The Dixieland Nightmare

"Keep it simple."

But there isn't a simple solution to the VI^{7(♭13 )} chord, i.e. in Bourbon Street Parade, Sheik of Araby, Whispering, Rock-a-Bye Your Baby, Wait 'Till the Sun Shines Nellie, and who knows how many other tradjazz warhorses.

This chord has been the bane of my existence for as long as my ears have been awake to it. In my nightmares and often in real life too, it goes down something like this:

If the melody player knows one note of the actual melody, it's probably the ♭13, because that's the highest, tensest note in the chart. So the cherry is always on top, no matter what kind of sundae is on the menu that day.

The bass player has been scolded to "keep it simple," and so given any G chord, the options are G and D. That's it. The language used to describe bass players who play notes other than G and D is even less flattering than the old joke about players who can do only this. So, "simply" put, this is a dominant chord, shit runs downhill, and payday is on Friday.

The chord player, meanwhile, has been playing these songs for decades and hasn't looked at a chart in years, but they know that G-B-Eb forms an augmented triad, hence that we are dealing here with a Black Sheep offshoot of the Augmented family, and that the remaining members of this clan are A-C#-F. And although the chord player is too tasteful to overdo it, planing is definitely a thing, and so planing there will be.

In other words, if everyone narrowly assimilates to their role, eventually there will be at least one C#-D-Eb pile-up, and probably more than one. This is especially likely in Sheik where the chord just sits there for two whole bars at medium tempo. If there are more than a couple of solos then there almost certainly will be a D-Eb-E pile-up too. This is the tradjazz version of thematic development.

I'm being extremely pedantic and a bit viscious here, but I promise there is a point to it.

The point is: the bass and chord players can't treat this chord as either a straight dominant OR augmented chord, because IT IS NEITHER of those things. By the most obvious analysis it is only one note away, but that analysis is so misleading as to deserve to be labeled actually "wrong." The functional diatonic weighting and countour of this chord are unique in tonal music. Hence there also is no point in everyone simply agreeing to treat it as straight dominant or augmented. That doesn't fit any of these melodies anyway, as parties to any such agreement will be quickly and viscerally reminded; but even if it did there would be much lost and nothing gained this way.

Technically, in the case of the above-named tunes, I believe this chordscale is best analyzed as "fifth mode of harmonic (or melodic) minor";

i.e. G^{7(♭13 )} = C harmonic (or melodic) minor starting on G;

but that is far too verbose to be useful, especially for tradjazzers who would rather live with the clams than bring this kind of talk into the band. So, I propose we label it the "Dixieland Nightmare" chord, in honor of an offhand remark that was once made to me by a bandleader.

In high school and college this chord used to drive me nuts as a listener, but now it drives me nuts as a bass (function) player. 

Staying with G7 as the working example:

If the melody shuttles between E-flat and D, then both of those notes are out; C is outest-of-out, as always; and there is an unresolved ambiguity even in what I consider to be the "correct" reference analysis of the chord, namely: are we using harmonic or melodic minor? i.e. Is it A or A-flat? So even there, one of the most obvious "simple"-but-hip solutions, the G-A-B walkup, comes with the same risk of a pile-up.

And so . . . buckle up, hornheads! The F is a really attractive option. The F is both minimally consonant AND minimally risky. So, we can walk DOWN, G to F; we can even do one full bar of each if we must; and this is a very elegant solution! Most days it seems to me like the ONLY elegant solution. The problem (for others, not for me) is that this lands us on the third of the impending C7 chord. Unless you're dealing with exceptionally hardheaded necrophile purists, this is also quite elegant against the resolution to D in the melody. There are two problems, though. (1) Those necrophiles ARE out there; and (2) generally putting the third on the bottom in this style IS actually pretty destabilizing, and people get annoyed with it when it happens all the time; that is why bass players are so often admonished to "keep it simple" even where doing so creates clams rather than preventing them.

So, as nice as this line is, you can't play it every time. Probably you can only play it once per song, and there are likely to be more choruses than there are unique workable solutions. You can probably get away with the G-A-B walkup, one way or another. I often find myself ghosting the dangerous note in those once-bitten-twice-shy moments. And again, "keeping it moving" IS a viable alternative to "keeping it simple": you can fill-ghost with G-A-B♭-B such that the NCTs really are placed and articulated like NCTs and the anchors like anchors; and this (I really REALLY mean this) usually leads to better results and happier sidespersons as compared with letting some necrophile talk you into "keeping it simple."

"You played a Bb under a G7 chord!" Sure did. If you want to fight about it, fight with Messrs. J.S. Bach and P. Chambers, for starters. Just realize that you're fighting the music that came BEFORE tradjazz at least as much as the music that came after it; you're not just damming the backwash, you're damming the headwaters too. That is really Somethin' Else!

Rank—Art and Artist (iv)—Dynamic Needs of Equalization

Otto Rank
Art and Artist
trans. Charles Francis Atkinson
(1932/1989)

---

[xlviii] a paradoxical phenomenon discloses itself, which will not startle the psychologist and indeed will facilitate our approach to the understanding of the spiritual dynamism in artistic creativity. The autonomous individualism of primitive man, as well as that of the lordly masters appears to be more dependent on Nature in its artistic creativeness than is the sedentary collective type of man, who, though depending to a great extent on nature's moods and his own environment (of commerce), can yet rise to abstractions in art which are quite independent of reality. We shall see presently how this compensatory function of the art-form brings the development of personality and its dynamic need of equalization into unison. Here I would merely point out...that in neither of the two art-forms is it a question of an absolute style-principle, but only of a more or a less, while at the same time both style-forms alike possess the tendency to reproduce something absent , which in certain cases happens to be a natural object, while in others it pictures an idea. The obvious purpose in this tendency is domination , whether this takes the form of a naturalistic representation of an animal as a hunting spell or of the symbolic representation of a human abstraction. Behind both there is the creative will of the personality, which only now and then manifests itself directly, and at other times reacts to the compulsion of collective society and gives expression thereto. Undoubtedly this second art-form...is more capable of development, not only for stylistic and aesthetic, but for psychological reasons as well. For the abstraction at the base of this mechanical art represents even in itself a rising above nature, and it can be still further intensified and varied, whereas in naturalistic or organic art the objects within a cultural environment are limited, so that the artistic effort to deal with them otherwise than in their natural setting does not find them very malleable. In a word, art consists in the latter case of arbitrary

[xlix]

re-creation (not copying) of the given objects; in the other, of the new creation of ever changing ideas. Nevertheless, for both we must assume a creative force in the individual himself, which has to be studied in its various forms before we can arrive at a deeper understanding of the art-forms produced by it.

[end of Introduction]

---

I

Rank's

feeling is insistent that artistic creativity, and indeed the human creative impulse generally, originate solely in the constructive harmonising of this fundamental dualism

of individual and collective. (p. xxii)

By therefore relegating

biography (or pathography)

to the margins, Rank reestablishes a line (perhaps a barrier) between transmission and reception, a line that uncritical, self-projecting observers have tended to blur.

I see no reason why the audience cannot also be creating something through their participation, incommensurable as that something may be with what the artist has presented to them. Yes, reception can be a (self-)generative act, a transformative act, or at the very least an act of consolidation, a renewing of vows to ego and/or to alter. Audiences must also have some dynamic need of equalization even if that need is not as tempestuous as that of the artist-type . But I also see no reason why we should be obligated to assume this of the audience tout court. The old saw about actions speaking louder than words is never too obvious or trite to be relevant. Experience permits us to be dubious when someone tells us offhandedly that a song or a movie or an unrealized concept piece "changed my life." Don't tell me, show me. Don't write your own biography so mechanistically. The fact that you yourself have done it does not make it valid.

chugging along

My mind is a steam engine, not a sports car.

It is reasonably impressive merely to behold it at rest, immobile and ornamental, but that cannot be very interesting to very many people for very long.

My mind is surprisingly slow at getting up to track speed. This requires tremendous waste of time and energy compared to the more advanced technologies that have come around more recently. Most people who behold this spectacle are back at the station. They see something very powerful that moves too slowly. But eventually we will get up to track speed, out here in the vast and sparsely populated rolling hills.

Fickle Ears According To ChatGPT

kacattac: Summarize the site fickleears.blogspot.com in 500 words or less

ChatGPT: Fickleears.blogspot.com is a blog dedicated to music reviews and analysis, with a focus on indie, alternative, and experimental genres. The site offers in-depth critiques of albums, EPs, and singles, providing readers with insights into the artistic merits and cultural significance of various musical works.

The blog's author demonstrates a keen understanding of music theory and composition, often delving into the technical aspects of songs while also considering their emotional impact and thematic content. Reviews are written with a thoughtful and subjective approach, incorporating personal anecdotes and reflections to convey the author's connection to the music being discussed.

One of the distinguishing features of fickleears.blogspot.com is its eclectic taste, covering a wide range of musical styles and artists from around the world. While the blog primarily focuses on independent and lesser-known acts, it also occasionally features reviews of mainstream releases, offering readers a diverse array of music to discover and explore.

In addition to album reviews, the blog occasionally publishes interviews with musicians, providing readers with insight into the creative process and inspiration behind their work. These interviews offer a behind-the-scenes look at the music industry and help contextualize the artistry featured on the blog.

Fickleears.blogspot.com also serves as a platform for critical discourse within the music community, encouraging readers to engage with the content through comments and discussions. The blog's author fosters a sense of community among music enthusiasts, facilitating dialogue and exchange of ideas around the music being reviewed.

Overall, fickleears.blogspot.com is a valuable resource for music lovers seeking thoughtful analysis and commentary on a diverse range of musical offerings. Whether readers are looking to discover new artists or deepen their understanding of familiar genres, the blog provides engaging and insightful content that celebrates the rich tapestry of contemporary music.

---

kacattac: Summarize fickleears.blogspot.com’s theory of aesthetics

ChatGPT: fickleears.blogspot.com's theory of aesthetics centers around the idea that music is a deeply personal and subjective experience, shaped by individual taste, emotion, and context. The blog emphasizes the importance of approaching music with an open mind and a willingness to engage with diverse styles and genres. Rather than adhering to strict criteria of "good" or "bad" music, fickleears.blogspot.com encourages readers to appreciate the artistic merits and cultural significance of each piece on its own terms.

The blog's aesthetic theory also values authenticity and innovation, celebrating artists who push boundaries and challenge conventional norms. While technical proficiency is acknowledged and appreciated, it is not the sole determinant of artistic merit. Instead, fickleears.blogspot.com emphasizes the importance of emotional resonance and creative expression in evaluating music.

Furthermore, the blog's aesthetic philosophy recognizes the interconnectedness of music with other forms of art and human experience. Music is seen as a reflection of society, history, and individual identity, with each song carrying its own narrative and meaning. By contextualizing music within broader cultural and social contexts, fickleears.blogspot.com seeks to deepen readers' appreciation and understanding of the music being reviewed.

Overall, fickleears.blogspot.com's theory of aesthetics promotes a holistic and inclusive approach to music appreciation, valuing diversity, authenticity, and emotional resonance above rigid standards or genre classifications. Through its reviews and analysis, the blog seeks to inspire curiosity, foster dialogue, and celebrate the rich tapestry of musical expression.

the bot that put these next to each other might actually be intelligent

Richard Maltby—in order to create a political cinema, you have to create a non-political cinema

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

CHAPTER 5

DOUBLE MEANINGS

...

[129] The definition of "controversial" grew broader as blacklisting procedures became more institutionalized.* The appearance of one's name in a list published by the Legion's Firing Line, Counterattack, the publications of AWARE, Inc., or any of the even more obscure Red-baiter groups was all that was needed. Figures without studio protection who had past "controversial" allegiances found it increasingly difficult, and finally impossible, to obtain work. The studios were careful to avoid providing grounds for any possible charges of conspiracy, so that there was never an industry-wide "blacklist" as such. There were almost certainly minor variations in policy between studios, with less pressure on independent producers. These inconsistencies as well as the lack of written evidence on the subject, the general pattern of declining employment in the industry, and the reluctance of any but the victims to discuss the issue, make it almost impossible to determine accurately how many people were affected by blacklisting, or the resulting impact on film production.

The studios' adoption of blacklisting practices can, however, be explained, and largely in non-political terms. The economic crisis provoked by falling audiences and the

__________
*By 1952 the "controversial" category covered not only the 324 names cited by cooperative witnesses at the H.U.A.C. "mass hearings, " but also brief membership of the 194 organizations deemed "subversive" by Counterattack, or a listing in the notorious Appendix IX of the 1945 H.U.A.C. report, which even the Committee had ordered destroyed on the grounds of its inaccuracy.

[130]

Paramount decrees left the majors anxious to avoid any further criticism that might have repercussions on their financial position. They conceded to the anti-Communist lobby for the same reasons that they had conceded to the Legion of Decency in 1934, and if the influence of the anti-Communists was disproportionate to their numerical strength, the financial crisis facing the industry was more severe. Moreover, the increase in relative authority that the crisis had given distribution executives in New York encouraged the timid solution. After 1947 the position of the studio production heads was seriously and permanently weakened. Louis B. Mayer was forced out of M. G. M., Darryl Zanuck was pressured into resigning from Twentieth Century-Fox, and two of the Warner Brothers sold their interest in the company. Hughes' sale of R. K. O. to a branch of the General Tire and Rubber Co. in 1955 may have predated by ten years the submergence of other film companies in disparate conglomerates, but it did indicate in dramatic terms that the era of the all-powerful production head was over, and that the dominant voice in studio policy would from now on belong to those in charge of distribution and finance.

The changed nature of the right-wing attack on liberalism in the early 1950s also encouraged the institutionalization of blacklisting. Earlier attempts to rescind hated pieces of New Deal legislation through Congress or the courts had failed, and the enormous success of the Alger Hiss case had shown the reactionaries that the most effective way to destroy Rooseveltian influence was through victimization of individuals. This policy was applied to Hollywood in the "mass hearings" of 1951 and 1952. The Committee's new line of attack permitted the industry the face-saving rationalization that they were not abandoning the freedom of the screen, which had been the primary issue during the 1947 hearings. The situation in the early 1950s, it was argued, was that certain specific individuals were no longer acceptable to sections of public opinion because of their private politics. The more stringent policies adopted by radio and television companies and their sponsors in the name of the political purity of their consumer products forcibly affected the employment policies of the majors. A studio employing an actor too "disloyal" for television would be bound to come under heavy fire from the anti-Communists who had secured his original unemployment. And, as ever, but particularly as in any period of financial crisis, the industry executives were unwilling to alienate any section of the public who might decide to boycott, picket, or refuse to show their product .

Note to p. 130:
Hate to say it, but the account here does indeed invite comparisons with what has happened in the wake of Me Too. Leaving aside the actual principles at stake in Communism, Sexism, etc., the unique kind of public scrutiny invited by the very existence of an Entertainment Industry is comparable to few other sectors, perhaps only to Politics itself. On an industry-wide level this is apt comeuppance for much which is toxic and unethical in The Biz...but of course RM's thesis throughout is well-taken: it is isolated individuals who, rightly or wrongly, become scapegoats, which is all about maintaining the status quo as much as possible.

...

[135]

...

In spite of the commercial triumph of innocuous entertainment signaled by The Sound of Music in 1966, the M. P. A. A. in that year conceded that the existing Production Code was unworkable, and abandoned it for a much shorter and less specific formulation that could be adapted to changing circumstances, in the legal definition of obscenity, for example. In itself, the redrafting of the Code was more significant symbolically than materially: it evidenced the industry's final and reluctant acceptance that it could no longer profitably purvey a specified form of harmless entertainment to an undifferentiated mass audience. In one particular, however, the 1966 revision made that acceptance concrete. It specified that some films should be labeled as "suitable for mature audiences," and thereby introduced a system of classification which the majors had consistently resisted much more vehemently than they had opposed censorship. Film classification had been the main issue of dispute between the M. P. A. A. and censorship boards since 1952. Boards had taken more and more to restricting certain films, including some of the majors', as unsuitable for children. Their right to do so had been upheld by the Supreme Court, and some boards were operating exclusively on this practice, rather than attempting to enforce bans. The industry had fought any attempt to restrict audiences, particularly in the light of its knowledge that a large and growing proportion of movie audiences were under

[136]

17. As before, the producers accepted classification only in the face of a growing censorship lobby, pressure from exhibitors who were concerned that they might again fall prey to community protest, and the forceful arguments of M. P. A. A President Jack Valenti that such a system was in their long-term self-interest. Even so, the system introduced in 1966 was, at best, half-hearted. It went no further than requiring that some films carry the label "Suggested for Mature Audiences" (abbreviated to S. M. A.) on their first- run advertising. This minimalist system did not quell the censorship lobby either inside or outside the industry, and was replaced in 1968 by a four-category classification sys- tem that finally abandoned the Code altogether.

The revisions of the Code during the 1960s amounted to a belated and reluctant acknowledgment by the member companies of the M.P.A. A. that a significant change had taken place in the composition and tastes of the movie audience. The classification system represented the institutional abandonment of the myth of the undifferentiated mass audience. But the tardiness and hesitancy with which these changes were implemented indicated even more clearly the extent to which distributors and major producers clung to a conservative economic definition of their product. The P. C. A. was replaced by the Code and Rating Administration (C.A.R.A.), but the philosophy with which the new organization operated did not differ from that of its predecessor. Instead of excising material by declaring it prohibited, the new administration achieved the same result by threatening producers with an X rating, which the major companies were not prepared to have attached to their product. Although some independent producers consciously pursued the publicity value of an X rating, the majors, committed as they were to blockbuster economics, continued to ensure that with very few exceptions their films were accessible to audienes under eighteen. Despite the increasing evidence to the contrary, they persisted in practicing the restrictive and conservative attitude to their product that the classification system appeared to have breached. That attitude continued to predominate because neither the political nor the economic events of the post-war period, disturbing as they were for the industry, caused the majors to alter their fundamental assumptions about the nature of film as a commercial commodity.

Note to pp. 135-136:
Pair with S.Ewen's observations about children being more susceptible to marketing. Also Zukin and others on teen purchasing power. The irony being that it's tough to crack down on the targeting of youth without flirting with censorship of a different kind. A crazier irony, also, is that the legal case for overturning censorship and granting film status as speech rests on what might be called a strong theory of media effects; in one sense a contravention of McLuhan's dictum.

---

[140]

INTERLUDE

I WAS A COMMUNARD FOR THE F. B. I.:
GENRE AND POLITICS--ANTHONY MANN

"There's a revolution going on.
Don't stay out late."
Arnold Moss (Fouché) in Reign
of Terror

What constitutes a political cinema? A dissenting film within the commercial cinema may choose to make statements about politics as a force outside the institution in which it operates (plot politics), or it may expose the mechanisms of manipulation and exploitation within its economically determined forms (political narrative). In Hollywood these possibilities have consistently functioned as alternatives, obliging a conventionality in one discourse in order to permit opportunistic subversion in another. The limitations of a superficial radicalism in content are apparent: Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer were quite justified in their claim that no Communist propaganda had ever sullied their studios' output, although it is perhaps debatable whether that was entirely due to their unceasing vigilance. The possibilities of formal subversion are more ambiguous, since such a strategy involves a side-step into areas not normally recognized as political. A challenge to conventional modes of representation is, however, a prerequisite for a politically subversive cinema, particularly in Hollywood where highly developed narrative codes circumscribed and recuperated the radical elements of a film's subject matter. To succeed in either political or aesthetic terms a dissenting film was obliged voluntarily to subjugate itself to the immediate demands of its status as a commercial product. By, for example, accepting the conventions of genre and plot development, a subversive film might create a free space for itself through its overt

[141]

conformity. Working below the surface level of plot percepton is exactly what makes such films subversive; they genrate a tension between plot event and its performance, which offers the audience a choice as to the level on which it wishes to read the film. Manny Farber's description of these movies as "Underground Films" captures their essential quality precisely.

The generic puritanism of Budd Boetticher's Westerns, for example, so emphasizes the ritual in the patterning of plot events that the conventional moral lessons of those events, so evident in Ford, cannot be drawn except by an unreflective reading of the plot as sole text. Rather, this rigid, ruthless adherence to generic conventions uses irony to turn the usual implications of the plot on their heads. The sympathetic villain is hardly unique to Boetticher's miniaturist approach, but rarely has evil been more personably personified than by Claude Akins in Comanche Station, nor has righteousness, the central tenet of Randolph Scott's performance, seemed more absurd.

Thus the paradox: in order to create a political cinema, you have to create a non-political cinema . Which is to say, you have to create a cinema which expresses its politics in terms other than those already labeled political. The divisions within Hollywood over H.U.A.C. in a way defined this contradiction. Those people who took positions on either side of the issue were accepting the terms of the debate, even if they denied the existence of common ground between them and their opponents. Both groups were, in a sense, more fundamentally in opposition to those individuals attempting to define the political in a new manner than they were to each other. An alternative politics was not to be defined through positions on issues as such; rather, it was bound into films by their makers' attitude towards the act of filmmaking itself. For those who wished to practice an existential politics, specific issues were irrelevant. Their films contained an implicit acknowledgment that narrative cinema could not democratically present a political content before it had redefined the political implications of its style. The first task for filmmakers of Dissent was to reorganize their attitudes towards the narrative conventions within which they were obliged to work.

To make an overtly political film--a film which took politics as its subject matter--in 1949, two options were open. Either choose a contemporary subject matter in which good and evil could be readily identified, and didactically

[142]

bludgeon the audience with the dramatic logic of the central character's corruption (All the King's Men) or redemption (I Married a Communist). Or eschew message cinema through the use of generic and stylistic conventions to create a political cinema. Reign of Terror practices what it preaches: in describing the unstable realpolitik of the French Revolution Anthony Mann employs a barrage of film noir techniques and gangster movie conventions to present his audience with a cinematic world they can comprehend. Reign of Terror is a conscious exercise in displacement: gangster archetypes in eighteenth-century dress--Robespierre the grotesque homosexual city boss making a show of opulence ("I didn't know such prosperity went with the Revolution," says DuVivier to him on their first meeting); St. Just the brutal dandy whose spiritual corruption is measured by his physical beauty; Fouché the deformed sardonic intellectual who plots to kill his master; Madeleine the film noir fatal woman (kissing DuVivier, she murmurs, "I could kill you"); DuVivier himself, the hero who is a double agent--exchange the dialogue of a hundred crime movies: "Fouché, why don't you go take a walk?" "Don't tempt me, I still have a gun."

All the stylistic devices used to create the insecure urban landscape of the film noir are employed to endow eighteenth-century studio Paris with an instability of circumstance and morality: cross-lighting; the threatening use of extreme close-ups; the expressionist play with shadows (several characters talk to shadows); persistent composition against the natural balance of the subject; the definition of space as solid and three-dimensional through the use of high-or low-angle shots, but still capable of sudden distortion by a cut to an unexpected camera position. Mann carefully sculpts his space, using deliberately positioned people and objects to establish depth in detail and precisely define the space in any shot--frequently to prove to the audience how deceptive appearances are: mirrors conceal doors, a book which turns out to be hollow then turns out to be no more than a container for dog food. His use of camera movement stresses his ambiguity; violence is directed either at or from the camera, implicating the audience or threatening it. In beginning the film with an extreme high-angle long shot, which pans down to a direct overhead shot of the first scene, and cutting occasionally to similar long shots throughout the film, Mann establishes a distance between himself and the audience. He reserves the power to withdraw from the action when he wishes, but forces his audience into participation, bewilderment and suffering with the characters.

[143]

Mann' manipulation of the audience parallels Robespierre's and Barrat's manipulation of the crowds. "I created the mob ... where else would they find a leader?" declares Robespierre. This is a world of realpolitik, where the issue at stake is the control of the elements of power (here the mob, but also an object, the Black Book). What makes Reign of Terror's politics so distinctive is that it assertively defines the difference between good and evil as lying not in tactics but in purpose. The Barrat faction manipulates the mob at the Assembly to destroy Robespierre at the end of the film in precisely the same manner as Robespierre manipulated it to destroy Danton. Mann reinforces the point by the similarity with which he shoots the two scenes, in the same set with the same lighting, using the same camera setups.

Hero and villain are closely related: at one level of the plot, Barrat and Robespierre; at the other DuVivier and Fouché. At one point the latter are paired in a two-shot, facing each other in profile on either side of the frame, making a partnership by their mutual occupation of space, their mutual acceptance of each other's role and their mutual respect for each other's competence. They share the same aim, to find the Black Book and use it for their own ends. They share the same willingness to discard the other when he ceases to be useful. And they share the same duplicity: neither intends to fulfil the bargain they have just struck. By the end of the scene they are trying to kill each other. The moral distinction between them is offered to the audience only on a purely iconic level: DuVivier (Robert Cummings) is the film's ostensible hero because of his physical stature, because of his involvement in the romantic subplot, and because the plot draws us into his conspiracy--we can comprehend its motivation as well as its purpose. Fouché (Arnold Moss) is the villain because of his appearance--crooked, beak-nosed, invariably dressed in black--and because he is a natural dissembler. But almost the first thing we see DuVivier do is to murder a man with his bare hands. Significantly, Fouché has others perform all his butchery.

Mann's political methodology thus involves taking a conventional form and displacing its conventions. But in displacing them he does not violate them--unlike, for example, Abraham Polonsky in Force of Evil, where film noir criminal protagonist John Garfield turns renegade in the final scenes, reneging on his relationship with the audience and perhaps providing a model for the ex-Communist witnesses to H.U.A.C. Reign of Terror uses its generic

[144]

and stylistic borrowings to create a world which is familiar enough for its unfamiliarities to be disturbing. The sets are made familiar by their lighting, the costumes by their inhabitants. What is unfamiliar is the extent of the film's realpolitik ambivalence. By making its hero a political assassin who will, at the film's end, compromise in a balance of power with its personification of evil, it persistently denies that a fixed morality of action exists. That denial is made generically possible by the film's position, at the same time inside and outside the conventions of the film noir.

Reign of Terror's narrative fits the pattern of Mann's later Westerns. The action of the film is a neutralizing movement towards compromise and control. But it is more explicit in its discussion of power as morally ambiguous than the Westerns were to be. They assume the territory Reign of Terror travels, and employ more independent reified symbols of the ambivalence of power--the rifle in Winchester 73. They also seek resolution at a different point. By concentrating on the obsession or dilemma of a single character, they articulate the politics of an introverted individualism, and at the plot's conclusion leave the central character a good deal less interesting than he was at its beginning. Reign of Terror, because it is not so clearly focused, can abandon its characters in the middle of a balance of forces no more stable than that with which it began; the untenable joint governance of Barrat, the "honest man," and Fouché, the "disloyal, unscrupulous, deceitful, treacherous, cunning" embodiment of studied malevolence. It is an apt enough commentary on the two worlds of Hollywood politics it describes.

"official communication" from fickle ears staff, re: "the jobs that they were counting on"

We recently received the following "official communication" from the local of which we are a member and under whose auspices our present employment is conducted:

...The Eagles are on tour right now and are scheduled to perform a few times in the Southern California area. Although they are not performing in our jurisdiction, they are contracting the string students from California State University Fullerton to replace the professional musicians that would normally be contracted for these performances. This is not the first time CSUF has done this. ...

The institution is displacing professional musicians’ jobs with their students; jobs that their students are presumably training for in the first place. ... Under these circumstances, by the time their students graduate, the jobs that they were counting on for will be no longer be filled by professional musicians. ...

We of course find this part of such stories to be at best the fifth or sixth most important part.

Also, we do greatly value the privilege of being represented by a union, but we wish this union would be more coherent in its stated positions.

First: people who willingly attend Eagles-with-orchestra concerts can't tell the difference between student and professional musicians. Those who maintain this not to be the case have a formidable task in explaining away the above-described events.

Second: whatever the failings of such an audience, these are not moral failings. It must be said that they betoken success too: namely the smashing success of the education-industrial complex in taking up the cause of the performing arts. We are unfamiliar with the CSUF strings but generally we find it unsurprising that a college group could be adequate for much "professional" work. We've heard and played in several that were. We've also done extensive "professional" work and found the bar to be quite a bit lower than we, and ostensibly the union (but only sometimes), would prefer. In two different locals in two different states we have been left mystified and incredulous at the union roster on our instrument, which extends to anyone who knows someone they can borrow a tuba from. At that point, to get bothered at students taking over "professional" work is absurd. How much of the local "tuba" roster could carry the jock strap of a state-school tuba player?

Third: ditto above with regard to quantity as well as quality. It is not breaking news that more students train in the performing arts than can work in the performing arts. The industry and the union both get what they want when more musicians split a fixed amount of work. Predictably both pay lip service to "music education." Less often but equally predictably, they also pay lip service to audience outreach. But musicianship has proven more amenable to progressive reform than has reception. You can build a better mousetrap, but you can't train anyone else to notice or force them to care.

Fourth: the notion that pre-professionals "were counting on" pickup orchestra gigs with The Eagles is one which strains credulity. The union declares that they should, the industry that they shouldn't. In any case, we suspect they are not. They and their teachers are aiming much, much higher. This is as it should be, and this is what countless union and industry photo ops have goaded us towards: high motivation can come only from high aspirations. Those among the professorate who have had significant careers outside of academia know that students who are good enough to get admitted to 4-year college as music majors already play well enough to do pickup orchestra with The Eagles, no matter if the gig is union or dark. Anyone who maintains this not to be the case has a formidable task in explaining away the above-described events. They have an equally formidable task in explaining why the skills required to play pickup orchestra with The Eagles are post-secondary and graduate-level skills rather than elementary ones; why this is what music students should be doing while their peers are reading Plato and Kant, plotting regression equations, and extracting abcessed teeth; why and how this "aspiration" can be anything other than crippling and cynical in comparison to everything else the performing arts have to offer a young person. The indications are all around us that Eagles-with-orchestra skills are elementary skills, but many of us would rather hold out hope-against-hope of filling a couple more dates on the calendar than think too hard (or at all) about what is actually to happen on those dates. The cynical proposal that aspiring freelancers attend business school rather than music school speaks a certain truth, but it is not the truth that its cynical utterers think they are speaking. They think they are extolling the wisdom of markets; in fact they are pointing up an area of exceptional failure of markets and of the conceit to meritocracy, a failure so drastic that it is not the least bit representative of general market dynamics. For this and many other reasons, we ourselves prefer the idealstic outlook which challenges performing arts students to maximize their potential and to seek a distinctive artistic voice rather than bending themselves and their work toward an existing career path. But this does nothing to raise audience receptivity to those new voices. Nor does either industry or the union have any use for self-directed artists with day jobs. Prospectively we cannot really say what (if any) value self-directed artists might have. No one has any use for them, until they do.

Self-Curation

Richard Seymour
The machine always wins: what drives our addiction to social media

A 2015 study looked into the reasons why people who try to quit social media fail. The survey data came from a group of people who had signed up to quit Facebook for just 99 days. Many of these determined quitters couldn’t even make the first few days. And many of those who successfully quit had access to another social networking site, like Twitter, so that they had simply displaced their addiction. Those who stayed away, however, were typically in a happier frame of mind and less interested in controlling how other people thought of them, thus implying that social media addiction is partly a self-medication for depression and partly a way of curating a better self in the eyes of others. Indeed, these two factors may not be unrelated.

[from a screenshot-to-self, 2019]

Garry Chick—Games and Their Rhetorics

Garry Chick
"Games and Their Rhetorics: An Idiosyncratic Appreciation of The Contributions of Brian Sutton-Smith"
(2015)

[13] In a 1964 study, Sutton-Smith and Roberts showed that 8 to 12 year old children were able to attribute playing style-like characteristics to others. They created a categorization of players wherein those who “act (a) like players in games of chance and try to succeed by relying on luck, i.e., are fortunists; (b) like players in games of physical skill who try to succeed by applying physical power, i.e., are potents; or (c) like players in games of strategy who try to succeed by making wise decisions, i.e., are strategists” (15). Children who either lacked followers or gave up in the face of difficulties were regarded as failures. In addition to the children’s sociometric ratings of others, teachers rated the children in terms of their success in the classroom and on the playground. Sutton-Smith and Roberts (1964) found that 76% of the children named as classroom successes were in the top quarter of the distribution of strategists as perceived by other children. Fifty per cent indicated by teachers as successful on the playground were in the top quarter attributed as being potents. Fifty-nine strategists, but only four potents were regarded as classroom successes by teachers while 34 potents, but only 17 strategists, were classified as playground successes. Teachers classified 65% of the children regarded by their peers as either fortunists or failures as failures either in the classroom or on the playground. Sutton-Smith and Roberts (1964) extended their study by further examining the children who were in the top quarters of the distributions in each of the categories. As some children were in the top quarters of more than one category, Sutton-Smith and Roberts created the additional categories of potent-strategists, potent-fortunists, and fortunist-failures. They reported:

Our results show that boys make distinctions among children who succeed by strategy, children who succeed by power, and children who succeed by using a combination of these two types. Boys do not, however, appear to distinguish clearly between children who succeed by good fortune and those who simply fail. To succeed by luck is apparently tantamount to failure.

[14]

Girls, on the other hand, distinguish between children who succeed by fortune and those who simply fail. The largest difference between the two groups is to be found in the girls’ game preferences in which the fortunist-failures are not unlike the success groups in their responses, whereas the pure failure group is atypical and immature. The distinction made by girls between potent-strategists, strategists, and potent [sic] seems not to be a distinction in type as it is with boys so much as a distinction in degree. Potent-strategists have most of the desirable characteristics, strategists somewhat less, and potents even less; but all three groups are superior to fortunists and failures. (31)

Sutton-Smith and Roberts (1964) concluded that children can consistently place each other into categories based on games and that boys, in particular, play games that are analogous to their success styles. Girls tend not distinguish among success styles but do so among failure groups.

p. 16 subject heading:

Games as Ambiguous Agents of Socialization

My note says:
emphasizes that coaches can usurp decision making and encourage bending the rules...but it seems fair to speculate that the games themselves (more specifically, perhaps, the stakes) could have the same effect.

Now:
Lasch, in his chapter on sport, makes reference (pregnant reference I would say, especially if you are both a sports fan and a musician) to a certain irreducable "autonomy of cultural traditions," and he quotes approvingly an ex-pro athlete who holds that "Money" in pro sports "has nothing to do with capitalism." For Lasch, this stands as a "Reject[ion of] the simple-minded radicalism according to which "commercialization" has corrupted sports."

Neither Lasch nor his source, evidently, foresaw the latter career of LeBron James, e.g., wherein the "corrupt[ion]" of sport by "commercialization" can in fact be noncontroversially pinned to quite specific statements and actions. Hence the managerial turn remarked upon above, while it certainly is in evidence in the NBA, is superfluous to the diagnosis of "corruption;" a strong word no doubt, but the only accurate word for a sport where the top points-per-game scorers, per Ryen Russillo (7 June, 2022, ca. 3:35), on average play no more than 60 of 82 regular season games, and often many fewer than that. Per Russillo, in the last five years the number of missed games among the top 25 ppg scorers has gone from 6 to 23 (of 82). He points out that this past season many legitimate injuries contributed to the spike, but ultimately concludes that, "Until the money [i.e. esp. from live television rights] is screwed up, nothing happens," i.e. there is no urgency to shorten the season or legislate participation. Really it makes no difference whether the league is running the players harder than their bodies can take or whether the players are "resting" preventatively at the expense of competitive integrity. The diagnosis of "corruption" follows easily enough from either factor.

The obvious explanation for why this "corruption" is further advanced in basketball than in baseball or football is simple, and also very simply a function of that narrow but undeniable "autonomy" of the sport which follows ineluctably from its structure: a single great player has by far the most impact on team success (and therefore power over team management, coaches, and other players) in a 5-on-5 sport (or at least in this one) as against 9-on-9 or 11-on-11. It has also been ventured by more than a few talking heads that the NFL, in contrast to the NBA, is a "helmet league" which conceals players' faces and hence limits their off-the-field recognizability as powerful celebrities. Unfortunate as all of this is, the onus is on the detractors (can I just say opponents?) of "autonomy" for the West's more decadent "cultural traditions" to show that the structure of the game is at fault rather than the influence of money and careerism. It is, conversely, not nearly so difficult to show that the autonomy is real, since money and careerism have a way of bringing it into higher relief, as here, even in spite of the overall spectacular quality which all major-league American sports (and big-money performing arts endeavors) necessarily share. In other words, money's influence could not vary even so widely as in the above example if the "autonomy" was not real; and so, at least under the present circumstances, given the ability of autonomous factors to serve not just as vulnerabilities but also as defenses, there are ample grounds for rejecting the loudmouth cries of self-referentiality and decadence which are the customary response to assertions of the "autonomy" of any particular "cultural tradition."

Lasch also makes much of the managerial turn, evidently visible already in the late 1970s, which "makes every effort to eliminate the risk and uncertainty that contribute so centrally to the ritual and dramatic success of any contest." That this factor renders sports Ambiguous Agents of Socialization rather than outright positive or negative ones is a point near and dear to my heart, and also, I must add, fully consonant with my own youth sport experiences from Peewee through Babe Ruth. (Later I was fortunate to have an exceptional high school coach, Dave Wicker, who was a calculus teacher and, formerly, an accomplished baseball player, though there were, let's say, ambiguities to spare emanating from just about every other direction.) Lasch certainly understands this ambiguity, yet one of the few unperceptive aspects of his account is that he, as far as I can tell, treats the money issue and the managerial issue separately. It is a bit odd that he finds only "simple-minded radicalism" in the thesis that money corrupts sport; or at least it seems odd in hindsight, since much else in his account is characteristically on point, and because the conceit to "eliminat[ion of] risk and uncertainty" via bureaucratic means is (and it is fair here to also say was) a highly visible trait of the world he lived in, a major area of overlap between the "captialist" and "communist" leviathans.

[16] In the cross-cultural data, they found evidence that, in societies where all three game types [physical skill/strategy/chance??] are present, obedience was emphasized over self-reliance or honesty. In contemporary American sports, for example, coaches have all but completely usurped decision-making. Hence, there is little need for players to be self-reliant. However, coaches value obedience and self-restraint. And, as for honesty, coaches teach how to shade the rules without getting caught. At both the University of Illinois and Penn State University, I have

[17]

had offensive and defensive linemen from the football teams in class. When asked how often offensive linemen are guilty of “holding,” defensive linemen respond “on every play” while offensive linemen answer, “never.” Obviously, there is a difference in perspective but also in training. Offensive linemen are coached in how to hold and not get caught. Roberts and Barry (1976) concluded, “If games build character, that character may be less than ideal” (59). As Sutton-Smith so often emphasized, ambiguities exist not only in how we study play but in play itself.

...

[18] Sutton-Smith went on to critique [certain] studies and their conclusions based on post-1970 research and theorizing. More important, however, is that he recognized that the studies themselves were grounded in the then-extant view that play is an ideal activity for children rather than one that is to be maligned and avoided as in previous times and other cultures (see Sutton-Smith and Kelly-Byrne 1984). Thus, with respect to games, “When Roberts and I called them models of power, we were becoming victims of our own and other males’ macho rhetoric […]” (SuttonSmith 1989, 13). Further, with respect to games, he claimed that

In their own strange ways, they embody tenderness in their affairs as well as toughness. They make players love each other, or love their coaches, or love their supporters, as much as they make them hate each other. What shall we call them: the games as models of toughness and tenderness? Perhaps games as models of Power and Pusillanimity? (13)

My note says:
I would suggest that part of what BSS is groping for here is captured by the universalistic-particularistic distinction. We hate the opponent, but “it’s not personal,” and “game recognizes game.” Sorry, but this does seem to be a guy thing. Time for us to work on our emotions, and also time for the ladies to work on this.

Now:
The year I attended his (in)famous Interim class at CalArts, Art Lande related stories of reffing "high level" basketball, wherein the truly "great" players "love the other team."

[notes emailed to self, 26 April 2021]

---

Garry Chick
Games in Culture Revisited: A Replication and Extension of Roberts, Arth, and Bush
(1959)

[188] Glassford (1976) enumerated several criteria that characterize good systems of classification. These include:

1. Exclusiveness. Members of one class should be excluded from all other classes that are at the same level of analysis. With respect to games, any individual game should be a member of only one class.

2. Exhaustiveness. The classification system applied to any particular concept should include all instances of that concept. A game classification system should be such that any game will fall into one of its categories.

3. Usefulness. A categorization system should be useful in description, analysis, or comparison (or all three) of the objects or events that it classifies. To be useful, a game categorization system must permit cross-cultural or other kinds of comparisons of games.

...

[189] The problem with all of these systems [e.g. from Caillois on], though they may have considerable utility in describing and understanding games, is that they are not exclusive and often not exhaustive. That is, many games can fall into two or more classes. Systems such as that of Caillois (1961) are so broad that it is difficult to exclude many activities that are not commonly thought of as games (e.g., skiing, riding a merry-go-round). The game classifications based on informant perceptions lack utility for cross-cultural comparisons, though it might be possible to construct some composite system based on several emic categorizations. On the other hand, any activity that fits their definition of games can always be categorized into one of the three classes given by Roberts et al. (1959). Though their categorization scheme has been criticized (e.g., Royce, 1972; von Glascoe, 1976), it has the advantage of being both inclusive and exclusive, unlike the alternatives developed by others. For this reason, it is useful in comparative research.

My note says:
Fair criticism of Caillois’ taxonomy. Still, “comparative research” is just one application. A taxonomy which is not useful for “comparative research” could still, imaginably, be useful elsewhere. And, admittedly, I just like the Caillois version. Will have to think about why that really is.

[193] Tables 3 and 4 indicate that the degree of political integration and social stratification have strong positive relationships with the presence of games of strategy. Hence, these results clearly support

[194]

Roberts et al.’s (1959) conclusions about games of strategy and the complexity of the social system. It is worth noting that Table 3 shows that no societies that lack multicommunity organization have games of strategy. In both his writings and in personal interactions after the publication of "Games in Culture," Roberts maintained that games of strategy model hierarchical social organizations, that such models function as socialization devices, and that for each specific society, there is a fit between the array of games present and the more general culture.

My note says:
...this leap straight to “modeling” is actually rather drastic! What if societies “create what they need” or “reproduce something absent”? This is not just a different explanation, it’s the OPPOSITE explanation.

[emailed to self, 26 April, 2021]

Two Thoughts on Woke Casting

(1) A special complication arises from the conceit to establishing vocational role models by showing the target audience actors who "look like them" in those roles: flooding film and TV with Black actors also reinforces the message that entertainment careers are more open to Black people than are other kinds of careers, which is one of the oldest and most pernicious "messages" American culture has been sending to Black people this whole time.

(2) Casting is and was always inherently unfair. Woke casting is not more or less fair than casting ever was. What's different about woke casting is not its fairness or unfairness but the fact that it is talked about openly and virtuously, even in the eye of the hurricane. For those thus located, this makes it divisive on a day-to-day, person-to-person level. (I am relating past and ongoing experience here, not conjecture.) So, whatever new society we're birthing this way, it seems the talent won't be sharing in it. Seemingly arbitrary acceptance or rejection is, as it turns out, a far stronger basis for esprit de corps. Arbitrariness is a kind of rugged equality, hardly the ideal kind, but closer to it than what is unfolding right now.

Bibliographilia—Lasch's Roth

Here is the article by Philip Roth which launches Chapter IV of The Minimal Self.

Several passages are of interest despite (in some cases because of) not having been referenced by Lasch.

Lasch—Crises of Competence

Christopher Lasch
The Revolt of the Elites (1995)

[84] Dewey's exchange with Lippman raises the disturbing question of whether democracy implies high standards of personal conduct. Unlike many contemporary liberals, Dewey clearly thought it did. ... Like other progressive thinkers...Dewey was bent on refuting critics of democracy who claimed that it fostered mediocrity, self-indulgence, an excess love of comfort, sloppy workmanship, and a timid conformity to prevailing opinion. The idea that democracy is incompatible with excellence, that high standards are inherently elitist (or, as we would say today, sexist, racist, and so on) has always been the best argument against it. Unfortunately many democrats secretly (or not so secretly) share this belief and are therefore unable to answer it. Instead they fall back on the claim that democratic men and women make up in tolerance what they lack in the way of character.

The latest variation on this familiar theme, its reductio ad absurdum, is that a respect for cultural diversity forbids us

[85]

to impose the standards of privileged groups on the victims of oppression. This is so clearly a recipe for universal incompetence (or at least for a disastrous split between the competent classes and the incompetent) that it is rapidly losing whatever credibility it may have had when our society (because of its abundance of land and other natural resources, combined with its chronic shortage of labor) offered a more generous margin for incompetence. The mounting evidence of widespread inefficiency and corruption, [etc., etc....a very long list of contemporary ills]...—these developments, the ominous import of which can no longer be ignored or concealed, have reopened the historic debate about democracy. ... Formally democratic institutions do not guarantee a workable social order... As conditions in American cities begin to approach those of the Third World, democracy will have to prove itself all over again.

Liberals have always taken the position that democracy can dispense with civic virtue. According to this way of thinking, it is liberal institutions, not the character of citizens, that make democracy work. Democracy is a legal system that makes it possible for people to live with their differences. The impending crisis of competence and civic trust, however, casts a heavy pall of doubt over the agree-

[86]

able assumption that institutions, as opposed to character, provide all the virtue democracy needs. The crisis of competence suggests the need for a revisionist interpretation of American history, one that stresses the degree to which liberal democracy has lived off the borrowed capital of moral and religious traditions antedating the rise of liberalism.

...

For all its intrinsic attractions, democracy is not an end in itself. It has to be judged by its success in producing superior goods, superior works of art and learning, a superior type of character.

...

[87] The call for models of heroism "common to all" seems to threaten the pluralism of ethical commitments that democracy is obliged to protect. In the absence of common standards, however, tolerance becomes indifference, and cultural pluralism degenerates into an aesthetic spectacle in which the curious folkways of our neighbors are savored with the relish of a connoisseur. However, our neighbors themselves, as individuals, are never held up to any kind of judgment. ... The questions that allegedly divide us beyond hope of compromise turn out to be lifestyle questions, in the jargon of the day. ... In this context, the question that really matters—How should I live?—also becomes a matter of taste... But this deeper and more difficult question, rightly understood, requires us to speak of impersonal virtues... If we believe in these things, moreover, we must be prepared to recommend them to everyone, as the moral preconditions of a good life. To refer everything to a "plurality of ethical commitments" means that we make no demands on anyone and acknowledge no

[88]

one's right to make any demands on ourselves. The suspension of judgment logically condemns us to solitude. Unless we are prepared to make demands on each other, we can enjoy only the most rudimentary kind of common life.

So, regarding

mak[ing] no demands on anyone
,

along with

acknowledg[ing] no one's right to make any demands on ourselves
,

dare
I
ask,

chicken or egg?

Asking for a friend

(perhaps a friend who lives in a certain Upper Midwestern semi-metropolis where

tolerance becomes indifference
,

and/or

who attended a certain a boho finishing school where a

workable social order

was not

guarantee[d])

.

[88] Without these ["minimal standards of workmanship, literacy, and general competence"], we have no basis on which either to demand respect or to grant it. Common standards are absolutely indispensable to a democratic society. Societies organized around a hierarchy of privilege can afford multiple standards, but a democracy cannot. Double-standards mean second-class citizenship.

[107] When the authors of The Good Society say that "democracy means paying attention," they seek to recall us to a sense of the common good and to combat the selfish individualism that blinds us to the needs of others. But it is our reluctance to make demands on each other, much more than our reluctance to help those in need, that is sapping the strength of democracy today. We have become far too accommodating and tolerant for our own good. In the name of sympathetic understanding, we tolerate second-rate workmanship, second-rate habits of thought, and second-rate standards of personal conduct. ... Democracy in our time is more likely die of indifference than of intolerance.

Representationalism as Certainty

Evidently this has been making the rounds:

Rittenhouse

When I look at this image, I see a concept made perfectly transparent and rendered powerfully with a high degree of technical and aesthetic skill alike. I see a devastating and pessimistic statement made pleasing to look at. Like a "beautiful" but "sad" piece of music, this makes for a particulary powerful combination.

All of this is familiar, though it is not to be taken for granted. It is unusual to find the technical skill and the powerful conceptual sense merged in the same artist. (This in itself is no dig at conceptual art; it's just simple math.) But backing up a step, another thing this image makes clear is that the artist has total confidence and total certainty vis-a-vis his "message." A mere unconscious twinge of doubt would make the creation of this particular image impossible. Artists customarily are praised for such displays of fortitude, for "really going for it." But this is far more admirable in the realms of abstraction and aesthetics than it is regarding concrete politics. When political actors assume this degree of certainty, bad things tend to happen. And history is littered with artists whose certainty about individual political figures later turned to equally intense regret. If all it takes for us to lose sight of this is for us to agree with the "message" we are receiving in a particular moment, then we will not get very far (and we won't deserve to).

Images are uniquely powerful vehicles for any "message." That power is a responsibility. It is not a toy. McLuhan's hypothetical piece of cloth with "American Flag" printed on it has, as he indeed argued, nowhere near the power of the genuine imagistic article. There is much more to this aspect of images than their being worth "a thousand words," or any number of words. The point is, they are totally different than words. And as powerfully as the above image conveys its "message," and as strongly as I am inclined to agree with that message, all of this nonetheless reinforces for me a deep uneasiness with this kind of political art. I am not certain enough of anything in the world, not even of the beliefs I've spent the last 15 years writing about in this space, that I would be comfortable making this kind of statement against another person using a caricature of their own image as its basis.

The poverty of words as against images is precisely what makes words suitable (and images unsuitable) vehicles for political dialogue. That entire line of argument is summed up concisely and profoundly in this image, as it is also by many of the images of George Floyd which have been installed on sides of buildings and freeway underpasses over the last year and a half. In seeking to put an individual human face on issues which remain too abstract to too many of us, these images also, perhaps unwittingly, signal a retreat from decades of hard-won intellectual and legislative momentum toward understanding racism as a structural problem. Instead, we are treated to, alternately, the beatification or the condemnation of individual social actors who cannot possibly be, not even in these two cases I don't think, reducible to such either/or judgments. If you think that anyone is so reducible, then I question your fitness for political participation (and I urge you to stick to words in any case).

These are images which obfuscate and mystify the underlying structural factors as viciously and totally as any piece of government or media propaganda ever could. I can only hope this is because these artists take that awareness for granted, not because they are woefully ignorant and/or incapacitated (far too easily) by rage, and not because their identification or contra-identification with the skin-deep traits of any given person is as deep of a political analysis as they are capable of making or understanding.

The transparency of "concept" here is a double-edged sword. It ensures that the "message" cannot be lost in aesthetic translation, but it also traps the artist on a level of crudity which is totally unbecoming of the issues at stake here. What is this work, really, but a very sophisticated piece of name-calling? Rather than modulating legitimate anger into a mature and nuanced political statement, aesthetics and technique in this case serve merely to amplify the visceral sentiment while leaving its infantile quality intact. A pencil-drawn moustache-and-glasses overlay involves far less craft but operates, conceptually, on the same level of (im)maturity, the same level of historical and political understanding. This is the trap that conceptual brute force lays for all political artists.

(This post was written in an hour (i.e. tonight) after germinating for many months.)

Bodies and Artifacts (ii)—Partch's Corporeality

Harry Partch
Genesis of a Music (1974, orig. 1949)

For the essentially vocal and verbal music of the individual—a Monophonic concept—the word Corporeal may be used, since it is a music that is vital to a time and place, a here and now.
(p. 8)

Hmm. I thought corporeal meant something like "relating to a person's body, especially as opposed to their spirit." (-Google)

Repurposing New York's Aphorist Laureate for Very New York Purposes

When Yogi Berra plugged disability insurance, he could just as well have been talking about art:

When you don't have it, that's when you need it.

B.W'd.Y.G addendum

A quick and bloggy addendum on looking for edification in all the wrong online places:

As I continue to trawl/troll Blogspot for distant voices of reason, I am frequently reminded, for one, that this is asking a lot no matter the medium, but also that the analytic/speculative/critical orientation remains very much a preoccupation of a tiny woolly-headed minority of thinkers, even (or is it especially?) now that it has been institutionalized and co-opted.

In plain English now, I am rather taken aback not so much at any lack of literacy or erudition but rather at the sheer number of "book reports" that people have written and posted, summaries of other authors' work which are in and of themselves accurate, grammatical, well-proofread, etc., more so in fact than we have been led to expect from The Internet, but from which any whiff of original analysis or insight is, let's say, conspicuous by its absence.

There is a specifically journalistic version of this wherein some bygone writer/thinker is exhumed in order to be offered as an antidote to or perspective on some current political event. In this there is at least some gentle stirring of analytic thought, some positing of a connection or juxtaposition between two ideas or ideologies; but if you have in fact already read the book which the author wishes more people nowadays would read (in other words, if you are like me in that you only go looking for original thought online after grinding away at a fair bit of your own), then for you these are still "book reports" which rarely take note of anything you have not already noticed yourself. I often go online hoping to find out what I have not noticed about a given work I want to cite or write about. I am finding that this bet doesn't pay out very often or very well. (I hasten to add that academic journals on the whole, and I really mean this, are not much better, not unless the article in question is a true landmark document. I have the best luck with physical books published before the PowerMac. I am quite underwhelmed by just about everything else.)

I believe it was Ms. Wright in 11th grade IB English who quite explicitly weaponized "book report" as an epithet and a piece of negative advice. We were therein admonished to understand the difference between writing a summary of a book and writing an essay about the ideas presented in the book, and about our own ideas about those ideas. We were also made to understand that many high schools out in the suburbs practice grade inflation while assigning less rigorous work than we would be doing, and that if we thought this unfair then it was tough beans for us. I've lived to have mixed feelings about the overall effect that all of this rigor had on me for the ensuing decade or so. But PHHS really did have some great teachers who "get it."

That said, I think that grade inflation and general soullessness is at best half the answer to the present riddle. My free-wheeling speculation is that the "book report" is, consciously or otherwise, just a more erudite and better-proofread version of clickbait. "Book report" bloggers are more likely to have something for sale, literally or figuratively. And, while it may of course be countered that summaries of Erich Fromm books are never going to get as many clicks as a well-curated cat video, I'm not sure that this conclusively rules out my theory.

Among my central interests here, which do not include cat videos even though I enjoy them as much as the next guy, it is not too hard now that google supplies some pageview data within the dashboard here to make some educated guesses about what kinds of posts might get the most attention. Ever since I posted it, my transcription of Wayne Shorter's Pinocchio has been by far the most viewed page on this site, often doubling up on the next closest competitor. A really terrible essay that I wrote for a class at CalArts, on Ligeti's Lontano, posted as a placeholder during a Blog Month, is always near the top. I would of course prefer it if Against the Literary Imperative or any of the essays on Mumford's Art and Technics were the most viewed; but I suppose I would have to delete everything else to make that happen, and even then this would be a lowering rather than a raising of the tide.

There are many other possible explanations for the "book report" phenomenon: a genuine desire to create something more accessible than the books themselves, any of a number of esoteric personal motivations, and, of course, the mere conceit to original thought in absence of any real ability to toss it off. But I do wonder if clicks are not part of the equation and if desperate slacker college students are not in and of themselves a formidable mass of clickers.

Bro, where'd ya go?

The first time I heard or read the word "blog" was when I over-heard it on the radio while trying to work on something else. Some glib NPR infotainment piece about blogs, their rise and potential fall. Circa 2004, give or take a year. The funny thing is, something quite glib was uttered in the course of this puff piece that immediately captured my attention and imagination. This was solely responsible for my first aborted attempt at blogging, consisting of exactly one post which, if memory serves, was very much like post #1 here. A few years later I tried again and it stuck.

When you run out on a Blogspot, as I ran out on my firstborn, eventually it is resorbed into the cybervoid. You do get a friendly notice from the hivemind at google long before resorption is imminent. This has happened only once with Fickle Ears, and it practically made my heart stop, which is pretty embarrassing but also sums up well where things stand for me vis-a-vis anyone giving two shits about anything else that I've done. This blog project is now my hipster-nerdverse answer to Second Life. This was not the plan, but this is what has happened. McLuhan was quite correct to call these things "extensions of man," though I prefer "projection" because it more fully captures the aggressive aspect which is bound to be part of the equation for a washed-up high school athlete. This blog gets read about as often as my symphonies get played, but I believe in it, most of all because, just like that breezy NPR story said (or like I now imagine it to have said), the blog is a diary and a soapbox and a therapist and a record-keeper and perhaps a few other things, all and none of these things all at once, oddly able to shapeshift in spite of being, seemingly, a rigid, backward, slightly clumsy technology of failure, a technology of the millennium which with full millennial irony almost immediately ceased to have any obvious resonance with everything its sibling technologies have wrought. Meanwhile, I am a typical only child, and I'm here to stay.

Apropos of such a failure, no two people use these little monsters in quite the same way, and this makes community and exchange far more elusive than McLuhan seems to have thought it might become, depending I suppose on what exactly you understand "village" to mean. Lewis Mumford idealized the "neolithic" village as the most stable, secure, peaceful existence mankind has yet known, and so lashed out at McLuhan like a cornered animal. They were both prescient in their own ways. But neither got all of the details quite right.

There are only three other blogs that have really, really resonated with me. One of them, speaking of malign prophets, is Professor Gann's Postclassic, and when I say it "resonated" I mean to evoke a cast iron skillet falling off the stove during an earthquake rather than the gestalt of a clean orchestral tutti. Still, Gann is just about the only person writing about music who actually is all the things his right sidebar says he is. This makes his fieldwork invaluable even for someone who occasionally finds his positions absurd. Better a scholar courting absurdity than vice versa, I think. I'm not going to provide a link though, because if you're reading this the percentage chance that you've already been there is in the high nineties.

Daniel Wolf's Renewable Music has been a much more enjoyable horizon-expanding experience. Daniel's writing style also very much appeals to me and has influenced my own writing greatly, unlikely though that may seem. Unfortunately even with Daniel's help I didn't really understand exactly what The Radical Music referred to until I got to CalArts. (Or did this merely distract me with an academic caricature? Hmm...) I am not an experimentalist, nor all that Radical of a musician, and I have very precisely articulated/rationalized reasons for why I am not these things. But the funny thing is, in absence of full context I have always been able to read the writings of experimental musicians and think that I agree with every word. I've had some odd, very adolescent false starts this way. But I do owe Daniel quite a debt not just for providing raw information and for generating plenty of "heat and light" but also for exemplifying in quiet eloquence what a civil internet might look like. Daniel is the reluctant virtuoso of the blog whose example guides much of what I do here, though again I realize that probably sounds inexplicable and perhaps also is unfair to him. Influence works in funny, indirect ways.

Both of these blogs seem to have gone dormant, happily without yet being gobbled up by the streetsweeper, but for years now rather than the mere months which are customary for all of us. Predictably given my tastes and purposes, Gann's project does feel more or less complete at this point, while Wolf's feels open-ended and inexhaustible. Gann once confessed to being wary of repeating himself, a problem which every blogger has if we're being honest, while Wolf's purview itself seemed to ensure a certain ludic unpredictability very much in the spirit of the musical work he makes and writes about. As a reader I don't miss the pressure of keeping up, but now the disappearance of these two curiosities, both of which kept me on my toes in a way that a rigidly empirical orientation cannot, is felt as a palpable absence in my personal intellectual theater.

For all the time (too much perhaps) that I once spent bouncing off the walls of the blogosphere, there is only one other blog I would truly count as an influence. I spent only a very brief time with it, but it made a strong impression. Returning for the first time in a decade, I was sad to find that it has long since been resorbed, or possibly intentionally removed, and sadder yet to find the Internet Archive seemingly not quite in sync with the Blogspot way of organization. And yet, if you use the URL followed by the year you can indeed find your way to most of Stanley J. Zappa's It Is Not Mean If It Is True (Attack Attack Attack) and therein you will find plenty to chew on.

ee.gg.

[Update: criminy, these archive.org links work only on desktop, not on mobile. WTF?]

Peek-a-boo! Fetish Character in Music and Regression of Listening!

Adorno, Phoebe Snow, and the Colors of Spring--Emo Mix

Business Extending Peacefully

The Illusion, The Understanding

Exchange Value Destroys Use Value

The Truth About Tuxedos

Large Fry, Small Fry

10/10/11. God is Dead. Occupy Wall Street. Shit On Police Car. Wipe Ass with New York Times.

EYES RIGHT! Sgt Shamar Thomas, USMC and The Revealation of Self-Production and The Unity That is Realized in Precisely that Spontaneity

Forcible Retardation, Pinched Hatred, Neurotic Stupidity and the Genius of Children.

Capitulate Before the Superior Power / Purchase Spiritual Peace

Sensory Pleasure Turns into Disgust / Displacement of Feelings into Exchange Value / Neurotic Mechanisms of Stupidity in Listening / The Arrogantly Ignorant Rejection of Everything Unfamiliar

Whereupon Teddy Drops A Chocolate Yule Log on the Ambivalence of Retarded Listeners, Jazz Administrators and Pattern Based So-Called Improvisation

The Younger Generation, Rowing for the Older Generation

It's weird, but something about SJZ's presentation of Adorno just feels right. It's a well-staged collision between Adorno and the punk aesthetic, the kind Greil Marcus tried to bring off but couldn't without looking like a douche. The medium is the message, and there's a message-message too. It works. The liberal use of highlighting is especially crucial. I have already started stealing this idea and intend to continue to do so. No "anxiety of influence" here. But do go to the source.

This is also awesome.

And I'm not the least bit ashamed to say I totally agree with this.

Finally, please don't neglect to enjoy the order-from-chaos aspect of the labels list. Beef-Beethoven-Beheading! hipster-Husserl-hypocrisy! Pink Martini-piss smell-Plato! In a world where even fleeting moments of happiness are elusive, this makes me smile. Bro, where'd ya go?

Sticking with the Village motif, I decided to get tribal and do some googling confined to the domain blogspot.com. Lotta people were all over Wordpress when it first came on the scene, and it would be years after that before the Blogspot got any kind of comparable makeover. I confess that I did consider bailing. Nowadays I'm inclined to double down on the hipster-nerdverse aspect and remain on the present platform. I do take pleasure in having a deep archive even if most of what it contains is execrable rubbish. But I also sincerely despise slick packaging, which I'm pretty sure is exactly what the leavers were after. Happily there's still plenty of heat and light being generated by my tribe in a no-to-low-frills sort of manner. Some interesting shite that I managed to dig up:

Ever heard of Justus Buchler? The name sounds like a joke, but it's dead serious, and quite compelling.

Part 1

Part 2

Roger Bobo, the GOAT himself, is blogging strong! I especially recommend this short post, after which you can safely skip approximately 73% of the overwrought muck that I've posted here over the years.

Also of this variety, re: judging competitions:

There were groups that played perfectly together and projected no musical personality whatsoever. These groups, absolutely amazed by not being advanced to further rounds, were invariably the ones who would approach the judges, demanding an explanation as to why. Trying to explain was not easy.

A tired subject perhaps, until the last sentence. The rare wisdom is all in the last sentence.

And of course no excursion in brass would be complete without the gearheads trying to ruin everything.

I wrote the essay, "Specters", about some of the interesting people, those who would follow the various orchestras that I had played in through the years in our rehearsals and concerts.

Sadly, the stories of an old man who played in the Moscow Youth Orchestra when Tchaikovsky would bring by a new score by to hear the orchestration or another old man in another part of the world had a big part of his life rewriting symphony scores with all the inaudible orchestration deleted, do not hold the same interest as rotary vs. piston valves or "Is Bigger Better?" To me that's sad.

Everybody now, in your best millennial tween voices: SAAAD!

I love that our GOAT has brains and heart as well as chops.

Elsewhere...

A super-interesting 8-part series begins here. A taste:

Prewar Modernist architects had looked back to the look of cleanness of white undergarments that signaled a actually clean body (in contrast to the earlier look of white linens that had simply covered a dirty body). In the postwar years the material abundance made of industrial manufacturing changed the game once more. JFK, the president who committed America to landing on the moon, changed suits as many as four times a day, often went through six fresh shirts a day, and habitually wore a girdle to the point that his muscles atrophied. Mid-century Modernist fashion designers,who were the first to extend their couture brands to mass market merchandise, were now returning the early Modernist architect's gaze. But they were not admiring architecture's look of cleanliness, they were admiring the rigid structure.

Through the above site I found my way to this one:

Robertson conducts a large and varied cast through a long time and a complex plot with great skill to a most satisfactory click of closure. But, Hames argues, the difficulty of integrating the characters' lives with a political history that mostly consisted of tiny conventicles and ceilidhs in literally smoke-filled rooms and debates in widely unread periodicals, and that now and then took public form as 'set-piece' events in parliaments and streets, can defeat even the best novelist – even though Robertson was himself on those marches and in those rooms. It's a problem familiar in science fiction: one reviewer cited refers to Robertson's 'info-dumping', a term from the lexicon of SF criticism.

I am quite ignorant of the principals but not the principles, hence this was logged at once in my personal card catalog of meditations on the lie that tells the truth.

Here is an intelligent and erudite examination of a work which is fundamental to my own bloggerel.

Elsewhere...

Abstract comics!!

This made me just the slightest bit homesick, emphasis on the sick part.

Critics taking a beating? Bibliographical use of the comments feature? I'm there.

Exhaling...

Just as the best places for Raising A Family are not/cannot be the best places for an artist to find a fertile balance of arrogation and humility, so I have often aspired to emigrate from the parochial intellectual climate of the here-and-now to a self-curated intellectual community of online scholars. "Small pieces, loosely joined" in the coinage of one popular author. The ideal seems unachievable and the need remains unmet. In the bigger/scarier city I settled in as an adult, from which the so-called Family Millennials and their as-yet-unborn entropy machines are said to be fleeing in droves, superficially it seems possible to find almost any other variety of human company one might desire. The reality is that even after uprooting and moving across the country, certain structural obstacles remain. I can confirm, against my abiding pessimistic streak, that the aforementioned "small pieces" are indeed in evidence, both online and IRL. Not surprisingly in hindsight, it's the "loosely joined" part that has remained elusive and seems impossible. That is cause for as much skepticism and despair as even I am capable of mustering. As a co-worker and scarred LA veteran once put it to me, there's no "scene" here because there's no "community." A continent's worth of great players does not make a scene if said players are too spread out, spread too thin, and spread too far up their own buttholes. And now, adding insult to injury, we've been forced even further apart and, assuming we are able to return to our non-scene at all, will be confronted with the historic ruins of a dead civilization, something much trickier and traumatic to confront than mere scorched earth from which spontaneous regeneration is more assured. The online world, meanwhile, was already imploding even before the Plague. The social media have become less rather than more differentiated. To become even "loosely joined" to anyone or anything on the internet is now the greatest hazard rather than, as it was once imagined to be, the whole point of the thing. So, I will continue to shelter in place, to append "site:blogspot.com" to any google queries which otherwise prove to be overbroad, and to feign optimism to the extent possible under the circumstances. Feel free to share anything you've been reading or writing lately in the comments.