Aron's comment is quite insightful, because much of what you are describing is the loss of the private self. Our self-surveillance culture demands that we turn everything into public spectacle, all for the financial and cultural benefit of tech moguls. Having a genuine experience with art, most especially literature, requires solitude, in practice and acceptance.
Simultaneously, the death of the private self in favor of the a public "brand" spells the end of cool. When I asked David Jemilo, the owner of the Green Mill jazz club in Chicago, for his definition of "cool," he said, "Whatever it is, if you're trying too hard, you ain't it."
Social media insists on everyone trying "too hard" all the time.
On the one hand, it is always unnerving when the Spectacle trains its predatory gaze on something you deeply love.
On the other hand, like I was writing yesterday, it's generally a good thing in my books (ba dum tss) for people to get into serious literature. Proper reading is innately anarchic, because it is self-education by will, & however people get into it, it's opening doors in their minds. (Also, my guess is that it's driven by a backlash against phones, & I’m all for a bit of Neo-Luddism.)
My feeling is there's no need to worry, they'll never catch up with us. Many of us have a lifetime’s worth of literature under our belt by this point. The appearance or performance of erudition is profoundly different from actual erudition, as with every other facet of the Spectacle. Plus maybe they'll toss us a few coins ya know
A literary work used to be merchandise as well as something else. A book had a 'value' beyond and separate from its price; the well known contradiction between the use value and exchange value was presumed right at the outset and the second element usually tried to conceal itself under the first, as art always looked at commerce from a higher but lonelier plane. that principle no longer holds, now there is no such thing as 'art'; art is only a method, a tool which could, with the help of other means create a product. 'objectively', art has dissolved; today it can only exist as a subjective practice. the distinction between art and commerce, a work of art and a product has more or less collapsed. the examples given in this article are clear proofs of this shift: a well known novelist producing short stories for a luxury clothing brand but also with the help of an hollywood actress. another novelist pairing each of his books with a beverage from a specific, genocide-allied company. parody is not necessary or even possible in this instance; parody was used to show where certain things may lead to but at the final destination there is neither anywhere else to go or to see.
Who gives a shit who else likes the music you like? Why should it matter at all? Unless the artist responds to memefication by leaning in and pumping out crap in response it has no bearing whatsoever on anything other than your ability to feel cool for liking unknown bands, which is a laughably juvenile thing to care about.
I wrote this on David Masciotra's restack of this post, but while we're not subscribed to each other, please allow me to comment here, as this is very insightful.
Maybe it's a function of my age (I'm 63), as a couple of these refs in this piece flew over my head, but overall, this is spot-on. What I find interesting is that you start with an eagle-eyed view of literature fetishism, but then you bring something else into view that is just as insightful - the notion of any kind of music being instantly turned into a soundtrack for something that reveals a musical equivalent of illliteracy, where music is just a backdrop, rather than something that requires one to stop and focus their listening on.
Not only do a lot of people not know how to read, but they also don’t know how to listen to music or know what to listen for.
I don’t know how familiar you are with Rick Beato’s YouTube channels (he has more than one), but as a music educator, musician, songwriter, producer, and sound engineer, he has discussed this sort of thing on his channel, where he laments the decline of musicianship and composition, especially with lyrics.
The whole atmosphere of what you've described here has more than a whiff of the early '80s downtown scene, where celebs, pseudo-intellectuals, and hangers-on pretended a salon vibe of art, often centered on Basquiat, Kostabi, early Jeff Koons and such, without knowing that something was being put over on them - or not caring (as in the case of Kostabi, who delighted in his admission that he was aesthetically swindling people to their equal delight and copious dollars). Updated 40-odd years later, and it's now about books they pretend to understand but don't, with an aesthetically stunted sense of music, and atrocious fashion taste.
(We can say what we will about the '80s, but at least the fashion was more on-point.)
Here's how I have held on to music: I play it. Privately. For myself and my family.
Aron's comment is quite insightful, because much of what you are describing is the loss of the private self. Our self-surveillance culture demands that we turn everything into public spectacle, all for the financial and cultural benefit of tech moguls. Having a genuine experience with art, most especially literature, requires solitude, in practice and acceptance.
Simultaneously, the death of the private self in favor of the a public "brand" spells the end of cool. When I asked David Jemilo, the owner of the Green Mill jazz club in Chicago, for his definition of "cool," he said, "Whatever it is, if you're trying too hard, you ain't it."
Social media insists on everyone trying "too hard" all the time.
On the one hand, it is always unnerving when the Spectacle trains its predatory gaze on something you deeply love.
On the other hand, like I was writing yesterday, it's generally a good thing in my books (ba dum tss) for people to get into serious literature. Proper reading is innately anarchic, because it is self-education by will, & however people get into it, it's opening doors in their minds. (Also, my guess is that it's driven by a backlash against phones, & I’m all for a bit of Neo-Luddism.)
My feeling is there's no need to worry, they'll never catch up with us. Many of us have a lifetime’s worth of literature under our belt by this point. The appearance or performance of erudition is profoundly different from actual erudition, as with every other facet of the Spectacle. Plus maybe they'll toss us a few coins ya know
A literary work used to be merchandise as well as something else. A book had a 'value' beyond and separate from its price; the well known contradiction between the use value and exchange value was presumed right at the outset and the second element usually tried to conceal itself under the first, as art always looked at commerce from a higher but lonelier plane. that principle no longer holds, now there is no such thing as 'art'; art is only a method, a tool which could, with the help of other means create a product. 'objectively', art has dissolved; today it can only exist as a subjective practice. the distinction between art and commerce, a work of art and a product has more or less collapsed. the examples given in this article are clear proofs of this shift: a well known novelist producing short stories for a luxury clothing brand but also with the help of an hollywood actress. another novelist pairing each of his books with a beverage from a specific, genocide-allied company. parody is not necessary or even possible in this instance; parody was used to show where certain things may lead to but at the final destination there is neither anywhere else to go or to see.
Who gives a shit who else likes the music you like? Why should it matter at all? Unless the artist responds to memefication by leaning in and pumping out crap in response it has no bearing whatsoever on anything other than your ability to feel cool for liking unknown bands, which is a laughably juvenile thing to care about.
I wrote this on David Masciotra's restack of this post, but while we're not subscribed to each other, please allow me to comment here, as this is very insightful.
Maybe it's a function of my age (I'm 63), as a couple of these refs in this piece flew over my head, but overall, this is spot-on. What I find interesting is that you start with an eagle-eyed view of literature fetishism, but then you bring something else into view that is just as insightful - the notion of any kind of music being instantly turned into a soundtrack for something that reveals a musical equivalent of illliteracy, where music is just a backdrop, rather than something that requires one to stop and focus their listening on.
Not only do a lot of people not know how to read, but they also don’t know how to listen to music or know what to listen for.
I don’t know how familiar you are with Rick Beato’s YouTube channels (he has more than one), but as a music educator, musician, songwriter, producer, and sound engineer, he has discussed this sort of thing on his channel, where he laments the decline of musicianship and composition, especially with lyrics.
The whole atmosphere of what you've described here has more than a whiff of the early '80s downtown scene, where celebs, pseudo-intellectuals, and hangers-on pretended a salon vibe of art, often centered on Basquiat, Kostabi, early Jeff Koons and such, without knowing that something was being put over on them - or not caring (as in the case of Kostabi, who delighted in his admission that he was aesthetically swindling people to their equal delight and copious dollars). Updated 40-odd years later, and it's now about books they pretend to understand but don't, with an aesthetically stunted sense of music, and atrocious fashion taste.
(We can say what we will about the '80s, but at least the fashion was more on-point.)
Thank you for this piece!
Hozier makes better and more literary music than Taylor Swift
Both make abject slop, so I don't really see much difference
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