Last night I watched a UK doc called Wagner and
Me, the me being British actor and personality Stephen Fry. He loves
Wagner’s work and in the film he visits Bayreuth. Besides talking about what a
shrine the place is for him, he asks the inevitable questions about whether our
assessment of art should be affected by an artist’s behavior, politics, or, in
this case, anti-Semitism. Fry is Jewish, so he embodies this conflict in some
ways. He doesn’t focus on the serial adulterer side of Wagner’s personality—so
we assume that doesn’t necessarily affect whether or not we like Wagner’s work.
I know a smattering about Wagner: the big rousing tunes, the long mythic Lord Of The Rings-type operatic saga,
his professed need to build a completely new theater to perform his new work
in, his anti-Semitism, and his Gesamtkunstwerk concept—a creative form that
embodies all the arts. But I was hoping to learn a little more, so I rented
this doc.
Wagner’s work was notoriously loved by Hitler, though of
course Wagner had been dead for decades before the little guy came to power—so
Wagner didn’t write work supporting the Nazis or encouraging the Holocaust. He
can’t be blamed as being a supporter or collaborator. However, in a famous essay
that Wagner wrote before he became successful, he railed against Mendelssohn
and another Jewish composer who was very, very popular at the time. No doubt
there was professional jealousy involved, as these guys were both wildly
popular and had found patrons to support them. Wagner, meanwhile was getting
himself deeper and deeper into debt, and at one point he found himself on the
wrong side of a revolution (though a side we might politically agree with) and
was forced to immigrate to Switzerland for many years.
After his years in “exile” he returned, having conveniently
made friends with the wife of the new King Ludwig II. The King was a madman who
was extravagant and rich beyond imagining. Below is his castle, which was the
inspiration for the one in Disneyland. The castle itself was based on a
fantasia of what a medieval castle might look like—but this was the mid-1800’s and
no one was building medieval castles anymore! Not only that, it was a
simulation of something, a physical manifestation of a historical architecture
style that had never existed. Perfect for Wagner though, as this castle has now
become a kind of archetype of a fairy tale castle and Wagner was all about
embodying German mythology and archetypes in his operas.
Can I offer that this cozying-up–to-the-wife-of-the-crazy-king-thing
might be viewed as a craven means of securing arts funding (pretty sleazy
actually), but really how different is it from the schmoozing and ass-kissing
that goes on today? And it worked. Wagner got himself out of debt, began completing
his Ring cycle of operas, and securing a suitable venue in which they could be
performed.
Most of us musicians and composers don’t have the hubris to
think that a completely new venue should be built to accommodate our artistic
dreams—though there are indeed visual artists who have had museum wings and
structures made to accommodate their work. More often we look to existing
venues (concert halls, ballrooms, bandshells, basketball arenas, and re-purposed
industrial buildings) and hope to find our work performed in the one that will
showcase it in its best light. Wagner is the exception to my rule that we tend
to tailor our art to these existing and available venues.
Wagner wanted the orchestra that would play his work to be
both larger than usual and hidden. That might seem a contradiction, but he had
his reasons. He wanted expanded brass and bass sections to accommodate the
bombast to come, and he hid the orchestra in order to submerge the music—at
least visually—more thoroughly into the total work. To his credit, he also
wanted the performances to be less elitist than opera had a tendency to become.
He was annoyed at the extra-musical behavior that often took place during opera
season—the socializing, gawking, and gossiping. To emphasize the more
egalitarian aspect of his theater he eschewed much of the Rococo decor and gilt
that often covers opera venues. This was to be serious—a shrine, a people’s
temple, set isolated on a high grassy hill.
Though I view his hubris at insisting on a purpose-built
venue as the exception as far as composers go, I realized while watching the
doc that there are indeed recent equivalents—Celine Dion, Elton John, Cirque du Soleil, and a handful of other Vegas shows have had venues specially built to
accommodate their needs. Lion King and Spiderman on Broadway in NYC are others—the
amount of remodeling and construction that went into the theaters where these
shows run effectively makes them into new purpose-built venues.
I find this slightly disgusting and unfair. I tend to
believe that part of the challenge of any artistic endeavor is to find a way to
work within the limitations and physical restrictions that have been given to
you. That’s part of the game—to acknowledge the rules and context but then come
up with something totally new within that world. Maybe there’s some creative
jealously here—I convince myself that ignoring the rules is easier than
accepting the restrictions as given; that ignoring them isn’t playing the
game. (What rules one might ask?) To propose impractical projects might be the
mark of a visionary, but one wonders if the huge effort and expense to realize them
necessarily guarantees an appropriately increased level of audience experience.
Think of Jeff Koons’ locomotive that he proposes suspending by the barely
solvent LA County Museum. Sometimes yes, bigness is indeed part of a piece—but
scale is not a sure-fire guarantee of a great experience.
Back to the question of whether or not we can allow
ourselves to like someone’s work knowing they might be a despicable human
being, hold abhorrent views, or possibly be a complete pervert. Do we care that
Picasso may have been a bad father and mistreated all his wives? Not
particularly—we tend to separate his work, or at least our judgement of its
quality, from his private life. Do we care that the poet Elizabeth Bishop made
excuses for the brutal dictatorship in Brazil? Does that invalidate her work?
The composer Gesualdo
murdered his wife. Mussorgsky
was an alcoholic. The composer Henry Cowell went to
prison for molesting young boys. Caravaggio killed a man over
a game of tennis! And the contemporary painter John Currin goes against
most of his peers and often espouses conservative Republican political views.
Actors and singers have a harder time separating themselves
from their work. Mostly because physically they are their work—to a large extent their bodies are what we see and
hear in their work—it becomes hard to separate them from what they do. As a
young man I found both Charlton Heston and John Wayne intolerable based on
their political views (though I’ve managed to watch Wayne’s John Ford westerns
lately). I’m suspicious of Scientologists—Beck, Cruise, Travolta—but they seem to keep their wacky cult leanings out of their work. More than a few
country singers hold pretty radically conservative views and sometimes it makes
it into songs like Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue”. Ted Nugent is just a crazy person,
period. It can be confusing.
And if we do sometimes judge someone’s work based on their
extracurricular behavior, is the reverse then true? Does being a good and kind
person make your work better? Most certainly not. The painter Jacques-Louis
David promoted the overthrow of the monarchy during the French revolution—something
we tend to empathize with. A lot of his work was propaganda; his political
beliefs were very much entangled in his work. Here is an unfinished work
depicting the provisional government forming at an (indoor) tennis court:
Though we might agree with his politics and instincts, do we
give him extra artistic points as a result?
Picasso’s “Guernica”—an act of political protest—is given
high marks. But imagine if instead of depicting the pain and horror of the
civilian bombing of a Spanish village, it depicted civilians being bombed by
the Allies in Dresden or Berlin. The painting might not look all that
different. Imagine what our architectural taste would be like if Hitler had
decided to promote an industrial-inspired Bauhaus aesthetic rather than the
romantic imperialism of Speer. Would modernism have been suddenly abandoned as
a project?
Wagner’s anti-Semitism is not inherent in his work, I don’t think.
Though his operas evoke a sense of the deep roots of Teutonic culture and
therefore encourage a pride of that culture, it isn’t exclusionary. So, we can
compartmentalize here if we want to. Picasso’s work doesn’t espouse bad
parenting. Currin’s paintings of grotesque nudes don’t promote the Tea Party.
Caravaggio doesn’t excuse murder in his paintings. Similarly, Fry concludes
that Wagner’s work should be judged solely on its merits, and he suggests we
view and hear it independently from his personal views.
It was a weird week. Uptown and in Brooklyn, and in many
other places somewhat more remote, life went on as normal. I know, because I
visited those countries and saw this with my own eyes. What was weird was that
these other countries are so close—thousands of Recharge zombies would trek
over the Williamsburg Bridge or up the avenues to visit friends who lived there
with power, or they’d huddle around in a bank lobby or coffee shop with
outlets… and a flushing toilet.
My neighborhood, Monday night
Power is restored to most of Manhattan now, meaning that my
office is up and running again, and my November
radio playlist is live and ready to stream. No, this playlist is not a
collection of storm themed songs, or songs about making do without water,
power, garbage collection, public transportation and our friend, the Internet.
This playlist doesn’t reflect that storm, or its aftermath—it’s pretty much
songs I added to my own pop category over the last 3 months, while I was on
tour. I also added songs to other categories—new Brazilian stuff, no surprise
there—but there isn’t enough accumulated there for a new playlist, not just
yet. Included are some songs from Rodriguez,
the subject of the recent documentary, “Searching For Sugarman”—worth
checking out—and Coin Locker Kid,
whom I’m sure is going to blow up in the press pretty soon.
The media’s attention this week has been divided between the
aftermath of storm and the presidential election. Many who were directly impacted by the storm feared they
might not make it to the polls. I tried to get dual citizenship in time for the
election, but it didn’t work out. I’m actually looking forward to taking the
test. I joked with friends that
the citizenship questions are, “Where is Disneyland?” or, “Who is Snookie?” You
know, things every American seems to be expected to know.
If, unlike me, you can vote, then please do so. I know, I
know, it’s a fucked-up system. We should have gotten rid if the Electoral
College system a long time ago, and the Super PACs and huge sums of money that
are used to manipulate our opinions (and influence our elected officials) are
simply obscene… but this is what we have right now and it’s better than what
exists in many places. At least, I think
it’s better than Russia, Ukraine and North Korea.
There’s a website called Vote-USA.org
that helps you sort out local candidates, what they stand for, and how to get
to your voting place.
I ran across this video on the blog 3 Quarks Daily. It's not just the murmuration that is incredible, it's the editing of this little piece—such as the choice to include the viewer's giggles at the end, echoing their stunned reaction.
I did an enhanced
eBook version of my book, How Music Works,
in which you can not only enlarge the pictures, but also play short musical
snippets scattered throughout, to help explain the concepts I mention in the
text. These are VERY short—this is not a way to have background music while you
read, but a way to help readers understand what I'm referring to.
The folks at
McSweeney's in San Francisco, Canongate in Edinburgh, and my own office in NY
have worked hard and long to make this version of the book possible. It doesn't
cost more than the regular eBook (though Amazon tends to discount physical and eBooks heavily), and of course the music won't play on devices
that don't do this—like the older Kindles and Nooks. However, we want to get it
working on as many of the current devices as possible—like the Color Nook and
Kindle for iPad app. (I turned down an offer from Apple that would have made it
work exclusively on their format, through their iBooks Author program.)
It's been an
incredibly frustrating experience, and we're not out of the woods yet. These
companies all created their own proprietary formats—both to try to lock you
into buying from their stores and (probably at the insistence of big publishers)
to make it really, really hard to share or lend a book to a friend, as one
often does with physical books. That's sad, as gifting is both an important
kind of social glue, and it also helps spread the word of mouth about books
that folks fall in love with. Like mix tapes, they turn readers on to books
they didn't know about.
So far, we have the
enhanced eBook working in the Apple iBook format. That's a start. Amazon won't allow
side-loading a file on a Kindle, even for our testing purposes—instead they
have created a desktop application called Kindle Preview which is supposed to
show you how your file will look and work on their various devices. It does
this fine with the typefaces and page flows and images, but as far as the music
goes it refuses to cooperate—and the support folks for this are nowhere to be
found. Hell, this is the perfect way to show what their devices can do! Why
don't they want these files to work and serve as a showcase for their stuff!
For now, the only way you can play an enhanced eBook on Kindle is through their
iPad app (even though the Kindle Fire has the capability to play sound and
video, it can’t play those things embedded in an eBook file!).
Color Nook is the same
at this point: it displays the text and images fine, but won't play the
music—which is the fun part! McSweeney’s is currently making slight changes in
the code of these files, to fit Nook’s own requirements, but it has been an
opaque process.
I'd like to apologize
to anyone who is interested in this book and wants to buy an enhanced eBook
that will play music—we don't want to offer it in these formats until it is
working. Sorry. Meanwhile, the physical book is a truly lovely object, should
one want to go the old fashioned route.
Until The Light Takes Us(2008), is a documentary about black metal music culture in Norway that’s quite good. You don’t have to know much about, or even like the music to be drawn into this film. It seems that the impulse of the original black metal bands, who had a miniscule following, was in part, to defend Norwegian culture—at least as they saw it. They saw the Americanization of their culture as a terrible thing and something to fight against. When the first McDonalds came to Norway, they shot at it. Similarly, they felt that Christianity imposed upon true Norse culture and mythology (i.e. Odin and Thor)—quite reasonable, in a way (I was rooting for them, at this point).
The documentary describes the rise of the black metal scene. One guy, Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell, was the first to wear “corpse” makeup.
Another artist, to make a statement, burnt a church that was built over a pre-Christian sacred site.
One practitioner compares the scene’s music and art to that of Edvard Munch, another Norwegian, which isn’t a big stretch. Both Munch and artists of the black metal scene express parts of their culture that are generally kept tightly bolted down.
Although, they aren’t all necessarily “nice” guys. Burzum frontman, Varg “Count Grischnackh” Vikernes, is interviewed in prison (a prison with very homey curtains it seems!), where he is serving 21 years for murder and several church burnings. He describes the murder, quite matter-of-factly, in the film. It’s a chilling scene, as he comes across as articulate and disarmingly mild-mannered, explaining that their music is a way of defending Norwegian culture and heritage.
The press portrayed the black metal scene as purely Satanist, which it was not. But, it was the press’ branding of the scene as Satanic that caught fire (oops). Soon, everyone accepted this as truth and as younger bands came into the scene, they claimed to be Satanists. These kids burned more churches than ever before, and also put up 666 graffiti. It all spiraled out of control—not that there was much “control” from the start.
What began as a not totally unreasonable impulse to defend Norwegian culture, (though I’m not defending the burnings and murder) was perverted by the media. This perversion encouraged a far more deeply disturbed youth to emerge, badly copy, develop and act out in sad and meaningless ways. The “evil” thing that was preached against in press, was, in a way, encouraged to come forth and manifest.
A friend wrote to me, “David, didn't something vaguely analogous happen with American skinhead bands back in the day—I mean, decline of western civilization one day? Didn't [west coast punk groups] groups like TSOL launch entirely banal attacks on suburban ennui, but looked like skinheads with some window dressings, got written up as white supremacists, and so began a generation of surf Nazis?”
One can see how forms, not just musical, that trade and dabble in dangerous, disturbing images and provocative actions—even if these images and actions are not the main focus of their intent—run the risk of being perverted. There is, it seems, a great likelihood that potent images and actions will be used for other purposes. Not just likelihood, one can almost predict that powerful memes like these, like some strong medicine or drug, will inevitably be repurposed. It’s almost as if there really is a dark world, and upon entering, one surrenders some control—or at least maintaining control is extremely difficult. Someone like young Vikernes, disgusted by the bombardment of commercial images he saw all around him, decided to resist not just a little, but completely reject the whole package of how other people accept the world. He, alone, struck out into remote and barren territory, as he described, “to find the truth in a sea of lies.” Again, I’m sympathetic to the resistance to the McDonaldification of his country—most of us simply cave in and accept that this is the way things are going to be. It takes a saint or a maniac to reject the status quo, and maybe the two are flip sides of the same coin.
Going at this alone is a solitary quest, in a dangerous landscape, taken, in this case, without a guide. One would be tempted to say that maybe Odin, Thor, Wotan and the rest of the Norse horde, might have been summoned—but maybe these Gods or archetypes are too powerful to be confronted by an amateur. As with Voudoun, chanting, LSD and many other arts and practices that reach parts of us that we often don’t touch, it might be wise to have a professional along who knows where the dangers and pitfalls lie.
“The truth is hidden, under grass, under rocks, in a hidden trail, a forgotten trail in the forest, you know? And when you find these trails you will stumble, you will get branches in your face.” -Varg Vikernes
Additional quotes from others in the scene:
“He is like an angel lost in a dark universe.”
“It’s out there now [black metal]… anyone can have it… it’s like a brand now.”
I made shrimp tacos the other night for dinner—mostly from scratch—and they were good.
With this meal, there are a lot of pans going all at once. One has to pay close attention, but it all comes together really quickly. Once everything is prepped, it only takes about 15 minutes to cook and assemble—there’s nothing tricky to it.
This recipe serves 3 people.
Here are the ingredients:
1 lb. of shrimp, peeled and deveined, chopped into ¾ inch chunks
A couple of poblano chilies, seeds removed and sliced into strips. (poblano chilies are a little bit spicy, but not much. When cooked, they have more flavor than a bell pepper.)
½ of a large onion, sliced—but not too thin
A few gloves of garlic, sliced
Fresh cilantro*
Store bought white-corn tortillas (I bought the Tortilla Factory brand—they’re corn, but flexible like wheat tortillas.)
Store bought fresh mango, pineapple and jicama salsa*
Queso fresco (a type of fresh, Mexican cheese—white and crumbly.)*
*Note: The salsa, cilantro and queso fresco are quite perishable. They’ll keep for a few days in the fridge—but once they are opened, they don’t last long.
Here’s how I prepared them:
First, I sautéed the poblano pepper strips, onion and some garlic in oil, with a little salt and pepper. I cooked this over a low-medium heat for about 10 minutes—I learned that peppers burn if cooked too quickly.
While the pepper/onion mix was cooking, I tossed the shrimp in a separate pan with the rest of the garlic. I let this cook for about 4 minutes.
Then, I got the third burner going and tossed the tortillas one by one in a dry frying pan, flipping each after about a minute—just enough to warm them up.
I put some shrimp and the pepper/onion mix on each tortilla, added the salsa, some crumbled queso fresco and a sprinkle of cilantro on top. I had some other salsas available as well, but the mango salsa was the most fun.
This image was captured by one of the cast members, Evan D'Angeles, in a moment when our rehearsal was interrupted by the fire alarm
The story follows former first lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos, from her childhood up to the moment at the end of the People Power revolution when she and Ferdinand Marcos flee Manila (the infamous shoes were yet to be discovered, so they are not mentioned). Here Lies Love is entirely true and much of the lyric content comes from speeches and interviews the various characters gave over the years.
The production is a disco musical that I (with occasional help from Fatboy Slim) have been working on for many years. The production is directed by Alex Timbers and features a mostly Filipino cast of amazingly talented actors and singers. To make a long story short—it went amazingly well. Yes, there were problems, but all of them seem fixable. The main issues we were concerned with before the series of live performances were the following:
Can a story be imparted with almost no dialogue, and
Can we stage this "beast" (as Oskar at the Public Theater refers to it)—the reason Oskar calls the staging a “beast” is because the audience stands (and dances!) in the middle of the room while the action of the production takes place all around them.
The answer to both concerns is yes—the staging and the concept work. It works so well that I sort of cried at every performance. I attended all six performances, as we kept making small changes. To be honest, my tears at one show were because the sound mix was so atrocious, but at the others I cried because I was deeply moved by the story and emotions that the actors depicted. Now, one might say, “Sure, he knows the story inside and out,” and some might think that I got emotional because I was simply thrilled by seeing my vision finally realized—but I think some others may have had the same experience. In the end, I'd say it's the best thing I've done since the Stop Making Sense tour—which I guess is saying something.
The music, much of it done in collaboration with Fatboy Slim, is influenced by about 4 decades of dance music, much of which I have posted on this months’ streaming radio playlist. Funk, electro, disco, house, go-go, techno, samba, zouk, dubstep... I could go on and on. The score doesn't follow any particular club style—it hops all over to better represent each character's moment. This playlist is long (over seven hours of inspiration!) and it could have been longer—but this gives you an idea of the many beats and styles that fed into this thing.
I had a dream the other night in which the production designer of a documentary about a farm family was presenting me with some color swatches to view. All of the color swatches were dull colors—beige, pale blue and a muddy, off white. The idea, as the production designer explained it, was to make the entire setting, the farmer, his family and their home, look “better.” It was decided that the clothing and environment should be contained within a proscribed color universe. To do this, they would dye all of the farm family’s clothes, empty the rooms, repaint the walls, remove all of the knick knacks and utensils around the house and even alter the color of those in order to create a somewhat duller but more unified world.
This aspect of production design is common in fictional films. David Fincher is famous for color coordinating the rooms of his protagonists—for example, their clothes, furniture and walls might all be varying shades of bluish gray. Other movies might use this technique to confine flashbacks to golden warm tones while others might choose to unify the colors within the setting by meticulously coordinating wardrobe pieces, or even curtains and furniture. This can be obvious or subtle. For example, it’s fairly common for a white shirt to be dyed down to an off white during production of a film so it does not pop or glow too much against the background. You might not notice any of this art direction at work, but it’s there.
Anyway, many of these design elements were going to be applied to the documentary in my dream. Once the clothes, house and other items were all coordinated to depict a color-muted universe, the stuff would be put back exactly where it had come from and the family would be allowed to resume their normal daily lives.
In the dream I thought to myself, “This is very clever. Visitors to the farm family will immediately look like garish outsiders with their loud clothes, sporting colors that will inevitably clash with the toned down world of the farm. The sense that the farm is a world unto itself would, therefore, subtly be reinforced.” This seemed, in my dream analysis within the dream, like a pretty cool idea. Leave aside, as I did in my dream, the issue of whether this is a perversion of the notion of a documentary.
As my thoughts within the dream drifted, a disturbing thought arose. “What about the vegetables?” I realized, being a farm, that there would inevitably be bright red peppers, rich green leaves of kale and chard, and a variety of colorful fruits that would be brought from the farm into the house or barn. I thought to myself, “What about those? The film people wouldn’t re-paint vegetables would they? Nah, that would somehow be crossing a line.”
I purchased Jay-Z's book, Decoded, via Amazon Kindle to read on my iPad. I was mostly interested by the mosaic/collage/multimedia aspect of the book—which turned out to be less impressive than advertised.
A couple of weeks ago, I updated my Kindle iPad app, along with a bunch of other apps. A few days later, I was discussing my upcoming music book with Adam, from McSweeney’s. I wanted to show him the way the video excerpts were inserted into Mr. Z's book.
The videos from Decoded are at the beginning of each chapter—a feature I like because they don't interrupt the flow of reading. In the videos, Jay-Z sits at a desk and tells us that rap is poetry. It's nice to see him step out from behind a persona, but as far as extra content goes, it is less than hoped for. How about a tour of Marcy Projects (a subject explored in some of the chapters)? With multimedia implemented throughout the book, I thought he could have done much more with it. Regardless, there is good stuff in the book—and it has a nice cover too!
Anyway, in my attempt to show Adam the videos, I discovered that they were all gone—in their place was a message that this content was not supported on my iPad.
It seems that, once again, Amazon has removed purchased material from our devices. I suspect Apple had a hand in this as well. Apple has consistently sabotaged their competitors’ apps and software that allow you to sync other devices with their own. Then, all of the sudden, apps that once did X and Y suddenly don’t perform those functions anymore. In most cases those apps were free—so it is hard to complain too much. Although, some of the free apps contained magazines, books and other content, like Decoded, that I purchased and though they may not have been very good, I paid for them and they were mine to keep! They came to my house and ripped pages out of my book!
I love reading on these devices, as I travel a lot when I tour. They allow me to easily have access to, and read the newspapers and magazines I subscribe to... but these "fuck you" gestures to us, the consumers, reminds me of the nonsense the record companies got up to—and a lot of good it did them!
There are many forms of collective creation that run the whole spectrum, from merely coloring in someone else’s existing drawing to the actual creation of a thing from scratch. Often this spectrum of distinction is lost in the rush to embrace the amazing and wondrous, collectively created works like Wikipedia and, um, Zagat guides—these being held up as models for the possibility of collective creation of all and every kind of activity—from politics to newspapers. I’ve maintained a fair amount of skepticism about the idea of crowd sourced creative works for some time, which is not to say some of them don’t work incredibly well. But, they’re not all the same. To me, even though Wikipedia is indeed an example of the wisdom of crowds producing an amazing work—one that is possibly better than those that are top down in their inception—it seems that the claims made for this kind of creative process are often a little misleading. Each Wikipedia entry is not vetted or added to by everyone—by the lumped masses—but by self-appointed experts on each subject. Then, after these experts have had their say, we, the masses, tend to accept on faith that they have haggled amongst themselves over a particular subject to determine what will be included and the accuracy of what is in the entry. Of course, everyone considers themselves an expert on some subjects…
I’m not going to claim that only folks nominated as experts should be trusted to manage our world and create the things we enjoy and consume. I’d be the last person to believe that a college degree or experience in a field gives one a guaranteed wise perspective—would you trust a Rumsfeld? Often, it’s the perspective of amateurs that is more accurate than the professionals who are embedded and entrenched within their field of work. That said, nature seems to have found that some level of specialization is proven to work on some level. Though it seems clear that certain ants are designated as “experts,” and are deferred to as such, I admit that I have a bias against deferring to experts. Despite the sound social management system of ants that is responsible for their long survival—a system that we often believe that we might do well to emulate—I refuse to believe that the bankers who got us into our current economic mess are the best minds to get us out of it. Similarly, I sense that one maybe shouldn’t trust the military in evaluating and establishing their own budgets. It happens over and over—the police have proven they can’t be trusted amongst themselves. Economists? Oh, forget it.
The popular hive analogy, which compares insect societies to human interactions and creation, is often applied to the idea of many doing and creating what one alone cannot. Even in the hive though, there are “experts”—worker bees are given right of way to accomplish their tasks by the other bees because it seems that everyone recognizes no one can do their job as well as they can—there is not a mass consensus meeting or discussion amongst the entire hive about the role of these worker bees. For example, it is assumed they know best how to forage for food. Like the worker bee, the area of expertise of Wikipedia contributors may vary widely, potentially covering topics from Glee to String Theory. When one of these experts writes an entry, and then annotates and/or expands on it, we (in some sense) assume they are wise and perceptive in their particular field. Also, we assume these contributions have been vetted by that expert’s peers—not by everyone. So we, the non-expert readers, give respect.
With ants it is similar. Certain worker ants (all of whom are female) have designated tasks. A quick smell, via an antennae brush, identifies what a specific worker is best at doing—foraging, cleaning debris elimination, guarding—and no one tries to “tell them” how to do their jobs. There are no bosses. It is possible for the worker ant to switch jobs, but usually, as with humans, that opportunity arises when the colony is relatively young. After that, the job pool, one’s career, is more or less set. Though, there are always reserves of other ants underground that are recruited if a new food source suddenly becomes available (Thank you Deborah Gordon’s TED talk 2003).
One of the ways an ant figures out what is going on is oddly similar to the Google search algorithm—it “counts” how many encounters it has with a specific kind of worker. Based on these encounters, the ant can deduce that there is, for example, a major clean up in progress. Instructions and situations in progress are not “described,” but are inferred by the aggregate of encounters.
The consensus “rules” of OWS were (are?) possibly a more accurate example of real crowd (or democratic) decision-making. How did the OWS group, who struggled to maintain their leaderless and self-organized identity, ever make decisions? They endorsed the idea of consensus as opposed to voting. The word consensus comes from a Latin word meaning, “feel together”. Consensus means everyone (eventually) arrives at a place where they will give consent, although they might not be in 100% agreement. The distinction seems a little vague to me.
The well-reported use of hand signals, as a means of reaching this consensus, was adopted (microphones weren’t allowed due to noise restrictions) by the movement. One would be very tempted to ask who exactly decided that consensus would be the mode for decision-making? Who and how was that decision made?
Many of the participants found the assembly and consensus reaching process a bit tedious and boring—some would wander off from lack of interest.
Maybe the ants are on to something. They too have no leader (the queen lays eggs but doesn’t manage the colony via smell, as used to be thought) nor do they have a central control. On the surface, this sounds very democratic—even anarchistic. A completely leaderless society—that works! Although it might appear this way to us when viewed from a distance, you, as an individual ant, are very much programmed by your evolved instincts and your innate reaction to smells and behaviors. While having no leader might imply absolute freedom, there are other restrictions among insects. The leader, the guide, the rules, are not external, but are built into you as an individual.
Therefore, it statistically appears as if there is no free will in the ant colony. Each individual seems to go about their task without questioning things or stopping to ponder why or what for. But, maybe on the individual level, to each ant, they feel like there is, in fact, free will. Maybe they do agonize and make specific decisions. Maybe they have simply “learned” that following the aggregate tends to give the best results for the colony as a whole. They may feel that they have made a personal decision to join along with everyone else; they may also feel that they have acted of their own free will and are not forced into joining a specific program or activity. They’re acting in consort because, from their point of view, they want to…. or so they may be telling themselves. Maybe, their “government” is internalized.
According to Gordon, when you look inside of ant colonies, the behavior seems pretty haphazard. They’re not the well-oiled, smoothly functioning machines we might expect from a species that has survived for millions of years. As in human society, the behavior of individuals is not predictable. We all, as individuals, appear to be acting on our own—but just as it is with the ants, there is a kind of decision-making based around aggregate behavior. I’m not sure how this translates exactly—how this process works with people. Does it mean that if everyone is “drinking the Kool-Aid,” I intuitively “decide” that I should too? If everyone watches Kim Kardashian, then I better join the bandwagon and do what everyone else does? If the ants appear to have some sort of free will on an individual level, but in actuality it is mostly an illusion, does the same apply to us?
How Does Anything New Come Into Existence?
I’m curious as to whether or not what we call creative works can come into fruition as a result of the contributions of countless individuals. Must a creative work inevitably be guided by the tyranny of one person’s vision—or at least a very small group (Pixar films, for example)? Can the crowd write a great novel? A symphony, or pop song? A feature film? (Hollywood films are notoriously made by a committee—and the results speak for themselves). Do we all have a kind of innate (possibly unconscious) wisdom that can profitably guide us to influence and direct the track and arc of a creative work? Do these deep instincts, if trusted and tapped into accurately, and without bias, result in a work that is inevitably true? Is this why we feel cheated when a Hollywood movie has an obviously happy ending tacked on? Do we sense that the instinctively “true” ending was abandoned? Or, is this why the happy ending was tacked on in the first place? Is the happy ending what we instinctively want in a narrative? (Is this making any sense?). If, to some extent, a sense and structure of narrative is innate, then are authorship and writing skill overrated? Superfluous?
A parallel to the question of how new works come into being are some ideas that seem to be related to collective creation, but that might not really be the same at all. Are open-ended works (e.g. video games in which the players determine details of the story) and self-generating works—such music and visual programs that accept outside input but are designed to endlessly generate content on their own—truly collectively created works?
There is an established tradition of what are called indeterminacy in music—a not so new idea that has now migrated to digitally programmed works (musical and otherwise). In these earlier musical works, used by John Cage and many others, the player was allowed to determine how long to hold a note—and sometimes, what note to play from a set of given choices. Terry Riley’s “In C” is like this, as is Cornelius Cardew’s “The Great Learning.” These are all works that almost always end up sounding wonderful, despite being as open ended as they are. The marvel is why they don’t go off the tracks. We expect that, given free reign, chaos will inevitably result. Though, it doesn’t seem to—not always, anyway.
Maybe what is key is that the overall shape of the work has been cleverly pre-determined. There is free will involved in the choices the players are given, but within very severe limitations. One might say that this process is a way of fostering the illusion of free will. Maybe it proves that these compositions and social mechanisms, when cleverly “designed” can appear as though they allow for free will but, in actuality, they involve lots of restrictions—which have the effect of guiding the structure and the finished work to be something beautiful.
Cage used other devices to introduce chance and randomness into the “decision-making” process, but the “programmer” was always lurking. More recently in music, this process has been moved into the digital realm—with algorithms that do their best to randomize the choice of notes, along with other aspects of a composition. The Buddha Machine is a good example of this—a transistor radio sized device that plays endlessly changing sounds, chosen by the program, from a given set of notes and sounds. There is, as one would expect, no arc to these compositions—no beginning, middle and/or end. They are merely states of being, not substitutes for narrative.
These indeterminate scores can be viewed a bit like the literature that emerges out of oral traditions—the great epics and sagas. The process is not so different than what occurs in a lot of folk music as well—blues songs that get passed from area to area and subtly altered each time someone new sings them… but the main thrust of the story and the song tends to remain consistent. Everyone recognizes the song despite every interpretation being absolutely distinct.
There was a text version of this process called Consequences. It’s a bit like Mad Libs, though it originated much earlier (pre-1918). One creates a sentence by filling in the following blanks (from Wikipedia, of course):
1. A Man's name 2. A Woman's name 3. A Place name 4. He said to her… 5. She said to him 6. The consequence was… (A description of what happened after) 7. An outcome
Then the resulting “story” is read (for example):
Scary Bob met voluptuous Alice at the zoo. He said, "This is delicious.", she said, "Hit me baby one more time." He gave her a red rose, she gave him cholera. The consequence was that they eloped to Mexico. The world said, "the femme fatale will always win".
Could one write a whole book this way? William S. Burroughs used an aleatory (chance) literary technique that he and Brion Gysin popularized, called cut-ups. Cut-ups are created in two steps: by cutting a finished text into pieces and rearranging the words and then, by folding the linear text and looking for resonant bits of text when overlapped and placed next to one another.
There is the visual equivalent—collectively produced artwork like the Exquisite Corpse drawings. The Surrealists created these images based on an old parlor game. The idea is that 3 or more people contribute to a “body” by drawing on a folded piece of paper and then passing it around without knowing what the next person will contribute below the fold. Restricted by the rule that one is obliged to draw either the upper, middle or lower portions of the body the resulting monsters are, yes, beautiful and strange things whose authorship we could say belongs to an invisible 4th entity.
Here is a Chimera collectively drawn by Joan Miro, Man Ray and Yves Tanguy. They sort of didn’t adhere to the normal rules (in which you are to add normal body parts appropriate to your segment):
I’d argue that all of these forms are in fact authored. The programmer that sets the ball in motion, the one who determines the set of simple rules is, in these cases, the author. While you often get marvelous things through these algorithms, I’d be inclined to think that what you don’t get is a coherent story arc, complex characters or even a consistent vision—musical, lyrical or visual. That is, unless the framework has already been provided by a “programmer.” Follow a framework modified with embellishments, modification, additions, etc.—as in the oral tradition of storytelling—and, as a result, you get a coherent form.
Some of our most resonant works of literature have emerged out of the tradition of oral storytelling and do not have a single author credited. The tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights, for example, is composed of stories that have all been embellished, edited, written and molded by an unknown multitude of individuals over a long period of time. The stories hold up, and continue to move us today, as do the folk tales collected by the brothers Grimm. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana epics are similarly composed by a host of unknowns, as is the Bible. These all were all derived from oral traditions—in which each storyteller would add subtle embellishments and refinements to suit the local culture, time and place. The basic story arc would tend to be maintained and serve as a skeletal framework—though, in many cases, we can see where successive refinements over time completely altered the “message” of the tales. We know this because people wrote down some of these tales at different stages of their evolution and transformation.
The Old Testament tales are, in many cases, embellished versions of stories that were told (sometimes even written down) for hundreds of years. Though, by the time the stories came to exist as they do today, they had already morphed into tales that emphasized the overthrow of the older matriarchal society and spirituality by a more rigid patriarchal one. (There’s a very nice analysis of this in the back of the Crumb comic version!)
Even though these particular tales changed their emphasis in a majority of cases, usually not too much fundamentally changed in the narrative framework. The embellishments were mostly superficial… until the cumulative effect of the changes became something more profound. When reading these works, one can often sense the fragmentary nature of the chapters and episodes—many of which contradict one another. At other times a plot point or explanation is dropped for political reasons, leaving one wondering why there was a sudden shift in tone of a story or the behavior of a character. A single author would be less likely to contradict him or her self. But often, if we take each single episode—such as a single Grimm’s tale or one of the tales out of the Arabian Nights—it is often consistent, incredibly well constructed, efficient and resonant—like a tool honed by use over centuries.
These stories behave like living creatures that have evolved over time—adapting themselves, over and over again, to the psychological needs of the listeners and the creative embellishments of the narrators and their audiences. They’re not, and never were, fixed stories with an Ur version—there never was a primal text. They survive and maintain their resonance by mutating, changing and adapting to the world around them. As soon as they become fixed, they die (in a sense). They become a work that is somewhat ossified—rooted in a specific time and place. Then, the core narrative quickly resurfaces in another form—a film, TV show or popular novel.
Folk, blues, house music, pop, hip hop and lots of other musical genres might be viewed the same way—not so much as individual songs or acts of unique creativity, but as the cumulative result of many creative narrators pitching in to tweak a form that already has a given and collectively accepted shape and framework. The equivalent of the narrative arc of a story is already there in these song forms, and we songwriters, producers and singers are the storytellers in our own oral tradition—putting our own spin on an existing form, but not making substantial changes in the form itself. The point is, a lot of music that we think of as being individual acts of creation might actually be narrators contributing to what might be viewed as a larger epic work.
Though I am not a griot or epic bard, I am in my home studio making subtle adjustments and contributions to a form that came before me, and will later be picked up by others. I have the illusion of free will, of creating work and forms from scratch, but I am merely embellishing. Of course, successive embellishing will eventually lead one far from home…
That said—I believe I lean towards work that has a consistent vision. Don’t we want to feel that the version of a song, movie or narrative we have just spent time listening to, reading or absorbing is consistent—that every part was considered by its author, so as to adhere to a coherent vision? We assume that collective works don’t have the same intention as authored works. This view doesn’t totally exclude the author as a creative contributor to an ongoing epic storytelling effort though, as one still might hope for consistency from a narrator, songwriter or storyteller, even if the individual works that result are essentially modifications of something recurring and familiar.
Authorless Architecture
Architecture Without Architects is the title of a wonderful picture book, by Bernard Rudofsky, that came out in 1964. The pictures are presented as evidence that exquisite, “authorless,” architecture has existed for thousands of years—and that, despite not being designed by one person, it rivals individually designed works in beauty and, above all, practicality. One might view the simple and elegant furniture of the Shakers the same way. The buildings Rudovsky chose evolved much in the same way folk stories and oral narratives did—to best meet the demands of each place and society, while also maintaining an aesthetic and spiritual appeal.
Was the latter aspect an unintended consequence of meeting local and practical needs? Could one say that these entities that have evolved over time tend to be beautiful because we recognize that some deep parts of ourselves are expressed and manifest in them? Is the beauty a layer that is, in fact, serving another equally practical function that is as important to human beings as keeping out the cold or ventilation? Is the need for beauty and elegance also something practical?
It seems that the beauty these buildings possess is not an aspect added on, an appliqué, but an integral consequence of every other aspect of these kinds of works. When every other aspect is true and integrated, maybe you automatically get beauty. These buildings and houses have evolved so that they have a spirit of life deeply ingrained in them. By recognizing this, by sensing that these qualities are in there, we find the resulting structures beautiful.
In his book Rudovsky includes single-family homes, as well as monumental works.. All of them were molded over time by a kind of collective will and impulse; none were built by just one designer. The design is not open to anyone-—it’s clear that not everyone in the community would have voted on where the chimneys go—there are folks who know how to thatch a roof, for example, better than others. But, it’s the evolutionary process that tells the community, and the specialized workers within it, that maybe there is, indeed, a best place for a chimney or a best size for eaves—and that this wisdom shouldn’t be ignored.
Here is a vernacular plantation house in Hawaii and the Sankore Mosque in Timbuktu:
There are other types of architecture, not designed by “individuals,” and these are not so different from the mosque above—like these giant termite mounds in Australia (near Darwin):
The chimneys and air vents from underground allow the hot air, in the parts of the world where these things are built, to escape—so that the precious nurseries deep inside can maintain a constant temperature. It’s a fairly sophisticated bit of building and HVAC for a creature whose brain is the size of a pinhead. However, one might say that if you combine all of those pinheads, you get a more substantial mental capacity.
However, I’m not sure size is what matters. Heh heh. A fairly simple algorithm—rules and behavior that don’t require a lot of brain cells—can set in motion what, in retrospect, seems like a very complex bit of creation. So if over time evolution arrived at a structural solution by adapting to the situation at hand, and by using just a few rules, When these rules are set, the mental capacity of each individual doesn’t have to be so “big” at all. Everyone (or all of the workers anyway) can, and does build these incredible things instinctually.
Recently, there was a short film posted on the web of some scientists who poured concrete into an anthill to see what the network of nurseries and tunnels might look like. After the concrete (10 tons of it!) set, they painstakingly dug away the surrounding dirt to reveal an entire (miniature) futuristic city.
It’s easy to see how incredibly impressive the city is that these little things constructed. Overlap this town over a medieval city in Europe, in the Maghreb or in the Middle East, and one might see an almost an identical layout. It makes one think that: (A) we haven’t come so far, and (B) maybe the “hive mind” concept is more literal than metaphorical. Maybe we have retained elements of the insect mind, and we use and are guided by that, to order, build and organize our own cities. Like storytellers and songwriters, maybe in urban planning, we are merely embellishers too—we are reworking the same forms over and over, making slight adjustments to fit our own needs.
Others have preferred to view the social insects, not as social cities composed of individuals, but as single super organisms—more like one being made up of millions of semi-autonomous crawling “cells.” This would mean that these towering termite mounds and the tunnels of the ant colonies might represent the clothing or shell that belongs to a collective whole being. The mound is like the skeleton and the skin of a large creature. This view makes the cooperation of the little critters seem more like the cooperation and symbiosis of the cells and bacteria that make up our own bodies. The chambers are like the organs in our own bodies—each with its specific function and specialized job functionaries.
If we make that leap, then we too can be seen as sophisticated works of “soft” architecture. Just like the cities of the ants, bees and termites, one would never imagine that our little cells would be able to individually make and organize a structure as complex as we are. If we reorient our viewpoint, and can see ourselves as a kind of ant colony, we get a frightening insight that maybe our sense of free will is not much more than that of the ants and termites. Our most beautiful cities, and maybe we too, are not much more sophisticated than those of the social insects.
