Posted by trouble on April 8, 2002, at 10:25:38
In reply to Re: Civility vs. Propriety – Words, posted by Shar on April 8, 2002, at 3:24:30
Sorry, no time for greetings,
>> elite is 'the choicest part, as of a social group. It doesn't really talk about money or power, nor do I think of it in those terms.
LADIES, LADIES!
I believe the word we're struggling for here is snobbery. Snobbery is typiclly found in those who profess a heightened aesthetic sensibility, ya think?
Quoting now, "Being alert to...distinctions is a large part of the fun of being alive today, in a moment teeming w/raucously overvalued emptiness and trash." (will cite author later)
My condensed theory of art, and I'll try to stretch this into 9 pages for y'all, but no promises:
Because we are all stuck w/ SOULS we are ALL artists, like it or not. We are not artists b/c of any art we PRODUCE, but by the kind of art we COLLECT...the aesthetic this-n-that's w/ which we adorn our personal environments. You can play Lawrence Welk on your juke, hang velvet elvises on your living room wall, next to a collection of 280 sad ceramic painted clowns, display in pride of place an autographed copy of poet Rod McKuen's, LISTEN TO THE WARM and put a framed copy of the DESIDERATA over the fireplace and baby, THIS IS YOU AS ARTIST and it may bring out the booger-eating H.L.Mencken in someone who doesn't relate, but you got it girl, no dispensations for anyone and that includes, well, you.
The late 20th century democratization of the arts has brought forth the crass and abject naked and unwashed masses, drag queens, nobodies, riff-raff (sorry mist) such as myself, who work all day scrubbing rich peoples toilets and then stay up all night, writing furious manifestos and then handing them out to strangers on street corners and if you see no courage, no beauty in the boldness of putting yourself on the line like that, so be it. Snub me. I claim no nobility in my habit of writing and promulgating poetry.
It's just my favorite waste of time.You have every right to define "bad", according to your own sensibilities, and the more opinions we express the clearer picture we present of ourselves, the easier it is to find people who connect w/ those sensibilities, artistic or otherwise. Is there a problem here? Am I missing something?
"BAD is something phony, clumsy, witless, untalented, vacant, or boring that many Americans
can be persuaded is genuine, graceful, bright, or fascinating...
"...numerous awful things to be met w/in the United States which if not offensive b/c pretentious are offensive b/c banal, stupid, or subadult."Damn. Wish I'd said that. (BAD or, the Dumbing Of America, Paul Fussell 1991, Simon and Schuster.)
> This type of thinking paints people with a pretty broad brush, and SEEMS to suggest that one group gets a special dispensation from social custom because of their special status (in this case artists).Please enlighten me about these spoiled and over-indulged aristo-brats, b/c in my personal pantheon all of 'em lived lives of sheer and unrelenting and yes, self-pitying nightmarish hell. To wit:
Robert Johnson,
Billie Holiday,
Raymond Carver,
Charles Bukowski (among much public farting), Marilyn Monroe,
George Jones, Tammy Wynette,
Dorothy Parker,
Sylvia Plath,
Jackson Pollock,
Gertrude Stein,
Anne Sexton,
Kurdt Cocaine,
Janis Joplin,
George Depeirdeau,
Richard Hell,
me,
Lester Bangs,
John Lennon (gave back his knighthood or whatever the hell dispensation the U.K. tried to apologize with),
Tennessee Williams,
Jimi Hendrix,
Lou Reed,
Eugene O'Neill,
Marvin Gaye,
R.D. Laing,
Virginia Woolf,
J.P. Sartre,
Ayn Rand,
Sam Phillips,
Mark Eitzel,
Lee Hazelwood (from whom I borrowed my "handle")
Vincent Van Gogh,
William Burroughs,
Nick Drake,
Ian Curtis...I'm leaving out the survivors, the Patti Smiths and Boy Georges who keep the rest of us going, and I haven't even mentioned Cassavetes, Fassbinder, Peckinpah, and oh don't get me started on the filmakers, there will be no end to this!
Do arty folk have a place on PSB?
The leading vocation for mental cases then and now:
1.writers (depression)
2.artists (bi-polar)Pain propels artistic expression, it's publish AND perish, there will always be rabid critics, hatemongers and debunkers nipping at their heels, but I'm still looking for the public privilege and adulation, please someone show me what you see in the lives of these people that I have missed.
Now, if there's no room for befuddling, soul-baring, messianic, passionate, cockeyed sentimental visionaries on PSB we're gonna have to start by knocking off the good doctor's unique and idealistic and supremely individualistic apparition you are now gazing into with, admit it, rapt attention, this historical, and believe it, this is history we're making here friends, this on-line support/education/research booger thingie which was nothing but a concept dr. bob brought to spectacular fruition, a creation of something out of nothing, i.e. "ART"--to say nothing of that slippery dadgum policy of civility, and if THAT'S not social engineering in the purest and most romantic tradition I'll eat a six pack of stetsons.
> I believe the style/subculture remark is very pertinent. Some folks want to *be themselves* to a much greater extent than I want them to be themselves...just acting naturally, they say.
Right, this is known as the great American culture wars, the gang's all here, pleased to meetcha.
>>> I also believe my love of words is just as present for me as it is for an artist (writer). My words are chosen carefully, with attention to nuance. By what objective standard can we measure how important the artist's words are vs. how important my words are to me?Well Shar, that's a good question. The only one here who seems to be abdicating their responsibility as an artist is, you.
>>Well, that's probably enough said.
Why? Are you finished? Or have you "used up" too much of your slice? Speaking your truth has been stimulating to read, and I sense you have much more than this in you.
In weird but some sincere version of idiosyncratic friendship,
trouble
poster:trouble
thread:3683
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20020308/msgs/4004.html