Anti-Climacus

MEDIATED AND UNMEDIATED ARTISTIC EXPERIENCE: One of the big artistic sins, in my view, is posing too close of a relationship between an artist and his art. This was first taught to me by my Baroque art professor, who cautioned against reading too much of Caravaggio's or Rembrandt's biographies into their work. I think this is wrong on two ends: it misunderstands the intention of the artist, and it too-easily resolves the meaning of the work in question. I know about Rembrandt's son and the "psychological turn" of his mid- and late-period work, and so when I look at this:



...I know he's really making a comment on his own impending death and the loss of his son. Except that there's nothing in the painting to indicate either of those things, and one who sees it this way positively cuts out many options for themselves.

Moving down to a lower plane: Helen on pop stars and sexuality. Morrissey is an exceptional case, probably the only person I can think of who puts autobiography cleanly into their music (or does he? What's the meaning of "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side?" I think there's a presumptive answer, but I see no reason for us to accept that).

Since The Road to Ensenada is in my cd player at the moment, I'll ask my question about that: what, if anything, does it tell us about Lyle Lovett, and what, if anything, ought I take from it? Most of the songs ("Her First Mistake" excepted, possibly) are pretty bleak about relationships and their possibilities: what does that express about me? In truth, I suspect it expresses nothing: I don't like good, morose songs because they're morose (or because I'm morose), but because they're good. Sure, like every lovelorn teenagers who feels dangerously removed from society, I liked The Smiths, but I also liked Oasis, considerably less pessimistic. And, goodness, 1970s Miles Davis. And what of those kids who like classical music?

The truth, I think, is that what you listen to is partially responsive to who you are, and partially constitutive of the same. Consider the response to Chuck Klosterman's argument about Say Anything given here:

Dealing with Klosterman’s argument first, not only do I disagree with Klosterman’s fundamental point, i.e., that Cusack betrayed us by creating an unattainable archetype for romance, I’ll take it the other way: Cusack is the romance messiah for the demographic slice that came of age with REM’s Document and Doug Coupland’s Generation X. Even as a young adult, I knew that Say Anything didn’t represent the absolute reality of relationships — hell, my parents’ marriage and my first kiss in junior high (followed by the girl’s piercing laughter) taught me that. Guess what else? When I see two knuckleheads fighting outside a bar, I don’t take my behavioral cues from the Bruce Willis ouevre.

That said, as someone on the elder edge of the demographic group involved, I was heavily impacted by Say Anything, strongly identifying with that adult-trapped-in-an-adolescent’s-body ennui infecting Lloyd Dobler and Diane Court. “I have glimpsed our future. And all I can say is…..go back,” Diane tells their graduating high school class. As an early 20-something, I recognized and recalled with crystal clarity every emotion, every misgiving, every breathless hope Lloyd (and Diane) went through, from the loner outcast’s pessimistic resignation that the beautiful, smart girl won’t give him the time of day, to the lung-squeezing dare of asking her anyway, to the heroin-like high of fumbling through their first sexual encounter, to the soul-crushing despair of her rejection. Redemption? Maybe another time.