I feel like I just walked into a room, and everyone is so blissfully unaware of something obvious, the proverbial white elephant, stamping around upsetting the mantel and the vaisselle dór collection. Or maybe it's a hip hop party, and there's a live band in the corner who are all nazis.
All the colour has drained out of the scene, the TV broadcast has gone backward in time, and we're all a flickering shadow, grey noise our collective efforts.
I heard years ago, a story about a Native American tribe who would kill you if you breathed in the smell of your dinner in appreciation, as they believed the nutrients of the food lay in the aroma. Maybe I got that wrong, the only Native person I know isn't very truthful, so there's no point asking her.
I hate to be the one to quote Bauhaus here, but is this what Peter Murphy was singing about in 'Exquisite Corpse', back in 1982?:
"Terry sat up and hugged the army surplus bag around his skinny waist. It was cold and the person beside him had faded badly. Legs apart his eyes lit up- the sky's gone out." People think those lyrics are about a dying soldier, and they are. But they're also about a person swimming in a dream, a dream that is life.
And now that I think about it, the poem Cliff Burton wrote, that Metallica made into the song 'To Live is to Die'- "These are the pale deaths, that men miscall their lives."
We're lying.
We've been given lives, but who among us know what to do with them?
Make money? Follow some creative passion that is ultimately unoriginal and contributes nothing of value to society? Live for others, which contributes much, but may just support attitudes and lifestyles that are undeserving of such altruism? Follow a deity? Turn inward and find oneself?
What does any of that do?
And more importantly, why should it have to?
I can't answer the fundamental question that all religions claim to answer- "How should I live?"
I don't know the point of life, I'm not sure there is one except to create more life. And that's ok. But I figure if we're gonna be conscious for a period of time, slung between the two great moments of darkness, shouldn't we try and add colour to this thing?
Plato derided the artists in his 'Republic', as it was a meritocracy, and to his purely logical mind, you can't eat art. But therein lies the danger of thinking with logic unbalanced by passion... because the city of logic is a cold stone one- utilitarian, soulless.
I think art is the point of all this life.
But that is a problem too.
When the tools are accessible to all, the standard goes down. Anyone can pick up a hammer, but the resultant house wouldn't impress anyone, without talent.
The internet (or: the archive of collective human output) is awash with horrible attempts at doing things the do-er could have saved a lot of wasted effort not doing...this blog itself may be a contender.
I don't think it's wrong to try, I think it's wrong not to try.
But I'm allowed to lament the lack of colour, in this rasterized grey mass we call culture. And once in a while a bright pixel appears, and oftentimes it is pounced upon by all of the starving appreciators of such things and consumed to death or overload.
But more often than not, an obscenely average thing dumps itself in the spotlight, thrown there by the power of soulless money (and the pursuit of more), and it wobbles and shakes and pretends to shock (when we've seen it all before, and in the case of Lady GaGa, three previous generations thereof), and the style gurus quite often get caught up in the hype thinking this thing represents culture.
Oh, sadness.
And we have trillions of colours of megawatt grey, washing over our desire for cool water, in a tsunami of toilet discharge. And as usual, the sheep act like it's the second coming. You know the great religions of the world have failed when an Italian girl from New York channeling Madonna, Warhol, and Marilyn Manson captures a larger and more frenetic fanbase than Christ, Gautama, and Mohammed put together.
People adore being manipulated, true?
Don't panic- it's just marketing...
And yes, I know that by blogging about her it just puts another few drops in the fuel tank of the hype machine, I'm aware. And I don't mean to pick on her in particular, it's just so convenient that she encapsulates everything that is wrong with music now. Right with business, wrong with music.
Who would have paid attention if she looked like Susan Boyle?
Everything is starting to blend together- all the culture is become diluted in the shitstream. And what do we expect, when the only way to sell that culture is to collab, to exchange links, guest spot? As much as I appreciate culture jamming, now that it is so prevalent, even the old masters have had a workover, condemning them to share in this amazing coagulation of...you know.
And like I said, it's wrong not to try- so I don't blame the artists. I don't blame GaGa, thanks for your efforts. In and of themselves, they're generally pretty catchy and harmless.
It's the consumers that settle for it, that I take umbrage with. Am I being too Platonian? Music is meant to be about feeling, right? So again, a purely logical overview isn't going to capture the experience. But does the experience have to be that watered-down? We understand tweens love Bieber. That's normal. We make allowances for their unsophisticated attempts at digesting culture.
But adults?
I'm well aware the critics of the time shitcanned The Beatles too, but let's be honest, they were writing the rule book for the lame excuse for music we 'enjoy' today. They didn't start writing actual songs til much later in their respective careers. In the beginning, it was 'Love me do', and love me do was utter shit.
Songwriters know there is a recipe for hits. And the good ones write to it. It's changing now, thankfully, as the reign of radio and MTV has ended, much like it changed before radio began to dictate how long a song should be, or MTV refused to play you if you were ugly. The internet has set us free.
Limitless distribution Vs. An all time high water mark of output vying for attention. And the standard has never been lower.
There are still great and talented musicians, writers, artists, you name it out there. They're the rare and bright pixels I mentioned earlier.
They're a blip on the radar...
But I'm waiting for the next thing.
The thing that hasn't been co-opted by marketing geniuses yet. The one that the early adopters haven't caught wind of yet. I'm not talking about Mexican pointy boots, this thing hasn't been invented.
It won't have accompanying dance moves, it won't collaborate with anyone, it will sue any TV or radio station that attempts to show it in the news. It won't trawl for subscribers, or annoy you with a 'Join my group' request online. It won't kiss Britney at the Grammys, Natalie Portman won't get the part in the biopic of the creator. There won't be one. You won't store it on the cloud, it won't come in a bottle. It will defy categorisation the same way a 12th dimension would now, and it will be free for everyone.
But for now we've got...planking. Again, a re-hash. Everyone who thinks they're doing something new and exciting should Google flagpole sitting in the 1920's. Planking's just lazy. And before you try to tell me I just don't get it, and that it's making a statement, we're all grown up enough to know it isn't. It's like extreme sleeping.
Graffiti, Weird makeup, flash mobs, baggy clothing, all had earlier incarnations between now and World War One (Apologies if you're reading this on facebook, as it won't include the links), as the Book of Ecclesiastes 1:9 so sagely put it:
"What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun."
Are we doomed to endless repeats and interpretations?
This is knifey, from 'the internet'.
No comments:
Post a Comment