There is a baffling interview with David Berman of the Silver Jews over at Pitchfork. I say baffling, because he seems like a pretty smart guy, but he says so many stupid things in the interview that I can't tell if he just talked himself into believing things that he doesn't really believe, or if he just has no idea what he's talking about.
It's fascinating, because almost everything he has to say about art is exactly wrong and exactly backwards. He praises Emily Dickinson for using "plain words," but seems to be oblivious to the emotionally explosive ways she plays with rhythm and structure. He accuses the Manic Street Preachers of singing "slogans" which means he's never actually listened to them, or he's actually thinking of Ned's Atomic Dustbin (Kill Your Television). And he completely rips Radiohead for being unable to play "something besides a feeling" and not giving you "something that you could take with you" or something that you could "put in your pocket."
Now, there's a few things I want to say about that. The first is that music is feeling, and art itself is an attempt to dig deep into our emotional inner selves so that we can, as David Milch says, transform the pain of the past in its pastness into the future tense of joy. That's what the melancholy of Radiohead's work offers. We live in despair because we are alienated and paranoid. Because we are unwilling or unable to confront those dark emotions that hinder us and separate us from the larger world. Those things in our past that prevent us from feeling good and worthy, that we belonging, and that we can deserve to be happy.
And what holds us back? Our ego. Simplicity. Straightforwardness. Plain Words. Simple truths. These all come from the ego which hates ambiguities and works only for stability and linearity, self-justification and rationalization. The unwillingness to just let go is a sign of despair that art ever have a greater meaning, can ever heal us spiritually, or allow us to transcend our wounded selves. Why do we sing the blues? So that we might not be blue. Why do so many of us devote so much time to music (and so much bad music). Because it is ours. The experience is subjective. As Morrissey says, "Don't forget the songs that made you cry and the songs that saved your life. Yes, you're older now and you're a clever swine, but they were the only one's who ever stood by you."
The whole argument reminds me of Virginia Woolf's opening to A Room of One's Own, in which she apologizes for not being able to offer a tidy conclusion:
Instead of a lecture she gives us a story and opens up her topic, writing, "I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions - women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems."
All of this is a writer's gambit of course, because by shirking her duty she draws her audience in, and through the course of the book she makes her feelings very clear by presenting her ideas and prejudices and backing them up with better and better examples, until reader and author both come to the same conclusions at the same time. But in order to create this shared experience she must first take a leap of faith, abandon logic and the ego, and let the story tell itself. She must not be afraid of the knots and ambiguities of her mind but let those ideas come forward with all their problems and passions.
For David Berman, I recommend some yoga and some Deadwood. It'll improve his understanding of art and ego transcendence, and maybe help him feel a little better about Radiohead. Otherwise, the dude needs to stop talking out of his ass.
It's fascinating, because almost everything he has to say about art is exactly wrong and exactly backwards. He praises Emily Dickinson for using "plain words," but seems to be oblivious to the emotionally explosive ways she plays with rhythm and structure. He accuses the Manic Street Preachers of singing "slogans" which means he's never actually listened to them, or he's actually thinking of Ned's Atomic Dustbin (Kill Your Television). And he completely rips Radiohead for being unable to play "something besides a feeling" and not giving you "something that you could take with you" or something that you could "put in your pocket."
Now, there's a few things I want to say about that. The first is that music is feeling, and art itself is an attempt to dig deep into our emotional inner selves so that we can, as David Milch says, transform the pain of the past in its pastness into the future tense of joy. That's what the melancholy of Radiohead's work offers. We live in despair because we are alienated and paranoid. Because we are unwilling or unable to confront those dark emotions that hinder us and separate us from the larger world. Those things in our past that prevent us from feeling good and worthy, that we belonging, and that we can deserve to be happy.
And what holds us back? Our ego. Simplicity. Straightforwardness. Plain Words. Simple truths. These all come from the ego which hates ambiguities and works only for stability and linearity, self-justification and rationalization. The unwillingness to just let go is a sign of despair that art ever have a greater meaning, can ever heal us spiritually, or allow us to transcend our wounded selves. Why do we sing the blues? So that we might not be blue. Why do so many of us devote so much time to music (and so much bad music). Because it is ours. The experience is subjective. As Morrissey says, "Don't forget the songs that made you cry and the songs that saved your life. Yes, you're older now and you're a clever swine, but they were the only one's who ever stood by you."
The whole argument reminds me of Virginia Woolf's opening to A Room of One's Own, in which she apologizes for not being able to offer a tidy conclusion:
I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantlepiece for ever.
Instead of a lecture she gives us a story and opens up her topic, writing, "I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions - women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems."
All of this is a writer's gambit of course, because by shirking her duty she draws her audience in, and through the course of the book she makes her feelings very clear by presenting her ideas and prejudices and backing them up with better and better examples, until reader and author both come to the same conclusions at the same time. But in order to create this shared experience she must first take a leap of faith, abandon logic and the ego, and let the story tell itself. She must not be afraid of the knots and ambiguities of her mind but let those ideas come forward with all their problems and passions.
For David Berman, I recommend some yoga and some Deadwood. It'll improve his understanding of art and ego transcendence, and maybe help him feel a little better about Radiohead. Otherwise, the dude needs to stop talking out of his ass.
