I make art as ... a complicator of social feeling. - Marion Coutts
Why the idea of art as complicator had never occurred to me before is probably testament to my spotty formal education on the topic; but since reading that quotation in an interview of the sometime Dog Faced Hermans frontwoman, I've been fairly obsessed with the idea.
Specifically, it's helped me recontextualize the perennial question: If everything is art, how does some art seem to fail at being artful? Or, more commonly, Why does some art suck? This debate, whether I'm having it with myself or others, tends to devolve sooner or later to bolstering the notion that there's no accounting for taste. But that's not incredibly satisfying to me, so the question continues to come up.
With Ms. Coutts' quotation in hand, I think I may finally have a good argument. Maybe art fails when it fails to complicate any part of reality, or any part of a perceived reality. I realize how tenuous notions of reality and perception are, but at least arguments can be made about them.
Taste, on the other hand, seems not only unengaging, but unengageable.
(This also sheds some further light on my complicated love for Clipse.)
29 December 2006
Clipse is a Fine Wine
The chorus to the song "Trill" by Clipse goes thusly: "Bitch, I'm trill. Bitch, I'm so trill. Nigga, I'm trill. Nigga, I'm so trill."
According to the Urban Dictionary, "trill" is either true + real or some contraction of "truly ill". Either way, the word has positive connotations. So, ostenibly in this context, do the words "bitch" and "trill", whose meanings and etymologies I think we're all familiar with at this point.
I'm a white American woman. While I could probably cry reclamation with regard to the word "bitch", I certainly can't for "nigga". As it stands, I use neither word. The word "bitch" specifically seems like a real linguistic trap. Either I use it as an insult and thereby insult 51% of the population including myself, or I use it as a term of endearment and end up suggesting that the negative stereotypes of women being bossy or nagging or manipulative are worthy of celebration.
All of that said, I really love the song "Trill". I love a lot of songs whose lyrics are reprehensible -- reprehensibly cheesy, reprehensibly misogynist, etc. -- but this song really gets to me by weaving these culturally complicated words so casually into its irresistable refrain. And it makes me feel conflicted.
On the one hand, I'm flatly alienated by the cultural signifiers at work in "Trill". Not only are its lyrically stated values almost exactly not my values, but this music isn't even intented for me. My demography is like the spandrel formed through the negative space of everything that Clipse positively embodies. I'm pointedly, deservedly excluded from their party.
On the other hand, this song is tops. The musicality of the language is undeniable. Clipse masterfully wields a diverse palette of syllables against a dark, squirming canvas of beats and synths. While not at all "funky" in the sense of what funk has come represent stylistically, you can see where a word like "funk" came to be a positive signifier in the context of music. This song is musically disgusting in the best possible way.
A few years ago I would have dismissed the song out of hand for the "on the one hand" elements above, but I'm at this point now where I sort of relish the discomfort. I relish the complexity of my relationship to this song. It's like a very complicatedly flavored wine or chocolate or salad. It's not an easy, but is absolutely an enjoyable, listen.
According to the Urban Dictionary, "trill" is either true + real or some contraction of "truly ill". Either way, the word has positive connotations. So, ostenibly in this context, do the words "bitch" and "trill", whose meanings and etymologies I think we're all familiar with at this point.
I'm a white American woman. While I could probably cry reclamation with regard to the word "bitch", I certainly can't for "nigga". As it stands, I use neither word. The word "bitch" specifically seems like a real linguistic trap. Either I use it as an insult and thereby insult 51% of the population including myself, or I use it as a term of endearment and end up suggesting that the negative stereotypes of women being bossy or nagging or manipulative are worthy of celebration.
All of that said, I really love the song "Trill". I love a lot of songs whose lyrics are reprehensible -- reprehensibly cheesy, reprehensibly misogynist, etc. -- but this song really gets to me by weaving these culturally complicated words so casually into its irresistable refrain. And it makes me feel conflicted.
On the one hand, I'm flatly alienated by the cultural signifiers at work in "Trill". Not only are its lyrically stated values almost exactly not my values, but this music isn't even intented for me. My demography is like the spandrel formed through the negative space of everything that Clipse positively embodies. I'm pointedly, deservedly excluded from their party.
On the other hand, this song is tops. The musicality of the language is undeniable. Clipse masterfully wields a diverse palette of syllables against a dark, squirming canvas of beats and synths. While not at all "funky" in the sense of what funk has come represent stylistically, you can see where a word like "funk" came to be a positive signifier in the context of music. This song is musically disgusting in the best possible way.
A few years ago I would have dismissed the song out of hand for the "on the one hand" elements above, but I'm at this point now where I sort of relish the discomfort. I relish the complexity of my relationship to this song. It's like a very complicatedly flavored wine or chocolate or salad. It's not an easy, but is absolutely an enjoyable, listen.
Cultural Entropy, Vol. 1: Hyphy
Finding out about minute cultural enclaves always makes me reflect on the vastness and complexity of humanity's modern situation. It seems like things are trending ever more toward the multi and myriad -- a la our friend entropy.
For an immediate -- er, possibly slightly past prime -- example, I turn to Hyphy. Let's list some attributes, courtesy of Wikipedia:
- gritty hip-hop
- playful, proliferant slang
- cars, specifically ghost riding the whip
- ecstasy
Luckily enough for me, this example does not tempt toward pessimistic cultural bemoanment. Rather, it almost gets me excited about the sorts of cultural mishmashery we can expect from globalization and its comrades (I'm looking at you, Internet!).
What next? Southeast Asian women obsessed with flapper fashion, nuclear power, and shchi?
For an immediate -- er, possibly slightly past prime -- example, I turn to Hyphy. Let's list some attributes, courtesy of Wikipedia:
- gritty hip-hop
- playful, proliferant slang
- cars, specifically ghost riding the whip
- ecstasy
Luckily enough for me, this example does not tempt toward pessimistic cultural bemoanment. Rather, it almost gets me excited about the sorts of cultural mishmashery we can expect from globalization and its comrades (I'm looking at you, Internet!).
What next? Southeast Asian women obsessed with flapper fashion, nuclear power, and shchi?
What happens to my consciousness when I die?
Clearly, given the resolutely slippery notion of consciousness combined with science's resolutely reductionist view of human existence, the rational response is: My consciousness dies when I die.
But I didn't always believe that, and lately I'm coming to think I might be better off with more comforting beliefs about The Afterlife.
As a young adult, I believed in some kind of reincarnation, orchestrated and overseen by benevolent higher beings who, if I asked really politely, would answer all of my unanswered questions about the mysteries of the universe. Etc.
Over the last several years, though, I've lost not only that belief but also its attendant comforts. Lately I've been thinking that when one dies, one is just dead; end of consciousness, end of story. All of one's accumulated information, feeling, memory is just gone.
So, I've been depressed -- and, more alarmingly, anxious. Am I living this precious life to the fullest? Is each moment living up to its potential? Rather than motivating me to seize the day, I'm immobilized by the anxiety that I'm not doing a good enough job of seizing the day.
But then a few months ago I was out with a few friends and one of them put forward the idea that if the universe is as vast as we think it is and the development of life as unlikely as it seems, then our sheer existence as who we are, where we are is sort of like winning the evolutionary lottery.
For him, the mere thought of it inspires an almost giddy ecstasy -- I imagine it as the way one feels when one manages, after having knocked it off the mantle, to catch the glass vase a second before it hits the floor. Or, even more mundanely, when mass transit forces align to make my typically 45-min commute to work last only 20 minutes.
While this idea offers some relief from the void science has left in my heart, it's a rather dangerous idea. In the next sentence after explaining the idea, my friend also used it to justify why he had decided to have biological children -- something I at the very least feel very conflicted about. His argument here is that if life is an ecstatic exercise in the unlikely, why not invite as many people to the party as possible?
But what if the party isn't always fun for everyone? I'm talking here, of course, about all the suffering in life making it seem a fate worse than death -- war, torture, crippling disease, etc. My friend's response was that even moments of pain are ecstatic plumes of experience -- consciously experiencing pain is better than no feeling at all.
And therein lies the danger. In a philosophy like that, there's very little basis for acting to end violence, poverty, disease -- any suffering, really. One is left, it seems, with little more than a blend of hedonism and social darwinism.
Could there be a balance, though? Since it's seemed the only viable pathway for me out of my currently bleak and debilitating attitude, I'm eager to find a way this perspective could be easily married to ideas of social justice and charity. If this life is ecstatic at its core, why not seek to make it the most ecstatic experience possible for the most people? This, of course, doesn't answer the question of whether or not to have children -- how does one weigh the addition of a life of ecstatic experience versus increasing the ecstasy of an existing life? -- but the idea is distracting me temporarily from the gnawing despair and indecision of nihilism.
But I didn't always believe that, and lately I'm coming to think I might be better off with more comforting beliefs about The Afterlife.
As a young adult, I believed in some kind of reincarnation, orchestrated and overseen by benevolent higher beings who, if I asked really politely, would answer all of my unanswered questions about the mysteries of the universe. Etc.
Over the last several years, though, I've lost not only that belief but also its attendant comforts. Lately I've been thinking that when one dies, one is just dead; end of consciousness, end of story. All of one's accumulated information, feeling, memory is just gone.
So, I've been depressed -- and, more alarmingly, anxious. Am I living this precious life to the fullest? Is each moment living up to its potential? Rather than motivating me to seize the day, I'm immobilized by the anxiety that I'm not doing a good enough job of seizing the day.
But then a few months ago I was out with a few friends and one of them put forward the idea that if the universe is as vast as we think it is and the development of life as unlikely as it seems, then our sheer existence as who we are, where we are is sort of like winning the evolutionary lottery.
For him, the mere thought of it inspires an almost giddy ecstasy -- I imagine it as the way one feels when one manages, after having knocked it off the mantle, to catch the glass vase a second before it hits the floor. Or, even more mundanely, when mass transit forces align to make my typically 45-min commute to work last only 20 minutes.
While this idea offers some relief from the void science has left in my heart, it's a rather dangerous idea. In the next sentence after explaining the idea, my friend also used it to justify why he had decided to have biological children -- something I at the very least feel very conflicted about. His argument here is that if life is an ecstatic exercise in the unlikely, why not invite as many people to the party as possible?
But what if the party isn't always fun for everyone? I'm talking here, of course, about all the suffering in life making it seem a fate worse than death -- war, torture, crippling disease, etc. My friend's response was that even moments of pain are ecstatic plumes of experience -- consciously experiencing pain is better than no feeling at all.
And therein lies the danger. In a philosophy like that, there's very little basis for acting to end violence, poverty, disease -- any suffering, really. One is left, it seems, with little more than a blend of hedonism and social darwinism.
Could there be a balance, though? Since it's seemed the only viable pathway for me out of my currently bleak and debilitating attitude, I'm eager to find a way this perspective could be easily married to ideas of social justice and charity. If this life is ecstatic at its core, why not seek to make it the most ecstatic experience possible for the most people? This, of course, doesn't answer the question of whether or not to have children -- how does one weigh the addition of a life of ecstatic experience versus increasing the ecstasy of an existing life? -- but the idea is distracting me temporarily from the gnawing despair and indecision of nihilism.
Pop & Heavy Metal: The Case of Jesu
I heard Jesu for the first time about two weeks ago, the self-titled record. I had no context for them at all; I didn't know they were ex-Godflesh, had never heard Godflesh anyway -- basically, I had no metal reference points whatsoever, just the music.
And it sounded mostly like mid-nineties British shoegaze to me. I would have readily filed it sonically somewhere between Blur's Leisure and My Bloody Valentine's Glider, with a bit of spacerock (Spacemen 3?) thrown in for good measure.
I've since done some homework, which has been instructive, and now I'm midway through listening to Jesu's newest record, Conqueror. Despite all this, my mapping of Jesu sonically hasn't changed much, if my view of them culturally is very different now. (I had a similar trajectory with Harvey Milk -- coming at it from a sort of avant-garde perspective, and then gradually conceding the more overtly metal aspects as my interest in them grew.)
I'm not very schooled in metal, but have found moments in it that I really enjoy. Culturally, however, it might as well be in another galaxy for me, being for the most part male-dominated, often nurturing aggression, fascinated with violence, etc.
But the whole thing has brought up a perennial question for me with regard to the relationship of heavy music to pop, and with regard to musical subgenrification (perhaps this cultural engine has a better name I don't know?) in general. That is, the many genres of popular music seem to be ghettos rather than friendly neighboring boroughs. Clearly boundaries are constantly shifting; yet there's also a persistent rigidity.
As someone who loves the physical experience of heavy and loud music, but who also viscerally appreciates a good hook and a sad melody, I find myself longing for a music that seems to not exist. Or, I'm having to satisfy myself with bits and pieces of songs from here and there -- like trying to fill myself up on pomegranate fruit.
And it sounded mostly like mid-nineties British shoegaze to me. I would have readily filed it sonically somewhere between Blur's Leisure and My Bloody Valentine's Glider, with a bit of spacerock (Spacemen 3?) thrown in for good measure.
I've since done some homework, which has been instructive, and now I'm midway through listening to Jesu's newest record, Conqueror. Despite all this, my mapping of Jesu sonically hasn't changed much, if my view of them culturally is very different now. (I had a similar trajectory with Harvey Milk -- coming at it from a sort of avant-garde perspective, and then gradually conceding the more overtly metal aspects as my interest in them grew.)
I'm not very schooled in metal, but have found moments in it that I really enjoy. Culturally, however, it might as well be in another galaxy for me, being for the most part male-dominated, often nurturing aggression, fascinated with violence, etc.
But the whole thing has brought up a perennial question for me with regard to the relationship of heavy music to pop, and with regard to musical subgenrification (perhaps this cultural engine has a better name I don't know?) in general. That is, the many genres of popular music seem to be ghettos rather than friendly neighboring boroughs. Clearly boundaries are constantly shifting; yet there's also a persistent rigidity.
As someone who loves the physical experience of heavy and loud music, but who also viscerally appreciates a good hook and a sad melody, I find myself longing for a music that seems to not exist. Or, I'm having to satisfy myself with bits and pieces of songs from here and there -- like trying to fill myself up on pomegranate fruit.
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