tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post4744228202138969268..comments2024-02-20T12:26:24.682-05:00Comments on language goes on holiday: The songs that saved your lifeDuncan Richterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-51829043272621268732012-07-13T17:31:17.789-04:002012-07-13T17:31:17.789-04:00No, I didn't think you did. Glad we agree!No, I didn't think you did. Glad we agree!Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-39552508196338081002012-07-13T16:49:13.665-04:002012-07-13T16:49:13.665-04:00I didn't mean to deny that some bands go into ...I didn't mean to deny that some bands go into the crapper!David Rachelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11889462507099768706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-24494269462463980832012-07-13T15:18:04.172-04:002012-07-13T15:18:04.172-04:00I will try to listen to A Love Supreme and like it...I will try to listen to <i>A Love Supreme</i> and like it. If I succeed my life will have changed.<br /><br />As for the Stones, I've never really listened to any of their albums as a whole. I've only owned various greatest hits albums, which is a bit strange now that I think of it. Anyway, I do like their early stuff and I don't like any of the later stuff that I've heard. Maybe if I could listen without prejudice, as George Michael would say, it would be different. I take your point, but I think some bands really do go into the crapper.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-11704751624218518792012-07-13T10:49:43.504-04:002012-07-13T10:49:43.504-04:00Here's the thing: I have disliked jazz for as...Here's the thing: I have disliked jazz for as long as I can remember, but then a musician friend SWORE to me that <i>A Love Supreme</i> would change my life--and it did. Also, a thought about the Stones and bands who (allegedly) go into the crapper: Fans (and critics) often create false narratives based on this sort of logic: <i>Beggars Banquet</i> and <i>Exile on Main Street</i> are the greatest Stones albums. Therefore, the less a Stones album resembles these, the worse it must be--which is to say that artists automatically get penalized for experimenting with different genres. A great example of this is Neil Young's brilliant synthesizer album <i>Trans</i>; when it was released in 1982, everyone savaged it simply because it didn't sound how a Neil Young album is supposed to sound. Critics are just now catching up to it.David Rachelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11889462507099768706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-4046581215980551602012-07-12T20:13:42.886-04:002012-07-12T20:13:42.886-04:00I'm not a big jazz fan*, but I'll look int...I'm not a big jazz fan*, but I'll look into it (honest). Thanks for the tip.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-21438352436749484092012-07-12T18:10:32.404-04:002012-07-12T18:10:32.404-04:00Coltrane. You must purchase A Love Supreme immedia...Coltrane. You must purchase <i>A Love Supreme</i> immediately.David Rachelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11889462507099768706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-79263430588059344132012-07-04T14:10:40.473-04:002012-07-04T14:10:40.473-04:00Edmundson's essay might be Geschwätz, as Wittg...<i>Edmundson's essay might be Geschwätz, as Wittgenstein might have called it in German, or "gas", which he used as an English equivalent. But I think there is a small kernel of truth in it nevertheless.</i><br /><br />Yes, there is probably more than one kernel of truth in it. The main thing that struck me about it was the smell of gas though. Or rather, the dismissal of popular music as if it were something that couldn't have much meaning, as if the only relationship one could have to it were something like the Teletubbies relation that you describe so well.<br /><br />That kind of repetitive viewing is a complete mystery to me. I always think of the Teletubbies' "Again! Again!" when I read Chesterton on the sun rising every day. (As I remember it, he thinks of God as having something like this kind of enthusiasm for the world and its workings, and this is why, according to him, induction works.) But I have never been one of the seemingly very many people who like to watch the same movies and television series over and over again. Wittgenstein is supposed to have read <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i> over and over again, and I would respect that kind of dedication to a really good book or film, but I just don't see the appeal of watching something of lesser quality till you can repeat every line. Maybe this is fabricating joy. It's just alien to me.<br /><br />Thanks also for the Lukács quotation. That's great.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-16446239575851011242012-07-03T16:05:36.503-04:002012-07-03T16:05:36.503-04:00"One should thus always ask when exaggerated ..."One should thus always ask when exaggerated dogmatic claims are made: What is actually true in this. Or again: In what case is that actually true." (<i>Culture and Value</i>, 1931)<br /><br />There are a few points on which I feel like putting in a good word for Edmundson's essay:<br /><br />1) Growing up, I haven't come to need music less. I don't have a family, and part of the reason is precisely that it would never come to mean as much to me as a number of other things, which include music. This vantage point on the matter may be quantitatively rare, but I know it exists, because I represent it myself.<br /><br />2) I do sometimes "date a new phase in life to hearing this or that [...] song", but only retrospectively. I have also sometimes felt immediately upon first hearing that a new song will become part of the periodisation in my autobiographical memory, but these feelings have on the other hand proved to be unfounded.<br /><br />3) "Easy, pleasurable repetitions suggesting that life makes sense" can also be afforded by art whose intended message is not that life makes sense. The pleasure of repetition in art is sometimes so intense that it can eclipse artistic messages which themselves contradict the view that life makes sense.<br /><br />Here in Finland there is a repellently bad war movie that is regrettably so popular that it has come to be shown on TV every Independence Day (6 December), and has even produced spin-offs such as a trivia quiz book, a postage stamp, and so on. What is worse, the movie is based on a very deep and philosophical, world-class war novel, which is admittedly itself very popular, but which has nevertheless come to be somewhat eclipsed by the movie adaptation. Just a couple of weeks ago I was lamenting this state of affairs (which I discuss briefly in my forthcoming book) to a friend, who is also a fan of the book but not the movie. He hit the nail on the head by saying that the movie is "Teletubbies for adults". It is at least supposedly about the horrors of war - most of the good guys are killed before the end, many of them in the most horrible ways - but the narrative content has long ago become secondary to the pleasure of merely watching the movie once more, having watched it already so many times that one can repeat all the lines by heart.<br /><br />So just like the Teletubbies cheer and demand "Again! Again!" the fans of this movie watch it again and again, although they know every shot and every camera angle and every line inside out. They use it to "fabricate joy", to use Edmundson's wonderful paraphrase of Bloom. The joy of themselves watching - which disgustingly masquerades as the joy of living in an independent country thanks to the war depicted in the movie.<br /><br />(I was reminded here of Georg Lukács's <i>The Destruction of Reason</i>, whose Leninist critique of Wittgenstein is wooden and absurd, but whose summary of Schopenhauer's philosophy is immortal: "a modern luxury hotel on the brink of the abyss, nothingness and futility. And the daily sight of the abyss, between the leisurely enjoyment of meals or works of art, can only enhance one's pleasure in this elegant comfort.")<br /><br />Edmundson's essay might be <i>Geschwätz</i>, as Wittgenstein might have called it in German, or "gas", which he used as an English equivalent. But I think there is a small kernel of truth in it nevertheless.Tommi Uschanovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02852865209279310471noreply@blogger.com