wild horses figure easily as one facet of the cowboys devotion, so too do rebels and outlaws, the beauty of simplicity, the devastating beauty of heart breakin' women.  Cowboys share a deep sense of transience and mortality as well.  Bob Dylan wrote a cowboy song called "Knockin' on Heavens Door.  It's a cowboy song because he wrote it about an outlaw, some say a lawman  At least he was thinking about outlaws when he wrote it.  It is an outlaws lament and plea for redeeming.  It is the prayer for redemption entwined in the words, as well as the presence of the outlaw himself, which makes this song sacred, a cowboy devotional.  Which, of course, makes it great.  Note how its devotional quality is picked up and amplified as it is reinterpreted, as it has been, and will be, so many times.

                                                                           

Interpretation can take an endless variety of unique forms.