You'd Be Surprised

Jonathan Rée mentions in this essay (h/t Dirk Felleman) that Wittgenstein considered a line from an Irving Berlin song as a motto for the Philosophical Investigations. The line is the title of the song: "You'd be Surprised." It's possible that Wittgenstein just liked the idea (as well as "I'll teach you differences" and "It takes many sorts to make a world"), but it also seems possible that the original context of the words mattered too. So here are some of the lyrics, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Part of first verse:

Johnny was bashful and shy;

Nobody understood why

Mary loved him

All the other girls passed him by.

Everyone wanted to know

How she could pick such a beau

With a twinkle in her eye

She made this reply

Parts of various choruses:

He's not so good in a crowd

But when you get him alone

You'd be surprised;

He's kind of scared in a mob

But when he takes you home

You'd be surprised.

He won't impress you

Right from the start

But in a week or two

You'd be surprised.

At a party or a ball

I've got to admit he's nothing at all

But in a Morris chair

You'd be surprised

Part of second verse:

Mary continued to praise

Johnny's remarkable ways

To the ladies

And you know advertising pays

Now Johnny's ne'er alone

He has the busiest phone

Almost every other day

A new girl will say

And I pictured you singing the Silver Jews

I knew the Silver Jews existed, but mostly because of the Allo Darlin' song that mentions them. Since David Berman's death I've been reading a bit about them and I'm amazed I stayed ignorant for so long. Berman was my age, went to the University of Virginia, where I went to graduate school (we didn't overlap), and sang just the kind of literate, sad songs I like (caveat: I still haven't listened to one all the way through yet). One of their albums is named after the Natural Bridge, which is only a few miles from here, and another was recorded partly in the small town where I live. I might have passed one or members of the band on the street. Time to catch up. I might have to look into Pavement too.

Perks of the job

It's nice to review a paper that mentions your work without just using it as an example of error. (I wrote this a while ago and didn't bother posting it, but this video--of the song I wanted to link here anyway--has just been uploaded to YouTube, so that's my excuse now.)

These are real things

As far as I know, this was the best song released last year (which I have only just discovered). I found out about Kacey Musgraves from j., via this blog, and Tracyanne Campbell has talked this album up on Twitter, so thanks to both of them for this find. If G.K. Chesterton were to write a country love song it might sound like this.

American playlist

I haven't posted much lately, which always makes me feel both lazy and that I must post something pretty good to make up for it. This is not that pretty good post. Instead it's some nonsense about music. Sorry.

I recently visited St Louis and doing so got me thinking about driving across the country, and what music I would listen to if I did that. I'm thinking of a playlist made up of ten blues albums, ten jazz albums, ten folk albums, ten country albums, and ten rock'n'roll albums. Within each genre I'd like, within reason, to approximate an ideal of two albums by each of the best two female artists, two albums by each of the best two male artists, one compilation, and one album by someone else. And the idea is to emphasize classics, so nothing of merely historical interest and nothing too recent. All artists should be from the USA.

What's likely to happen is that I don't ever do the road-trip but do create and listen to the playlist. So I'd like it to be good.

If you have suggestions, e.g., for specific albums, feel free to make them here.

Mark Smith is dead

If you know who he is then you already, almost certainly, know this. But it's still sad.

Rather than pick one of his songs, here's one that was inspired by him.

Winter/Christmas songs

Halloween playlist

New music

I usually have an album or two of the summer, if not here then on my phone. But Saint Etienne being Betjeman-ish didn't seem to warrant a blog post, and Alvvays didn't release their new album until September. Now, though, there are a coupe of albums that seem worth spreading the word about. One, not quite out yet, is by Makthaverskan, who usually sound like an idealized version of Siouxsie and the Banshees but here sound more like Alvvays.

The other tests the hypothesis that the more people are like me the more I like their music. The Granite Shore are middle-aged Brits who have done a whole album of moaning about Brexit. Not very promising, perhaps, but I've had this song stuck in my head for weeks, and I like the rest of the album too. (Fun fact: Phil Wilson, formerly of The June Brides, is in the band, made this video, and once emailed me. End of brag.)

Playing along with the art school boys (and girls)

His mother bought him a synthesizer

Got The Human League in to advise her

Now he's making lots of noise

Playing along with the art school boys

The Undertones, "My Perfect Cousin" 

It's striking how many musicians and former musicians are successful visual artists. I have no theory about this, but I feel like pointing out some examples, as well as drawing attention to some work that I like a lot. The example that inspired this post is Billy Childish, who I had read about before because of his involvement in The Delmonas (he seems to have been in dozens of other bands too). Via the magic of Twitter, I found that he is also a painter. I like this one:

  

But there's also Elizabeth Price of Talulah Gosh, who won the Turner Prize. Anja Huwe of Xmal Deutschland is now an artist. Aggi Pastel (formerly of The Pastels) is artist Annabel Wright. Edwyn Collins draws birds too. 

Some people have too much talent.

Songs about film directors

Are there any bad ones? These are the best, and only, three I know: "Woody Allen" by Allo Darlin', "What's Yr Take on Cassavetes" by Le Tigre, and "Roman P" by Psychic TV.

The videos aren't very exciting, but the performances are better in these than in the live versions you can watch online. 

Mbongwana Star -- Malukayi

Listen with Ludwig

Ray Monk has made a Spotify playlist of music that Wittgenstein admired.

Falling and laughing

This review of a book supposedly about the "twee tribe" makes what seem to be good points while simultaneously missing the larger point. Here's how the review begins:

Consider the following phenomena: owl-shaped cushions, bird-print textiles and kitten ephemera. French horns, ukuleles and accordions. Grown women with wispy fringes who dress like little girls, grannies or Jean Seberg, and young men who sport excessively neat haircuts, horn-rimmed glasses and waistcoats. Cotton candy, gluten-free acai berry cupcakes and quinoa fritters with probiotic goat yoghurt. Anything that is locally sourced, vintage or artisanal. Cream-coloured retro bikes with wicker baskets and 1950s sun dresses in ice-cream shades. Polka dots and cocktails in jam glasses. The comic strip Peanuts, J. D. Salinger and Maurice Sendak. The Smiths and Belle and Sebastian. Taxidermy, stamp collecting and home baking. The films of Wes Anderson. What do they all share? According to Marc Spitz, they are emblems of “Twee” – “the most powerful youth movement since Punk and Hip-Hop”.

The problem is that there's twee and there's twee, literal twee and good twee. The good stuff is called twee as a self-deprecating joke, because it has tendencies in that direction. The cutesie twee is one of the gutters into which twee's ball perpetually runs the risk of falling. The other is nihilism. So almost everything listed above has nothing to do with the sub-culture of twee, except as a kind of accessory. If you appear too humorlessly angry or depressed you might add some ironic cuteness, like Morrissey riding a bike with National Health glasses on, or some 60s style like Amelia Fletcher wearing her hair "just like Jean Seberg's." But both also have clear punk influences and sing about wanting to die. It's not all bird-print textiles. (And the NHS specs are also both a show of solidarity with the working class and an outward sign of inner trouble. Annoying to some, perhaps, but not a form of steampunk whimsy.)

Speaking of bird-print, Edwyn Collins actually makes bird-print products, but if he's whimsical at all he's a very long way from being merely whimsical. The lyrics of "Consolation Prize," while jokey, are not a joke:

I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn's

I was hoping to impress

So frightfully camp, it made you laugh

Tomorrow I'll buy myself a dress

How ludicrous          

Not surprisingly the song ends with the repeated line, "I'll never be man enough for you." It sounds likely to be true, but it's also despairing. Part of the essence of twee was, or is, the struggle of how to live when punk has changed everything but you don't want to be Vyvyan Basterd, when feminism has changed everything but you don't want to be Millie Tant, and when in some sense you want to die but you don't actually want to die. Being gluten-free has absolutely nothing to do with this. Irony and self-mockery, combining self-deprecation with a sense of humor, are more to the point. Perhaps these are features of the (suspiciously) ubiquitously maligned hipsterism of today, but if so I don't see it.

Mind, Music, and Language

Adam Croom edits a journal, which looks interesting:

Mind, Music, and Language is a new academic journal devoted to empirical and theoretical research on mind, music, and language. The journal is fully peer-reviewed by experts and all accepted articles will be published Open Access. This means that authors retain the copyright to their work and that all journal content remains freely accessible to readers.

Mind, Music, and Language publishes original research articles, book reviews, as well as entries for the new Encyclopedia of Mind, Music, and Language. Theoretically creative and empirically informed submissions on mind, music, and language are warmly encouraged and will receive the careful consideration of our experienced editorial team.

The best and worst of 2014

This blog has been quiet for a couple of weeks and is likely to stay that way for a couple of weeks more (lots of work, a little flu, lots of traveling), but in the meantime here's something. Looking at other people's lists of the top ten films and albums of the year, not to mention books, I realize that I haven't seen or heard (or read) as many as ten new movies/albums/books this year. So I won't even attempt a top ten, or top five, of anything. What I will do is make some negative comments and then end on a positive note.

The Guardian named Under the Skin the best movie of the year. It's not. People who like it talk about how haunting and visually stunning it is. It is memorable and visually striking. On the other hand, as the Rotten Tomatoes summary hints at ("Its message may prove elusive for some"), the whole thing seems pointless, despite very much appearing to want to have a serious point. The word for this kind of thing, I think, is pretentious. Another sci-fi disappointment was Snowpiercer. This is the kind of movie I really enjoy, just not a very good example of the kind. Maybe my expectations were too high, but any top ten list that includes it goes down in my estimation.

Now for the good news. I've mentioned some albums I've bought this year and I'm sure nobody cares, so I won't review them. But from other top ten lists I've recently discovered (a bit late) The New Pornographers (not really my cup of tea but sometimes very catchy indeed in a good way) and Allo Darlin' (presumably named after this). If I have an album of the year it's their We Come from the Same Place. Pitchfork calls them "bookish," which I suppose is my kind of thing.  

And I haven't seen enough new films to be sure, but my guess is that Locke was the best movie of last year. It's (even) better than Boyhood: a movie for grownups, and visually interesting too.

Rrrecommendations

I watched The Punk Singer a couple of nights ago, which is very good. I watched it just because it sounded intriguing:

Her critics wished she would just shut-up, and her fans hoped she never would. So in 2005, when Hanna stopped shouting, many wondered why. 

What I didn't realize is that Kathleen Hanna, the subject of the film, was the lead singer in Le Tigre, a band I like a lot. This is what happens when you don't have album sleeves to read anymore. She was also a leader in the riot grrl movement. Who knew? Probably everybody except me.

Speaking of music, it had looked as though the soundtrack to this summer was going to be the new albums by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, but now I'm not so sure. The Pains have meh-llowed a bit (the album is good but not as good as their earlier stuff, as we hipsters like to say) and the BJM album is far from being their best work despite claims to the contrary. But you can always turn to the artists your heroes recommend if those heroes themselves don't come through. Kip Berman (of The Pains) recommends Makthaverskan, and their latest album is dark (listen to it too much and you'll get depressed) but good, a bit like a more aggressive version of the Cure fronted by a sweary, younger version of Björk. 

And Anton Newcombe (of the BJM) recommends Les Big Byrd, another Swedish band. Droney but infectious.

Spirit

Brian Leiter likes Spirit. I am surprised, although I don't know what I expected him to like. And I only really know this one song by them.

Philosophical songs

This discussion of the top philosophical songs is hard to resist, but I don't think I can bring myself to come up with a top ten or fifteen. Songs can raise (perhaps unintentionally) philosophical issues, or pose philosophical questions, or propose answers to such questions, or deal with them in some other way. For instance, Gong's "You Can't Kill Me" ("You can kill my body, baby, but you can't kill me") provides an opportunity to ask questions about personal identity; Psychic TV pose the question of free will in "Roman P" ("Are you really, really, really, really free?"); one kind of theory about perception is ruled out by the Adverts in "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" ("The eye receives the messages, And sends them to the brain./ No guarantee the stimuli must be perceived the same"); and Morrissey likes to joke around with philosophical questions (e.g. "I could have been wild and I could have been free/ But nature played this trick on me"). But is any of those songs really philosophical? 

There's no shortage of songs with an ethical or political message, of course. Action Pact's "People" comes to mind, with its attempt to argue that you shouldn't treat people badly because they are people. (I'm still not sure whether that's brilliant or stupid.) Perhaps the most interesting ones, though, are the ones that aim for some bigger point: The Kinks' "Shangri-la" and "Big Sky," or Roxy Music's "In Every Dream Home a Heartache". I can't think of one that's genuinely philosophically interesting, but there are some good lyrics out there. And even bad lyrics can be fun: "Make the world your priority/ Try to live your life ecologically" is as funnily painful a rhyme as I can think of. It's a good song too ("Sweet Harmony" by The Beloved). 

Punk leads to Putin?

Jon Cogburn:

Punk is great art, but the nihilism leads to Putinism. Again, consider the United States. We had two punk eras, punk proper and grunge. Analogous  to Russian punk and Putinism, punk proper led to Thatcher/Reagan and grunge to Bush the younger.

Robert Paul Wolff:

All societies exist for the purpose of transferring wealth from those who create it -- the poor -- to those who do not -- the rich.  The academic professions exist for the purpose of rationalizing this transfer, the churches exist for the purpose of blessing it, and the arts exist for the purpose of decorating the transfer so as to make it as charming as possible [even though this often comes to nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.]

Cogburn is always right (in the sense that he is always edifying) even if some of his individual points are wrong (and he sometimes retracts things he's said, so he must be wrong sometimes). Here he looks wrong, but I think we have to go with the "nihilism leads to Putinism" part of the quote above rather than the "punk proper led to Thatcher" bit. Earlier on he says this:

For rock to be rock, there must be an audience base that believes in the possibility of liberation. Once that is gone, rock isn't really possible. And when rock stops being rock, its parents (blues and country) get a divorce. And, like a lot of children of divorce, rock gets angry and starts acting out. It becomes punk.

So the real problem, as he sees it, is the possibility of liberation, or the ability to believe in this possibility. And that ability apparently declined in the 1970s. Hence both David Bowie's "We never got it off on that revolution stuff/ What a drag--too many snags" and Hawkwind's "We used up all of our magic powers trying to do it in the road," in their rejection of Beatles politics in favor of violent revolution (the lines are from the song "Urban Guerrilla"). Bowie, too, rejects the Beatles and the Stones in favor of glam rock, which involves dressing like a queen but also kicking like a mule and drinking a lot of wine. Punk is roughly a combination of the would-be terrorist strain of hippiedom and the gaudy hooliganism of glam rock. It doesn't lead to Putin or Thatcher or Reagan, but the same despair that fuels it also opens the door to the likes of them. In short, Cogburn is right.

What about Wolff? It's not plausible that societies are a sort of con job that the poor are tricked into in order for the rich to be able to either take from them or use them to take from other poor people. Societies exist in the same kind of way that schools of fish and swarms of bees exist. That's just how human beings come: in packs. It's also relevant that we would struggle to survive otherwise.

But once we are in a society (which we are, as they say, always already) what then is the guiding mission of the society? Wolff's claim about the purpose of all societies looks plausible as an answer to this question. And the rest of what he says seems about right too. Except that there are norms internal to academia and the church and the arts that go against this idea. Academia might be allowed and even encouraged because it helps the rich get richer, but the norms of academia don't themselves directly promote this kind of useful idiocy. Nor, of course, do those of the churches or the arts. So I think views like Wolff's are true a lot of the time, maybe most of the time, maybe 90% of the time, but I don't think they are entirely true. Comically or not, I think he's exaggerating (and presumably he knows it, since I doubt he really thinks of himself as rationalizing the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich).

Does punk then put lipstick on the pig? Real punk doesn't. This was always the complaint about disco and other kinds of mainstream pop music: they are and were a distraction from political reality, or perhaps just reality in general. Pretty much the definition of alternative music, which includes punk, is that it doesn't do this. The hard part is to be true to this ideal while not being godawful musically. It can be done, but the audience is always going to be relatively small. The Red Wedge tactic is never going to work. Which sounds like despair but only means that the goals of academia, religion, and the arts must be academic, religious, and artistic, not political. Art for art's sake, in other words.