Structure

On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint is a work of cultural criticism divided into four sections, beginning with an introduction and ending with an afterword. The sections appear in the following order and are labeled with the following titles: "Introduction," "Art Song," "The Ballad of Sexual Optimism," "Drug Fugue," "Riding the Blinds," and "Afterword." In the introduction, the author outlines her reasons for and inspirations behind writing the text. In these pages, Nelson also lays out the possible arguments against writing such a work, and introduces her mode of examining the complex issue of freedom. In "Art Song," Nelson interrogates the positive and negative aspects of art critique. In these pages, she wonders how cultural and self-censorship of artistic works might limit the individual artist's freedom to create and to find in art, "a place for people to act out what they want and think...