I will post more on this later, but I was reading some dumb Village Voice article in which the author, recounting a conversation with a boyfriend who wanted her to be something she wasn't, has this inward moment of befuddlement:
I was devastated. Couldn't he see I was into the same things he was—Dostoevsky, early '90s shoegazer music and Indian food?
Now that we have the internet to prominently display our interests on social networking pages, presumably this isn't a problem any more. Although, my blogger profile lists my interests as: "iced coffee." Talya has "coffee", "snacks" and "showers". Well, that's almost as bad as Dostoievski (yeah you can spell it however you want) qua "interest."
In that Village Voice list, erhaps nothing is as weak as "Indian food" as an interest. What does that mean, that someone likes to cook Indian food? go out to Indian restaraunts? discuss Indian food? Even worse: "I was into the same things he was." Honey, EVERYONE loves samosas. This is not a bonding agent.
Recently I was half-jokingly telling someone how easy it would be to date me because I have such varied interests: Italian cinema, Victorian novels, French critical theory, German philosophy, Hollywood westerns, Jamaican reggae, Finnish hardcore, etc.
Now, I said this was "half-jokingly," and I hope you see why, but let's first say why I wasn't joking. 1) Those are interests. 2) My mom and her siblings, or my roommates, or most random people, don't have interests like this. 3) I think it's a good list. And I have Top 10 lists for each one.
More apparently, though, I was joking. Here's why:
1) Whether it is easy to date me is up for debate, but certainly "He has so many interests!" is far from being either the final word, or even necessarily positive.
2) The list is in a joke format: [Country/time period]--[genre].
3) In a way, it's really all the SAME interest to someone who doesn't care. Like, when I lived in Austin, no matter WHAT band shirt I was wearing, d-bags would be all, "Oh you like liiiive music? You must love livin' in Austin." [Which is kind of the Austin take on everything: "You like XXXX? You must love livin' in Austin."] So, my infinitely discriminating taste in various genres is ultimately irrelevant to anyone who doesn't have that same interest. Or, say: I love French New Wave films, but I would never offer that up as saying anything about myself. Because that is moronic. What would it say about me? That I am a cinephile? A francophile? A fan of classic noirs? A fan of Jerry Lewis films? An avid reader of Cahiers du Cinema?
4) As you can see, I have no idea what interests are, or why they might matter to someone else.
I'll get back to this topic in a bit (do I ever leave it) but I want to say, since we don't live in a romantic comedy, we need better shit than Dostoievski, indian food, and Pavement to qualify as an interesting person. (And I like Dostoevski and Indian food more than most things).
Showing posts with label Taste. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taste. Show all posts
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Monday, November 06, 2006
pretention/ taste arbitration
The weird thing about the word "arbitrary" is its relation to arbiter/arbitration--that is, to decision making. So that "arbitrary" actually means "subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion". Might one then say that "discretionary spending" is "arbitrary spending"? (discretionary: "regulated by one's own judgment). And then you get into the quagmire of defining spending which is discrete but not discreet, etc.
I digress.
In matters of taste, arbitration can seem arbitrary: why this trend and not another? And although in this short blog I am unable to go into matters such as snobbishness, class-determinations, a history of high and low culture, the hegemony of the bourgeois, the curious (demographically aproportional) ascendency of Jews and gays in determinations of culture (at least in New York), hipsterism, the legacy of the 1960s, and other factors that arbitrate what is cool, please consider these the background and future topics of this blog: to remove the "arbitrary" from arbitration of taste, to "expose it for what it is."
The other day in my Scholarly Writing seminar, we read James English's "Economy of Prestige". I also spilled teriyaki sauce all over the copy I was borrowing, and had to drack down the last hardcover copy in New York City so that the person who loaned it to me would not think I was the world's biggest jerk. In the class discussion, I thought my smartest comment was that, as in Borges' "The Lottery of Babylon," the lottery stops being a system of monetary prizes with clear winners, and becomes an extremely obscure, universal system resistant to ideas of winning/losing or even of an obvious outcome, until the lottery becomes indistinguishable from LIFE, so I thought that the system of prizes in English's narrative has become essentially synonymous with culture. There is no "outside".
However, something like the Criterion Collection has a prestige that is not about prizes, so I dunno... that probably also should be investigated later.
My point for today is this: the word "pretentious" should be used correctly. There is a great moment in Zizek's "Looking Awry" where he calls A River Runs Through it "pretentious". This is the precise meaning of the word. Of course, this example is doubly ironic. One, to cite a prominent philosopher to define the word "pretentious"--- secondly, that this philosopher's "slumming it" by discussing this garbage film is in its own way pretentious.
Nonetheless, I think we may use A River Runs Through it as our definition of pretension, and from there go on to discuss taste. What A River Runs Through it, or, to switch our examples, Schindler's List demonstrates, is a certain paranoia of being unable to distinguish between the "actually good" and the merely "pretentious" (that is, a paranoia which would have saved the Oscar from going to Forrest Gump instead of Pulp Fiction).
Ironically (in the sense that here taste is not discretionary but overheard--and thus arbitrary in an entirely different way), many seem to think that the only way to avoid falling into a trap of "bad taste" is to have an exaggeratedly refined set of "good taste" which ends up being altogether predictable and pretentious.
To simplify:
1) Schindler's List is a wildly successful film by an acclaimed director, about a serious subject, featuring several great performances, based on a literary novel, of an appropriately epic length, a winner of numerous awards and accolades, etc.
2) At the same time, I would be completely shocked to hear anyone (in 2006) cite Schindler's List as being anywhere near a great film, on their list of great films, a film by a great director, of anything approaching artistic relevance, or even a second look, etc.
3) In order to be cool, to have good taste in movies, one must not like Schindler's List. But, this demands a certain paranoia-- should one not like any films similar to Schindler's List? is all of Spielberg off limit? all holocaust movies? all Hollywood movies? all American movies? all 90s movies?
4) If one closed out all spielberg/hollywood/American/90s films, you would certainly weed out a lot of garbage. On the other hand, you would weed out some good stuff.
5) That "good stuff" on the other hand, probably is more popular and therefore susceptible to 'contamination' by uncool teenagers, as in the case of Rushmore, Reservoir Dogs...
6) The easy, paranoid solution, then, is to simply stick to the pretentious-- foreign, canonized, or experimental films which will never have the whiff of popularism or uncoolness. At worst, they will be slight and irrelevant. One risks nothing.
I find this to be absolutely unacceptable. Take the superior movie "Reds." Nearly all the same things (as in #1) could be said about Reds as about Schindler's List, and while Reds is probably going to have a comeback with its recent DVD release, I can imagine a good number of snobs having to wait another 10 or 20 years to realize how great this movie is, until it takes its place among (deservedly canonized) movies like "Dog Day Afternoon", "The French Connection," "Bonnie and Clyde," etc.
The point here is that being PRETENTIOUS (in avoidance of the obviously pretentious hollywood dreck and anything paranoiacally associated with it) means, not that you are avoiding all criticism ("at least i didn't accidentally like schindler's list"), but that you are infantilizing your taste, and are exposed to the critique (by me, at least) that there is actually no taste to be discerned in such an obviously defensive move.
You may also take the above as an indictment of hipsterism. Rather than being cutting-edge, in the negative sense hipsterism is a cowardly retreat behind unassailable categories of elitism, the avant garde, the imported, the sheltered. It waits around for something to be deemed "safe" (latest: doom metal, which would have been the least cool thing in the world ten years ago) while always repeating the same mistake (as with "Reds", which is totally under the radar).
This, you will notice, is the opposite of cutting-edge. It would be better termed as "waiting around". And, as an effort to esablish oneself as having "good taste", it accomplishes quite the reverse: the plainly pretentious exposes itself as having no taste at all.
I digress.
In matters of taste, arbitration can seem arbitrary: why this trend and not another? And although in this short blog I am unable to go into matters such as snobbishness, class-determinations, a history of high and low culture, the hegemony of the bourgeois, the curious (demographically aproportional) ascendency of Jews and gays in determinations of culture (at least in New York), hipsterism, the legacy of the 1960s, and other factors that arbitrate what is cool, please consider these the background and future topics of this blog: to remove the "arbitrary" from arbitration of taste, to "expose it for what it is."
The other day in my Scholarly Writing seminar, we read James English's "Economy of Prestige". I also spilled teriyaki sauce all over the copy I was borrowing, and had to drack down the last hardcover copy in New York City so that the person who loaned it to me would not think I was the world's biggest jerk. In the class discussion, I thought my smartest comment was that, as in Borges' "The Lottery of Babylon," the lottery stops being a system of monetary prizes with clear winners, and becomes an extremely obscure, universal system resistant to ideas of winning/losing or even of an obvious outcome, until the lottery becomes indistinguishable from LIFE, so I thought that the system of prizes in English's narrative has become essentially synonymous with culture. There is no "outside".
However, something like the Criterion Collection has a prestige that is not about prizes, so I dunno... that probably also should be investigated later.
My point for today is this: the word "pretentious" should be used correctly. There is a great moment in Zizek's "Looking Awry" where he calls A River Runs Through it "pretentious". This is the precise meaning of the word. Of course, this example is doubly ironic. One, to cite a prominent philosopher to define the word "pretentious"--- secondly, that this philosopher's "slumming it" by discussing this garbage film is in its own way pretentious.
Nonetheless, I think we may use A River Runs Through it as our definition of pretension, and from there go on to discuss taste. What A River Runs Through it, or, to switch our examples, Schindler's List demonstrates, is a certain paranoia of being unable to distinguish between the "actually good" and the merely "pretentious" (that is, a paranoia which would have saved the Oscar from going to Forrest Gump instead of Pulp Fiction).
Ironically (in the sense that here taste is not discretionary but overheard--and thus arbitrary in an entirely different way), many seem to think that the only way to avoid falling into a trap of "bad taste" is to have an exaggeratedly refined set of "good taste" which ends up being altogether predictable and pretentious.
To simplify:
1) Schindler's List is a wildly successful film by an acclaimed director, about a serious subject, featuring several great performances, based on a literary novel, of an appropriately epic length, a winner of numerous awards and accolades, etc.
2) At the same time, I would be completely shocked to hear anyone (in 2006) cite Schindler's List as being anywhere near a great film, on their list of great films, a film by a great director, of anything approaching artistic relevance, or even a second look, etc.
3) In order to be cool, to have good taste in movies, one must not like Schindler's List. But, this demands a certain paranoia-- should one not like any films similar to Schindler's List? is all of Spielberg off limit? all holocaust movies? all Hollywood movies? all American movies? all 90s movies?
4) If one closed out all spielberg/hollywood/American/90s films, you would certainly weed out a lot of garbage. On the other hand, you would weed out some good stuff.
5) That "good stuff" on the other hand, probably is more popular and therefore susceptible to 'contamination' by uncool teenagers, as in the case of Rushmore, Reservoir Dogs...
6) The easy, paranoid solution, then, is to simply stick to the pretentious-- foreign, canonized, or experimental films which will never have the whiff of popularism or uncoolness. At worst, they will be slight and irrelevant. One risks nothing.
I find this to be absolutely unacceptable. Take the superior movie "Reds." Nearly all the same things (as in #1) could be said about Reds as about Schindler's List, and while Reds is probably going to have a comeback with its recent DVD release, I can imagine a good number of snobs having to wait another 10 or 20 years to realize how great this movie is, until it takes its place among (deservedly canonized) movies like "Dog Day Afternoon", "The French Connection," "Bonnie and Clyde," etc.
The point here is that being PRETENTIOUS (in avoidance of the obviously pretentious hollywood dreck and anything paranoiacally associated with it) means, not that you are avoiding all criticism ("at least i didn't accidentally like schindler's list"), but that you are infantilizing your taste, and are exposed to the critique (by me, at least) that there is actually no taste to be discerned in such an obviously defensive move.
You may also take the above as an indictment of hipsterism. Rather than being cutting-edge, in the negative sense hipsterism is a cowardly retreat behind unassailable categories of elitism, the avant garde, the imported, the sheltered. It waits around for something to be deemed "safe" (latest: doom metal, which would have been the least cool thing in the world ten years ago) while always repeating the same mistake (as with "Reds", which is totally under the radar).
This, you will notice, is the opposite of cutting-edge. It would be better termed as "waiting around". And, as an effort to esablish oneself as having "good taste", it accomplishes quite the reverse: the plainly pretentious exposes itself as having no taste at all.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
ny times publishes words of idiot
Yesterday in the Times was this AWFUL piece on how Starbucks is selling CDs, books, and a "lifestyle" to its millions of coffee-drinkers. What astounds me is that this works, because the logic is seemingly self-defeating: coffee shops have been playing jazz for decades, so why is Starbucks going to succeed in moving a new Herbie Hancock CD where others have failed?
Now, there is only one answer, one which this (ridiculous) article does not provide, but which I can easily give you: *not* that Starbucks has pioneered a new logic of selling culture to the educated, $90,000-a-year crowd which they were incapable of finding elsewhere, but rather that Starbucks has turned into a CONVENIENCE STORE. Like a 7-11 on route 9, where you can buy Travis Tritt's greatest hits along with a Big Gulp, Starbucks is making laziness (one might say: the opposite of even middle-brow culture) the rule of the day.
That is to say, there is a perverse irony that the "aesthetic" that Starbucks sells is, to my thinking, already that of mainstream bourgeois pretension. The Ray Charles CD was actually an inspired product, because that is something most people "know" but don't own-- having been Pepsi's image in the 90s-- but the other examples in the article are actually kind of trashy: Mitch Albom is an Oprah author (Oprah representing the pinnacle of mainstream bourgeois pretension), and "Akeelah and the Bee" was a clear take-off on the sleeper documentary hit "Spellbound". Which is to say, what Starbucks is selling people is what they already know they want: but locating it under one roof.
Another shit-move by the article is not to discuss how Starbucks GOT its cultural currency from association with Barnes and Noble bookstores. Barnes and Noble actually includes the coffee house WITHIN the logic of the bookstore-culture, so that Starbucks selling books and CDs along with coffee is already pre-determined by Barnes and Noble selling Stabucks coffee along with its books.
So, I have compared Starbucks to a one-stop, selling people what they already know they want. But what really gets me is that these "educated" customers who make "$90,000 a year on average" are SO BAD at being snooty, espresso-drinking multiculturalists. To wit, when Starbucks recently started selling the Frank Sinatra classic “In the Wee Small Hours,” sales of that CD went up twentyfold. What moron arrives at the age of 50 (say), with a huge disposable income, a suburban home, an Audi, and a lifestyle involving $5 lattes, harbors a secret desire to listen to Frank Sinatra but is unable to fulfill this wish because Frank Sinatra CDs are SO HARD TO FIND? And so, when they pop up at a Starbucks, he/she thinks "at last! I've been looking for this forever!"
Or even stupider: that someone does not even KNOW that they like Frank Sinatra (maybe the most popular pop musician of the last century) until they hear it at Starbucks. This, more sadly, is probably the case.
“If I hear a CD playing [in Starbucks], I generally like it,” Bette Gottfried, back in the Ardsley store, said. “It’s who I am — baby boomer, upper middle class, a little hippyish, rockish.”
Starbucks stores don’t carry “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Beatles album everyone’s mother could name; they carry “Revolver,” a critical darling without the same overplayed name recognition.
Let's look at that fact that most people would probably be happy just owning a "Greatest Hits" of any particular artist. What is being (unironically) put forward here is that THE BEATLES and FRANK SINATRA are CULT ARTISTS. What is sad is that this obviously WORKS. People clearly buy a Frank Sinatra album or a Beatles album and go home feeling like they are possibly a bit slyer, more cultured than their neighbors. A bit jazzier. A bit more "critically astute".
Starbucks is so much better at selling these things to its customers than I would be, as I would adopt an ironic/meta/condescending attitude towards the buyers. The (evil) genius of Starbucks is not to say, "Oh, hey you should have this Frank Sinatra album, because you are sophisticated and it is essential to that pose." But RATHER, to say to SUV-driving, sweatpants-wearing, Robin-Williams-movie-renting middle-executive SLOBS, with total ingenuousness, "Hey, fellow coffee-drinker...yeah...this music *is* good...what is it?... oh man, Frank Sinatra...yeah, I love the old guy, "old blue eyes"... I have "Duets" and it is really great...oh, you have the CD here in the store...yeah, just throw it on the bill, b/c I'm paying with a credit card anyways...oh, it's his EARLY stuff...oh man, this is so cool."
See, being ironic and spiteful, I would try and capitalize on people's innate pretensiousness from MY perspective of what that means. Starbucks is so successful because it recognizes that, to the clueless idiot, what is really "new" and "culturally sophisticated" is just a variation that has been completely played out elsewhere for everyone but them.
Now, there is only one answer, one which this (ridiculous) article does not provide, but which I can easily give you: *not* that Starbucks has pioneered a new logic of selling culture to the educated, $90,000-a-year crowd which they were incapable of finding elsewhere, but rather that Starbucks has turned into a CONVENIENCE STORE. Like a 7-11 on route 9, where you can buy Travis Tritt's greatest hits along with a Big Gulp, Starbucks is making laziness (one might say: the opposite of even middle-brow culture) the rule of the day.
That is to say, there is a perverse irony that the "aesthetic" that Starbucks sells is, to my thinking, already that of mainstream bourgeois pretension. The Ray Charles CD was actually an inspired product, because that is something most people "know" but don't own-- having been Pepsi's image in the 90s-- but the other examples in the article are actually kind of trashy: Mitch Albom is an Oprah author (Oprah representing the pinnacle of mainstream bourgeois pretension), and "Akeelah and the Bee" was a clear take-off on the sleeper documentary hit "Spellbound". Which is to say, what Starbucks is selling people is what they already know they want: but locating it under one roof.
Another shit-move by the article is not to discuss how Starbucks GOT its cultural currency from association with Barnes and Noble bookstores. Barnes and Noble actually includes the coffee house WITHIN the logic of the bookstore-culture, so that Starbucks selling books and CDs along with coffee is already pre-determined by Barnes and Noble selling Stabucks coffee along with its books.
So, I have compared Starbucks to a one-stop, selling people what they already know they want. But what really gets me is that these "educated" customers who make "$90,000 a year on average" are SO BAD at being snooty, espresso-drinking multiculturalists. To wit, when Starbucks recently started selling the Frank Sinatra classic “In the Wee Small Hours,” sales of that CD went up twentyfold. What moron arrives at the age of 50 (say), with a huge disposable income, a suburban home, an Audi, and a lifestyle involving $5 lattes, harbors a secret desire to listen to Frank Sinatra but is unable to fulfill this wish because Frank Sinatra CDs are SO HARD TO FIND? And so, when they pop up at a Starbucks, he/she thinks "at last! I've been looking for this forever!"
Or even stupider: that someone does not even KNOW that they like Frank Sinatra (maybe the most popular pop musician of the last century) until they hear it at Starbucks. This, more sadly, is probably the case.
“If I hear a CD playing [in Starbucks], I generally like it,” Bette Gottfried, back in the Ardsley store, said. “It’s who I am — baby boomer, upper middle class, a little hippyish, rockish.”
Starbucks stores don’t carry “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Beatles album everyone’s mother could name; they carry “Revolver,” a critical darling without the same overplayed name recognition.
Let's look at that fact that most people would probably be happy just owning a "Greatest Hits" of any particular artist. What is being (unironically) put forward here is that THE BEATLES and FRANK SINATRA are CULT ARTISTS. What is sad is that this obviously WORKS. People clearly buy a Frank Sinatra album or a Beatles album and go home feeling like they are possibly a bit slyer, more cultured than their neighbors. A bit jazzier. A bit more "critically astute".
Starbucks is so much better at selling these things to its customers than I would be, as I would adopt an ironic/meta/condescending attitude towards the buyers. The (evil) genius of Starbucks is not to say, "Oh, hey you should have this Frank Sinatra album, because you are sophisticated and it is essential to that pose." But RATHER, to say to SUV-driving, sweatpants-wearing, Robin-Williams-movie-renting middle-executive SLOBS, with total ingenuousness, "Hey, fellow coffee-drinker...yeah...this music *is* good...what is it?... oh man, Frank Sinatra...yeah, I love the old guy, "old blue eyes"... I have "Duets" and it is really great...oh, you have the CD here in the store...yeah, just throw it on the bill, b/c I'm paying with a credit card anyways...oh, it's his EARLY stuff...oh man, this is so cool."
See, being ironic and spiteful, I would try and capitalize on people's innate pretensiousness from MY perspective of what that means. Starbucks is so successful because it recognizes that, to the clueless idiot, what is really "new" and "culturally sophisticated" is just a variation that has been completely played out elsewhere for everyone but them.
Monday, October 16, 2006
ipods
So. I don't have an iPod. I want one. But I would use my ipod as an arena in which mp3s I download would battle for my attention, for the honor of being purchased on vinyl as part of complete albums/singles. I buy music. For me, owning music is important, and not because of copyright issues. This is an increasingly outdated viewpoint, it seems, but I hope to show why I think it is the only way for someone who really enjoys music beyond background-noise.
This will seem condescending, I think. No one wants to hear that they do not "truly appreciate" music. So I hope to show the advantages TO listening of NOT downloading, which might seem counterintuitive.
1) It is easy to have "good taste" when you can download anything in the world for free.
...and yet! How rarely is this the case! Normally when I scroll through someone's ipod, it is a collection of inoffensive, friendly, unremarkable music that could be gotten with no research and less than an expansive taste. I remain unconvinced that downloading music broadens one's tastes, although it certainly has that possibility. I would say that it is because there is no risk to downloading something. Because you have not spent any money on it, you can simply send an album to the recycle bin after listening to one song. This makes for a conservative taste.
2) There is no reason to put in any time with an album/artist in mp3 format.
Separated from album art, lyrics, band photos, any sense of a discrete form, the mp3 really makes no demands on the listener to be absorbed, reckoned with, debated, "acquired" (as a taste), etc. So you end up with this completely ephemeral aesthetic, which demands instant attention and instant approval, and I would say that most tastes are acquired tastes-- songs, albums, artists, and styles which require some effort to "get into". I guess that is up for debate.
3) In an infinite space, there is no way to hierarchize one's preferences.
That sounds more boring than I really mean it to. What I mean to say is that our attachments to music are normally located around a "favorite song," or a memory, or something having to do with an experience/emotion we want to play over again and again. No one's *original* favorite song would be an abstract Eno noise-scape. It is probably a Temptations song, or something we can really latch onto-- catchy, good lyrics, easy to relate to.
So, if in point #1, I argue that downloading music makes for conservative tastes, here I am arguing that downloading music onto an infinitely capacious hard drive makes it impossible to ever have again the experience of listening to "Ain't To Proud to Beg" a million times in a row just because you just got the Big Chill soundtrack and are compelled to listen to it over and over. It is not just one spot on an infinite playlist.
4) But, Ben, don't you buy more records than you can possibly listen to very closely?
Fair enough. And I'm sure that some people listen to mp3s in ways that I would completely approve of, too. But there is something about the RECORD that is so much more endearing. It has an identity of its own, you physically interact with it, you have to take care of it, you can show it to other people, you can skip songs but you can't just get rid of them, you can play the same side over and over again, read the lyrics along with it, but mostly: you are responsible to a record. It is not abstract. If you treat it badly, it will sound bad. If you don't listen to it, you will have wasted your money. If you lose the art, it becomes contextless. And I think this is what taking music seriously is about: having some relationship *back* to the music. Knowing that "if I don't preserve this (melody, context, aesthetic), maybe no one else will."
This will seem condescending, I think. No one wants to hear that they do not "truly appreciate" music. So I hope to show the advantages TO listening of NOT downloading, which might seem counterintuitive.
1) It is easy to have "good taste" when you can download anything in the world for free.
...and yet! How rarely is this the case! Normally when I scroll through someone's ipod, it is a collection of inoffensive, friendly, unremarkable music that could be gotten with no research and less than an expansive taste. I remain unconvinced that downloading music broadens one's tastes, although it certainly has that possibility. I would say that it is because there is no risk to downloading something. Because you have not spent any money on it, you can simply send an album to the recycle bin after listening to one song. This makes for a conservative taste.
2) There is no reason to put in any time with an album/artist in mp3 format.
Separated from album art, lyrics, band photos, any sense of a discrete form, the mp3 really makes no demands on the listener to be absorbed, reckoned with, debated, "acquired" (as a taste), etc. So you end up with this completely ephemeral aesthetic, which demands instant attention and instant approval, and I would say that most tastes are acquired tastes-- songs, albums, artists, and styles which require some effort to "get into". I guess that is up for debate.
3) In an infinite space, there is no way to hierarchize one's preferences.
That sounds more boring than I really mean it to. What I mean to say is that our attachments to music are normally located around a "favorite song," or a memory, or something having to do with an experience/emotion we want to play over again and again. No one's *original* favorite song would be an abstract Eno noise-scape. It is probably a Temptations song, or something we can really latch onto-- catchy, good lyrics, easy to relate to.
So, if in point #1, I argue that downloading music makes for conservative tastes, here I am arguing that downloading music onto an infinitely capacious hard drive makes it impossible to ever have again the experience of listening to "Ain't To Proud to Beg" a million times in a row just because you just got the Big Chill soundtrack and are compelled to listen to it over and over. It is not just one spot on an infinite playlist.
4) But, Ben, don't you buy more records than you can possibly listen to very closely?
Fair enough. And I'm sure that some people listen to mp3s in ways that I would completely approve of, too. But there is something about the RECORD that is so much more endearing. It has an identity of its own, you physically interact with it, you have to take care of it, you can show it to other people, you can skip songs but you can't just get rid of them, you can play the same side over and over again, read the lyrics along with it, but mostly: you are responsible to a record. It is not abstract. If you treat it badly, it will sound bad. If you don't listen to it, you will have wasted your money. If you lose the art, it becomes contextless. And I think this is what taking music seriously is about: having some relationship *back* to the music. Knowing that "if I don't preserve this (melody, context, aesthetic), maybe no one else will."
Thursday, October 12, 2006
a few more comments
Well, since it's my blog, I figure I don't need to only make comments in the "comments" section of my posts, but please see the last post for some more on that topic.
But here's more:
-- I think I can trace a genealogy of hipster lingo to jazz song titles (unlike pop song titles, don't need to "mean" anything or say anything about the song---mostly arbitrary) and dadaism. This is to draw a line between dadaism and surrealism. Magritte (a surrealist for our purposes), writes "This is not a pipe" (in french of course) underneath a picture of a pipe. Famously, this is true and false at the same time, because literally, it is not a pipe. It is only a PICTURE of a pipe. Duchamp putting a urinal in an art gallery, however, requires no caption. ("Fountain" is metonymic, it's the same thing once removed. It's not necessary.) The reference is to the viewer's expectations- it is a provocation. Magritte is not provoking you: he is telling you the TRUTH. It *is not* a pipe.
-- In a comment in the last post, I discuss the circular defense this lingo puts around itself. To quote TS Eliot, these are "fragments shored against the ruins" of an identity. It is not new; I am not impressed. I am replying to a poster who writes that to reference something outside of oneself is to admit that the self is absent, that saying "Misfits Fan" is substituting for something absent. I dunno. Surely that line has to be drawn somewhere. I would argue, with a certain amount of eye-rolling, that maybe my interests (Proust + the Misfits, to be reductive) DOES add up to something new. But it seems to me that the comment overstates identification. You don't need Freud to tell you that a lot of "becoming" takes place by processes of "identification" and "recognition." And that what is different (in the other) exists only in relation to a difference in you. So, the space between the self and what it identifies with is clearly important. That is why I wonder what has happened in hipsterism, where identitification is either missing or ironized, as if there were a fear that the space left between identification and identity wouldn't be enough.
But here's more:
-- I think I can trace a genealogy of hipster lingo to jazz song titles (unlike pop song titles, don't need to "mean" anything or say anything about the song---mostly arbitrary) and dadaism. This is to draw a line between dadaism and surrealism. Magritte (a surrealist for our purposes), writes "This is not a pipe" (in french of course) underneath a picture of a pipe. Famously, this is true and false at the same time, because literally, it is not a pipe. It is only a PICTURE of a pipe. Duchamp putting a urinal in an art gallery, however, requires no caption. ("Fountain" is metonymic, it's the same thing once removed. It's not necessary.) The reference is to the viewer's expectations- it is a provocation. Magritte is not provoking you: he is telling you the TRUTH. It *is not* a pipe.
-- In a comment in the last post, I discuss the circular defense this lingo puts around itself. To quote TS Eliot, these are "fragments shored against the ruins" of an identity. It is not new; I am not impressed. I am replying to a poster who writes that to reference something outside of oneself is to admit that the self is absent, that saying "Misfits Fan" is substituting for something absent. I dunno. Surely that line has to be drawn somewhere. I would argue, with a certain amount of eye-rolling, that maybe my interests (Proust + the Misfits, to be reductive) DOES add up to something new. But it seems to me that the comment overstates identification. You don't need Freud to tell you that a lot of "becoming" takes place by processes of "identification" and "recognition." And that what is different (in the other) exists only in relation to a difference in you. So, the space between the self and what it identifies with is clearly important. That is why I wonder what has happened in hipsterism, where identitification is either missing or ironized, as if there were a fear that the space left between identification and identity wouldn't be enough.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
I realize a lot of things can be reduced to unenlightening truisms or platitudes, or disposable "advice" such as, "mean what you say, and say what you mean." On the other hand, taken to heart, that is probably the most important advice you will get today (and I am giving you this bit of advice).
In class today, someone said the word "equates" when they meant "relates" or "indicates" or "reflects", etc. This is an innocent enough mistake. It is hard to think of the right words, so we rush past the exact right one, to make our larger point. As baffling as Derrida has been, this has been the lesson I (and now you) can learn from it: mean what it is that you are saying. Say what it is that you mean. There, you have one of the most terrifyingly difficult French philosophers, brutally summarized, and in a perfectly useless way. Surely this example ("equates" instead of "indicates") has not hit home with you.
This post is an attack on laziness. On linguistic laziness (now), on laziness in thought, and (finally) laziness in identity. I am not arguing for a humorless "sincerity", nor do I have my mother's professed opposition to people "being fake" (because there is no true self, DUH). But I think it is worth thinking through the difference between "equates" and "relates", if what you mean to say is the second one. Let's be rigorous. For one thing, *I* do not want to be summarized incorrectly (see a few posts back) as having "equated" something, when I only "related" something. This is a terror I have. I am a decent enough writer, I can stop and start over a sentence if it is not going well, if I realize that I am going to have to fudge a verb or a metaphor or a preposition. In a blog, in conversation, often enough I'll just leave it sloppy, so that my meaning is clear, though it comes out as badly written. This is especially true when you are setting up binaries, which is a common rhetorical approach (parallelism and contrast), but halfway through the sentence you realize this isn't a real opposition, or your metaphor is wrong, or you even chose the wrong first word ("although" when you really mean "regardless")--- this is all a sort of rhetorical autopilot.
What this leads to, in large enough quantities, is an imprecision that makes what we are saying nonsense. I think this is a) too obvious, and b) too hysterical a point to dwell on here. What I would like to talk about instead is the laziness, not of ideology or politics, but of people's self-formation. I was lecturing someone about this earlier, in the context of people's internet profiles, which are a really good and a really bad way to form opinions about someone. Good, because how people represent themselves is important. Bad, because people almost always represent themselves poorly.
What I cannot stand is people COMMITTED to ironizing, delaying, obscuring, and creating a nearly-universal language of avoidance, in these forums. I think we are all familiar with a hipster dialect of mystical animal/improbable verb to construct a record title or internet handle. This may also include adjectives like "awesome" or questionable signifiers like "AIDS".
So, "AIDS Wolf" is a band, but also "Awesome Color" and "Japanther". Presumably all of this will sound incredibly dated in a few years, just as the two words "Surrealistic" and "Pillow" now clearly reek of a precisely-dateable pretension. On the other hand, at least you know what you are getting ("surrealistic" might as well say "psychadelic").
Here, as a counter-example, I would cite my two of my own internet "names": "Misfits Fan" (my email) and "S/s", my name on myspace. The Misfits are my favorite band, and S/s (signifier determines subject) is probably the most important concept in philosophy for me, and a key part of my favorite book In Search of Lost Time. Nuff said. I mean these things. "Japanther" means nothing. And also, fair enough--it doesn't have to. We're all postmodern here, right?
My contention would be that, yes, we are all being postmodern here. There is irony in "misfits fan" (it makes me sound like a 15 year old), and in "S/s" (what the fuck does it mean?), but at the same time, these are two VERY important things to me, rendered as if they were just floating signifiers. They aren't. But I am pretending that they are, since I am using them to "name" me. So, for me, I would say, this is my huge critique of the Hipster: get a self. Stay with it. Play with it, by all means. Have fun. Use language and images and signifiers, as freely as you like. But at the end of the day, MEAN something. You don't have to "stand for something"; I am not being political here. Be a person. Consolidate your objects and your desires into something that goes beyond evasion and posturing. I have an idea of what it is like to mature and to get into new things; this doesn't have to be everyone's. I do not ask anyone to be twee and wear their hearts on their sleeves, or to be humorless, or worst of all to be ME, but more's the pity if you turn 30 and you realize you have merely been rotating your self out on a 6-month schedule.
In class today, someone said the word "equates" when they meant "relates" or "indicates" or "reflects", etc. This is an innocent enough mistake. It is hard to think of the right words, so we rush past the exact right one, to make our larger point. As baffling as Derrida has been, this has been the lesson I (and now you) can learn from it: mean what it is that you are saying. Say what it is that you mean. There, you have one of the most terrifyingly difficult French philosophers, brutally summarized, and in a perfectly useless way. Surely this example ("equates" instead of "indicates") has not hit home with you.
This post is an attack on laziness. On linguistic laziness (now), on laziness in thought, and (finally) laziness in identity. I am not arguing for a humorless "sincerity", nor do I have my mother's professed opposition to people "being fake" (because there is no true self, DUH). But I think it is worth thinking through the difference between "equates" and "relates", if what you mean to say is the second one. Let's be rigorous. For one thing, *I* do not want to be summarized incorrectly (see a few posts back) as having "equated" something, when I only "related" something. This is a terror I have. I am a decent enough writer, I can stop and start over a sentence if it is not going well, if I realize that I am going to have to fudge a verb or a metaphor or a preposition. In a blog, in conversation, often enough I'll just leave it sloppy, so that my meaning is clear, though it comes out as badly written. This is especially true when you are setting up binaries, which is a common rhetorical approach (parallelism and contrast), but halfway through the sentence you realize this isn't a real opposition, or your metaphor is wrong, or you even chose the wrong first word ("although" when you really mean "regardless")--- this is all a sort of rhetorical autopilot.
What this leads to, in large enough quantities, is an imprecision that makes what we are saying nonsense. I think this is a) too obvious, and b) too hysterical a point to dwell on here. What I would like to talk about instead is the laziness, not of ideology or politics, but of people's self-formation. I was lecturing someone about this earlier, in the context of people's internet profiles, which are a really good and a really bad way to form opinions about someone. Good, because how people represent themselves is important. Bad, because people almost always represent themselves poorly.
What I cannot stand is people COMMITTED to ironizing, delaying, obscuring, and creating a nearly-universal language of avoidance, in these forums. I think we are all familiar with a hipster dialect of mystical animal/improbable verb to construct a record title or internet handle. This may also include adjectives like "awesome" or questionable signifiers like "AIDS".
So, "AIDS Wolf" is a band, but also "Awesome Color" and "Japanther". Presumably all of this will sound incredibly dated in a few years, just as the two words "Surrealistic" and "Pillow" now clearly reek of a precisely-dateable pretension. On the other hand, at least you know what you are getting ("surrealistic" might as well say "psychadelic").
Here, as a counter-example, I would cite my two of my own internet "names": "Misfits Fan" (my email) and "S/s", my name on myspace. The Misfits are my favorite band, and S/s (signifier determines subject) is probably the most important concept in philosophy for me, and a key part of my favorite book In Search of Lost Time. Nuff said. I mean these things. "Japanther" means nothing. And also, fair enough--it doesn't have to. We're all postmodern here, right?
My contention would be that, yes, we are all being postmodern here. There is irony in "misfits fan" (it makes me sound like a 15 year old), and in "S/s" (what the fuck does it mean?), but at the same time, these are two VERY important things to me, rendered as if they were just floating signifiers. They aren't. But I am pretending that they are, since I am using them to "name" me. So, for me, I would say, this is my huge critique of the Hipster: get a self. Stay with it. Play with it, by all means. Have fun. Use language and images and signifiers, as freely as you like. But at the end of the day, MEAN something. You don't have to "stand for something"; I am not being political here. Be a person. Consolidate your objects and your desires into something that goes beyond evasion and posturing. I have an idea of what it is like to mature and to get into new things; this doesn't have to be everyone's. I do not ask anyone to be twee and wear their hearts on their sleeves, or to be humorless, or worst of all to be ME, but more's the pity if you turn 30 and you realize you have merely been rotating your self out on a 6-month schedule.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
why "i'm trying to get into that" is the most beautiful phrase in the english language
the reasons may not be what you think!!
How charming and embarrassing is being "open minded"? Is there any other term that is so necessary for our existence as human beings in society and culture that is simultaneously full of cheesy connotations?
That is on a general level. Specifically, is there anything more embarrassing than buying a Bob Marley album?
In one way, I think that being "open minded" (like so many other things in this blog) needs to be kept in quotation marks, because it really is a morally questionable value. I am not a fan (lightly put) of cultural relativism, of the pretense of tolerance, of an undifferentiated taste, etc.
On the other hand, we need to get into new things. We need to find out that certain things are not worth getting into. We need to abandon some things as we get older, and realize what is still cool about the things that will always matter.
I'd like to emphasize "trying" to get into something. Maybe it won't work. It's not even "I want to get into that" or "that's something I want to learn more about." It's already an experiment in taste as an effort, as something acquired.
Now, lest all this sound obvious--which is always the criticism I got from Jeanette-- let me say there is a certain value in these blanket statements which I don't think are *quite* platitudes. I think a platitude is like, "We need to learn to understand each other," or "you never know what is really important until you've lost it." Even worse, and very typical, are mere cliches to which can be produced an equally accurate truth--as is inevitably the case with the proverbial ("two heads are better than one" vs "too many cooks in the kitchen..."). What I think Jeanette was failing to understand, and that it requires a frank unembarrassment to overcome, is the value of a number of very basic propositions, just as a good amount of the supposedly Canonical goes ignored because it is shameful. Now, in this blog at least, I pose as a fairly UNembarrassed person, but I have to resist the tendency to be aloof and superior as regards statements or tastes that, while requiring some deconstruction and qualification, are necessary. Hence, open-mindedness. Open-mindedness to the idea of being open minded.
Now, place all this in the context of what you know about me and those prejudices of mine which I am *not* open to reconsidering, and you will get a fair idea of what I mean here. For example, I think post-Wes Anderson/indie-rock/hipster-lite/20-something/Pitchfork culture offers a great deal to INDUCE VOMITING, ditto the bourgeois and the midwest and LA, and I think that open-mindedness as a variation on pretension is so rampant as to obscure the good faith I am proposing.
How charming and embarrassing is being "open minded"? Is there any other term that is so necessary for our existence as human beings in society and culture that is simultaneously full of cheesy connotations?
That is on a general level. Specifically, is there anything more embarrassing than buying a Bob Marley album?
In one way, I think that being "open minded" (like so many other things in this blog) needs to be kept in quotation marks, because it really is a morally questionable value. I am not a fan (lightly put) of cultural relativism, of the pretense of tolerance, of an undifferentiated taste, etc.
On the other hand, we need to get into new things. We need to find out that certain things are not worth getting into. We need to abandon some things as we get older, and realize what is still cool about the things that will always matter.
I'd like to emphasize "trying" to get into something. Maybe it won't work. It's not even "I want to get into that" or "that's something I want to learn more about." It's already an experiment in taste as an effort, as something acquired.
Now, lest all this sound obvious--which is always the criticism I got from Jeanette-- let me say there is a certain value in these blanket statements which I don't think are *quite* platitudes. I think a platitude is like, "We need to learn to understand each other," or "you never know what is really important until you've lost it." Even worse, and very typical, are mere cliches to which can be produced an equally accurate truth--as is inevitably the case with the proverbial ("two heads are better than one" vs "too many cooks in the kitchen..."). What I think Jeanette was failing to understand, and that it requires a frank unembarrassment to overcome, is the value of a number of very basic propositions, just as a good amount of the supposedly Canonical goes ignored because it is shameful. Now, in this blog at least, I pose as a fairly UNembarrassed person, but I have to resist the tendency to be aloof and superior as regards statements or tastes that, while requiring some deconstruction and qualification, are necessary. Hence, open-mindedness. Open-mindedness to the idea of being open minded.
Now, place all this in the context of what you know about me and those prejudices of mine which I am *not* open to reconsidering, and you will get a fair idea of what I mean here. For example, I think post-Wes Anderson/indie-rock/hipster-lite/20-something/Pitchfork culture offers a great deal to INDUCE VOMITING, ditto the bourgeois and the midwest and LA, and I think that open-mindedness as a variation on pretension is so rampant as to obscure the good faith I am proposing.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
-- People who "don't care about music" listen to shitty music. I guess that seems like an obvious point, but since the inverse could just as easily be true, it actually doesn't make sense. Have you ever met someone who "doesn't care about finding out about music," who is not a record-collector, who doesn't seek out new artists, who listens to "just whatever it is I enjoy," who listens to like, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix-- that is, completely well-known and accessible artists? --or, you know, just listen to classic music? Instead, the opposite is nearly always true, that people who "just listen to whatever" listen to music I've never heard of, which is terrible, disposable, and constantly changing.
My point is not (only) to insult people who listen to mp3 blogs, movie soundtrack albums, re-mixes, covers, or the radio, or buy CDs at Starbucks--- although as I have said, these people's "whatever" attitude actually seems to involve MORE effort at listening to WORSE music than if you just bought the top 20 albums on that Rolling Stone list--- it is that there is no such thing as a "neutral" or "whatever" attitude, really. Someone who "doesn't read" is 10x more likely to pick up a not-acclaimed, anonymous mass-market mystery, than to read a famous novel like The Grapes of Wrath. Someone who claims to hold some position outside of taste is actually an enemy of taste, and not just an innocent bystander.
Two things: how does someone arrive at a "whatever" attitude, in a culture which is inundated with reviews, lists, music videos, Barnes and Noble Classics, the Criterion Collection, employee picks, and THE INTERNET?, and secondly, what is the "message" of this position? My contention would be that it is a secondary position-- that of being defeated by or of rejecting this culture of taste/the canon/the new. This is why no one who supposedly "doesn't care" about music doesn't simply stumble upon having really good taste, by accident and by the massive availability of good music. You've got to really want it, to be into total crap. And someone who has this neutral attitude is not AS likely to stumble onto something great as to something banal and mainstream. The mainstream AT LEAST serves a regulatory function-- it is still where some aspects of culture occur. But the mainstream is actually fairly risqué, and stumbles forward unwittingly. I have no *real* beef with mainstream culture, which has given us The Simpsons, among other things. What I would like to see destroyed is the attitude that masquerades as indifference to culture (even mainstream culture), while at the same time despising culture, erecting of taste an Idol that will condescend to them, that they may hate it and plan its destruction.
My point is not (only) to insult people who listen to mp3 blogs, movie soundtrack albums, re-mixes, covers, or the radio, or buy CDs at Starbucks--- although as I have said, these people's "whatever" attitude actually seems to involve MORE effort at listening to WORSE music than if you just bought the top 20 albums on that Rolling Stone list--- it is that there is no such thing as a "neutral" or "whatever" attitude, really. Someone who "doesn't read" is 10x more likely to pick up a not-acclaimed, anonymous mass-market mystery, than to read a famous novel like The Grapes of Wrath. Someone who claims to hold some position outside of taste is actually an enemy of taste, and not just an innocent bystander.
Two things: how does someone arrive at a "whatever" attitude, in a culture which is inundated with reviews, lists, music videos, Barnes and Noble Classics, the Criterion Collection, employee picks, and THE INTERNET?, and secondly, what is the "message" of this position? My contention would be that it is a secondary position-- that of being defeated by or of rejecting this culture of taste/the canon/the new. This is why no one who supposedly "doesn't care" about music doesn't simply stumble upon having really good taste, by accident and by the massive availability of good music. You've got to really want it, to be into total crap. And someone who has this neutral attitude is not AS likely to stumble onto something great as to something banal and mainstream. The mainstream AT LEAST serves a regulatory function-- it is still where some aspects of culture occur. But the mainstream is actually fairly risqué, and stumbles forward unwittingly. I have no *real* beef with mainstream culture, which has given us The Simpsons, among other things. What I would like to see destroyed is the attitude that masquerades as indifference to culture (even mainstream culture), while at the same time despising culture, erecting of taste an Idol that will condescend to them, that they may hate it and plan its destruction.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
a few comments regarding taste in music
Part I:
Walter Pater says, "all art aspires to the condition of music": in our modern world, this means to be constantly sampled in car commercials, rap songs, summarized in cursory greatest hits collections, butchered in covers, and turned off at parties in favor of reggaeton.
Yet music does hold an unique position. Music, after TV, is the most quickly consumed form of art. It takes thirty minutes to watch a TV show, and thirty minutes to listen to an album, but you don't really take it all in on the first listen, whereas you are supposed to have taken in an entire episode of, say, Drew Carey, in order to follow his zany adventures next week.
However, there is so little TV (would that this were true!) that it would be hard to really define oneself by the TV one watches. The most die-hard fan of Lost probably has not seen any more episodes than someone with nothing better to do most nights and catches the missed episodes in reruns. Moreover, the mass audience and mass appeal of popular TV prevent differentiation (from others) and intimate relation (to the show), respectively. Even being a huge fan of The Simpsons and Law and Order, I find not only little in common with most other fans, but I'm not even sure what it would mean to identify with these shows.
In literature, the moral conceptions, plots, and style of a given author are so unique (the opposite of TV's condition) that there can be no identical relation to an ouevre.
Films simply take too long to watch to meet our criteria here. Even among my favorite movies, there are few that I have seen even a dozen times. In a sense, one *moves on* from a movie after far less contact than with a record. (This could also be said of books, although it is not the main objection).
Art is too expensive. I would possibly allow that an art "movement" could work here, though, were one involved.
Poetry almost succeeds, but how many times can one read a poem?
Exceptions:
1) Trekkies
2) Tolkien fans
3) anyone leading some sort of expatriate, drunk "poetic" lifestyle (warning: you are a cliche!)
Which leaves music as the easiest art form with which to form a social bond-- and therefore a defining one.
Part II:
Walter Pater says, "all art aspires to the condition of music": in our modern world, this means to be constantly sampled in car commercials, rap songs, summarized in cursory greatest hits collections, butchered in covers, and turned off at parties in favor of reggaeton.
However, what interests me is the dialectic of taste. The other day, I was (half) joking when I said that I wanted to get into jazz because I wanted my music to be more dialectical. However, one's taste is already dialectical. What is taste, but a winding, mistake-filled dialectic which finds itself in the end through tribulation and identification?
In this sense, it is hard to argue with *and* hard to credit someone with really shitty taste in music. No one is born liking shitty music. This is something that must be arrived at. In the same way, however, liking shitty music is inherently valid. [Although, I should say that I once heard someone say, "I don't like the music that I like," and I suppose their earlier taste had not been constructed on firm ground.]
However, this process is essentially a reductive one. To wit, what people LIKE about the music they like is not a good guarantor of what they will like about the music they don't already like. We imagine that we have "cornered" our tastes from a really wide field, but the ordering of the points where one approaches each genre is colored by the previous instance. I know a lot of people approach black metal from the noise or hardcore scenes (for instance), and want to hear in that music what they already like, but this normally ends up with the WORST taste in black metal. What happens is that people decide "i don't like that kind of vocals" or "i don't like the production on this", but at the same time they listen to Modernlifeiswar is something, which is hardly the music an infant would choose at the outset, from the entire field of creative endeavor.
I do think that someone can simply "suck at listening to music." Old people, for instance, who insist that a distorted guitar is "angry" while the exact same notes, played acoustically, are "happy". Or people who insist that a particular form of pop-rock, with different inflections of instrumentation, somehow constitutes a new genre.
In short, (and to be honest I have to go eat some potato chips right now and can't continue this until later) musical taste should reproduce the wise words of Mr. Eliot: We shall not cease from exploration: And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time.
Which is just to say, not that one should "taste every flavor" or "understand the history of a music before he forms his opinion"--nothing so trite--but that with each new song we hear, we simultaneously have to bring every song we've ever heard into the headphones with us, and to forget them at the same time. I do not believe there is such a thing as "being open-minded," nor that all music is equally valid, etc., but I would like to start thinking about (good) taste not as something one "has" or arrives at, but as maybe this other thing outlined above.
---i am staying up all night in order to touch my mousepad every hour so that my computer does not shut down, so that my download of the new Fucked Up album will continue without incident
---today I wore blue suede shoes; there were no remarks.
---if you convince me to buy an expensive reissue and i don't like it, we have beef [b33f]
---the construction "which" as a relative possessive pronoun is so egregious that it does not even occur as an "erroneous" usage in the OED--- and yet I snuck it by in my senior thesis. oops!
---no one likes being told they should go listen to "the teddy bears' picnic"
--- generate your own (meaningless) graduate paper
---text message distro updates=the future is here
---"veering towards solipsism"= the definition of my life/method
---all complaints about the content of this blog should be directed to the fact that I spend all day in the library
Walter Pater says, "all art aspires to the condition of music": in our modern world, this means to be constantly sampled in car commercials, rap songs, summarized in cursory greatest hits collections, butchered in covers, and turned off at parties in favor of reggaeton.
Yet music does hold an unique position. Music, after TV, is the most quickly consumed form of art. It takes thirty minutes to watch a TV show, and thirty minutes to listen to an album, but you don't really take it all in on the first listen, whereas you are supposed to have taken in an entire episode of, say, Drew Carey, in order to follow his zany adventures next week.
However, there is so little TV (would that this were true!) that it would be hard to really define oneself by the TV one watches. The most die-hard fan of Lost probably has not seen any more episodes than someone with nothing better to do most nights and catches the missed episodes in reruns. Moreover, the mass audience and mass appeal of popular TV prevent differentiation (from others) and intimate relation (to the show), respectively. Even being a huge fan of The Simpsons and Law and Order, I find not only little in common with most other fans, but I'm not even sure what it would mean to identify with these shows.
In literature, the moral conceptions, plots, and style of a given author are so unique (the opposite of TV's condition) that there can be no identical relation to an ouevre.
Films simply take too long to watch to meet our criteria here. Even among my favorite movies, there are few that I have seen even a dozen times. In a sense, one *moves on* from a movie after far less contact than with a record. (This could also be said of books, although it is not the main objection).
Art is too expensive. I would possibly allow that an art "movement" could work here, though, were one involved.
Poetry almost succeeds, but how many times can one read a poem?
Exceptions:
1) Trekkies
2) Tolkien fans
3) anyone leading some sort of expatriate, drunk "poetic" lifestyle (warning: you are a cliche!)
Which leaves music as the easiest art form with which to form a social bond-- and therefore a defining one.
Part II:
Walter Pater says, "all art aspires to the condition of music": in our modern world, this means to be constantly sampled in car commercials, rap songs, summarized in cursory greatest hits collections, butchered in covers, and turned off at parties in favor of reggaeton.
However, what interests me is the dialectic of taste. The other day, I was (half) joking when I said that I wanted to get into jazz because I wanted my music to be more dialectical. However, one's taste is already dialectical. What is taste, but a winding, mistake-filled dialectic which finds itself in the end through tribulation and identification?
In this sense, it is hard to argue with *and* hard to credit someone with really shitty taste in music. No one is born liking shitty music. This is something that must be arrived at. In the same way, however, liking shitty music is inherently valid. [Although, I should say that I once heard someone say, "I don't like the music that I like," and I suppose their earlier taste had not been constructed on firm ground.]
However, this process is essentially a reductive one. To wit, what people LIKE about the music they like is not a good guarantor of what they will like about the music they don't already like. We imagine that we have "cornered" our tastes from a really wide field, but the ordering of the points where one approaches each genre is colored by the previous instance. I know a lot of people approach black metal from the noise or hardcore scenes (for instance), and want to hear in that music what they already like, but this normally ends up with the WORST taste in black metal. What happens is that people decide "i don't like that kind of vocals" or "i don't like the production on this", but at the same time they listen to Modernlifeiswar is something, which is hardly the music an infant would choose at the outset, from the entire field of creative endeavor.
I do think that someone can simply "suck at listening to music." Old people, for instance, who insist that a distorted guitar is "angry" while the exact same notes, played acoustically, are "happy". Or people who insist that a particular form of pop-rock, with different inflections of instrumentation, somehow constitutes a new genre.
In short, (and to be honest I have to go eat some potato chips right now and can't continue this until later) musical taste should reproduce the wise words of Mr. Eliot: We shall not cease from exploration: And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time.
Which is just to say, not that one should "taste every flavor" or "understand the history of a music before he forms his opinion"--nothing so trite--but that with each new song we hear, we simultaneously have to bring every song we've ever heard into the headphones with us, and to forget them at the same time. I do not believe there is such a thing as "being open-minded," nor that all music is equally valid, etc., but I would like to start thinking about (good) taste not as something one "has" or arrives at, but as maybe this other thing outlined above.
---i am staying up all night in order to touch my mousepad every hour so that my computer does not shut down, so that my download of the new Fucked Up album will continue without incident
---today I wore blue suede shoes; there were no remarks.
---if you convince me to buy an expensive reissue and i don't like it, we have beef [b33f]
---the construction "which" as a relative possessive pronoun is so egregious that it does not even occur as an "erroneous" usage in the OED--- and yet I snuck it by in my senior thesis. oops!
---no one likes being told they should go listen to "the teddy bears' picnic"
--- generate your own (meaningless) graduate paper
---text message distro updates=the future is here
---"veering towards solipsism"= the definition of my life/method
---all complaints about the content of this blog should be directed to the fact that I spend all day in the library
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