Evolution of the Story Mind

I think the evolutionary psychology view of art is one of those ideas that seems glaringly obvious once it is pointed out to you:

To take the next step to fiction would seem to give early humans a simulation machine, useful for war-gaming their options in survival choices. But Dutton refuses this adaptive explanation for fiction, advanced by Stephen Pinker and others, pointing out that our fictional library extends into realms far beyond anything humans would encounter. It is instead, he argues, an enhancement and extension of counterfactual reasoning - the ability to step beyond mere reproduction of facts in the imagination to hypothetical states of affairs.

Fiction, it has been argued, also serves as an efficient archive of cultural knowledge; Eric Havelock famously argued that for nonliterate peoples, epics like the "Iliad" constitute a kind of oral encyclopedia. Perhaps more than its tactical or archival capacities, however, fiction provides a unique platform for social and psychological reasoning. "The inner psychological experience of one's fellows, the shared emotional and intellectual world of the tribe," Dutton writes, is the final field upon which fiction plays - and perhaps its ultimate evolutionary raison d'etre as well.

You don't even have to dive very deeply into the evolutionary advantages of what in Dramatica they call the "story mind" to see that human beings are keen observers of other human beings and that the stories we tell are really arguments and descriptions of how we think, understand, behave, and solve problems. Because we are complex beings, story telling is a complex activity, not merely instrumental in telling us what something is or what we should do in certain situations, but exploring emotional terrain, the tragedy of death, the comedy of life, the possible, the improbable, and the fantastic.

And just like the human mind, it is even large enough and flexible enough to reflect upon its own creation, methods, and ends. It can tell a story about itself.

Radiohead Aren't Bovvered

The Vulture is following up on the Silver Jews vs. Radiohead brouhaha in true "let's you and him fight" style:

The list of things Radiohead have nothing to say about evidently includes the Hold Steady and Silver Jews, as neither Thom Yorke nor any of the various Greenwoods have responded to either attack. There's currently no mention of any beef on the band's official blog and a search on Hype Machine indicates that no dis tracks have yet been recorded. Are they simply too big for this? Or are they holed up in Oxford right now putting the finishing on a Nigel Godrich–produced ironic cover of "Chips Ahoy!"? God, we hope so. Come on, guys, it's the slowest news week of the year!

Radiohead are too smart to care, and they're the better for it. Since OK Computer they've pretty much been out there sailing the postmodern seas all on their own, sending back reports from the future. To say that they've lost the plot, or that they have nothing to say is an irony so large it won't even fit on your t-shirt, bro. Losing the plot is when you're known primarily as a drunk-ass Bruce Springsteen cover band, yo.

Anyway as far as the Hold Steady and the Silver Jews are really concerned, there's just something weirdly conservative and reactionary in their pro-rock 'n roll, tell me something pretty, take on things. It's all verse chorus verse chorus linear thinking. Art and music come from the non-linear, holistic side of the brain. It's the antithesis of simple and straightforward.

Linear thinking leads to things like the Iraq war, the mortgage crisis, off-shore drilling, and McCain running neck and neck in the polls. Linear thinking is our natural response to the shock doctrine. We could use a lot less of it right about now.

A Nugget of Pure Truth to Wrap Up and Keep Forever

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:

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.

Cognitive Play With Pattern

A very nice essay on the need for reconciliation between art and science, including an excellent reading of Nabokov's Lolita and The Enchanted Hunters. The premise of the essay is this:

To consider art and story in evolutionary terms we have to decide whether they are biological adaptations: are they features that natural selection has designed into humans over time because they led to higher rates of survival and reproduction? I argue in a book I’ve recently written, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition and Fiction, that art and storytelling are adaptations. These behaviors are species-wide, engaged in spontaneously by all normal individuals and spontaneously encouraged in infants by their parents.

Art is a form of cognitive play with pattern. Just as communication exists in many species, even in bacteria, and human language derives from but redirects animal communication along many unforeseen new routes, so play exists in many species, but the unique cognitive play of human art redirects it in new ways and to new functions.

For me, one of those functions is to understand the difference implied in the word "play" which contrasts with and compliments the necessary work of scientific knowledge. Science deals with facts, cataloging and cross-referencing, seeking out and correcting error. Art is something different. It is an open-ended argument about the meaning of patterns. It is an attempt to replicate the way the mind looks at patterns, connects one idea to the next, and draws conclusions. And as the word "play" suggests it can be a game, something done at leisure, something that is rehearsed and performed, something without a goal or end. A pleasure in itself.

And it is this capacity for art to transcend the everyday considerations of life, to take us out of our own head-space, and open us up to a world of possibilities beyond necessity, that is its greatest value.