John Maus, Art as Politics, and The Predicament of Change

[Eugenia]

Beautifully written Matt, thank you. I posted this as a reply to your blog, but I think it would be nice to have a discussion about it here too. While well-expressed, I'm not sure if I agree though with everything. Here's the thing.

John has said that he still awaits "pop" to introduce us to some new, radical thought. I agree with you that a piece of music can't change the world, and that politics and art should stay apart. However, music can influence our world. Even Marx's or Smith's or Kant's books didn't change the world overnight, but they did influence things down the line. Maybe we won't even be here when this radical change takes place because of some obscure pop song, or maybe we would be too old to realize it happened. But that change could have come, because of a piece of music, a music video, a movie, or again, a book.

As John said in a more recent interview, our society changes "just about", little by little at a time, taking a different direction each time. It takes a French Revolution to change things overnight (and even then it took the French 30 years to get it right after that revolution), and such a thing was only done once in our history. All other changes happen gradually.

So overall, our pop culture will and has influenced our society, and it will continue to do so. Let me give you a personal example. While I like to think, over-think, and philosophize about stuff in the shower, my parents are not exactly of that lot of people. When I was growing up I had that need to talk about complex issues with my (few) friends, or my parents. But none could understand what the heck I was talking about, neither they were interesting about these issues in the first place ("shopping" was the only thing in my friends' minds). As a young geek teenage girl, in rural Greece surrounded by goats, I needed to be molded, to have a mentor, but I had none.

And then, Star Trek: The Next Generation happened.

A lot of very interesting concepts were flourished in my head, or introduced to me, after watching some of these episodes. There were some social commentary episodes where they were teaching something very valuable. Some of my opinions changed about stuff, while others were re-enforced. But the bottomline is, ST:TNG *changed me*, and it became my father & mother, in a way that my real parents never could.

In the world of music, I think Nirvana had a lot of similar "mind gripping" on a lot of people. The grunge attitude still lives among 30-40 year olds today, who are the people who are currently running our next-gen companies. So saying that Nirvana was not influential is not true, even if Nirvana did not introduce any new political thought.

In my case, about music, I listened to mainstream pop/rock until 2009. I spent 35 years of my life listening to that cr*p. But if it wasn't for the RIAA lawsuits, who made me revolt against the big-4 labels (even if I never pirate myself), I would have never turned into indie music. It took me a year to get used to these "Pitchfork sounds" as I call them. In the beginning, I didn't find anything easy to listen to. But eventually, it worked (starting with Washed Out). And when this change happened, I could never go back to "easy", nothing-to-imagine-or-explore chunes. The fact that my mind had to "work" more to get pleasure out of more difficult music, is in itself progress. Because around the same time I started thinking more about more stuff. So while a no specific band or album "changed me", truly contemporary music *overall* did. The trends themselves is so "now", that they describe our world. Not what happens in our world (that's why John said "lyrics don't matter"), but rather the sound of modern indie music is how our world feels if you had to express it with music. If you were taking vacations in the planet Risa, and an alien asked you "how does it *feel* to be living on Earth", it'd be probably a piece of music you would play for him, not show him a picture of NY. A plain city picture only shows how a part of our planet looks like, not how it feels to live in it though.

Being part of such music trends is enough to make you ENGAGE with the world more, because you understand the world more, because it's "described" to you. You understand its essence.

As for "Just wait til next year", it's both the most "mainstream pop" song John ever wrote, and the most personal one possibly. I absolutely feel his angst when he recorded it. In fact, I even tweeted about that fact when I first heard the song. It was one of the very few songs that I had heard in my life where what I was listening to, was exactly how the artist felt at the time. Extremely expressive, piercing through my heart with his semi-crying voice. I got shivers.

So while that song was very personal, it wasn't as much a sum-up of our "situation today" as some of his songs later would be about. At the end of the day, it's a matter of preference if someone prefers "introverted" songs, or "extroverted" ones. If someone wants to listen to the artist-person express his very personal life, or listen to the artist express his world around him/her. That's a matter of aesthetics, which whole books have been written about but I haven't read (but I'm vaguely familiar with). ;-)

As a technologist myself, I'd have to contradict John and say that technology is a more direct vernacular of today than pop. Look at the iPhone. As much as the iPhone has a lot of political baggage behind it (from capitalism to security, cloud etc), it HAS changed the USA faster than any pop album or movie, or politician has. The way people do stuff today is different than pre-2007. The very fact that we do things a bit differently now because of iOS/Android, does lead to new schools of thought for the individual, even if these changes happen subconsciously.

So as a conclusion, I don't believe society can change fast because of pop culture, but pop culture DOES change it -- just very slowly. Even if pop could change society fast, right now we are bombarded by pop culture so much, that it's difficult to make out what's truly revolutionary and what's not. Personally, I see our society as a "living mass", which matures and changes overtime. Nobody matures or changes overnight. If that happens, it would be because a *tragic* event took place (World War I/II anyone?). So capitalism today, or any other thing we're subjected to, it's just our current test. Eventually -- should this planet won't explode on us by our own stupidity -- we will get over and around it, and move on to the next challenge. And when that happens, DIFFERENT kind of music and pop culture will be needed to express and describe that kind of new world.

The fact that John's music moved from "personal" to "rhetoric" as you called it, it's because John himself matured. He's not 20 anymore, with whatever that entails. He's a grown man, truly troubled "about all the bad things in the world" as he put it. And this is reflected in his music. Personally, I prefer his latest album to his older ones exactly because of all that.

I think that the only way to really change the world overnight and challenge people's ethics and opinions in a snap, would be to have aliens landed in Manhattan. And even then, most Americans would probably prefer to watch the "show" via their TV sets, even if they live two blocks down the road. Sign o' the times my friend.

[Eugenia]

Thanks, I replied there too, but I will branch-out here if that's ok with a different reply. I would like to expand a bit on the influence thing though (I had a shower in the meantime, so I thought a bit more -- no kidding).

I believe that the Internet is a much more influential force than pop culture today. Pop culture is now a subset of the Internet in a way. As such, following a forum where 2-3 of the "most influential" posters there actually influence your opinions or decisions, might be a more powerful thing that listening to a pop song. I've seen it happen. But because the Internet and our pop culture are so extremely varied and huge, the "credit" for some radical philosopher changing the world gets split-up and shared with others. So while from the Renaissance until the early 20th Century some smart guy could "make it big" and "change his world" via the publishing of a book, today that's way less possible. Instead, today, you only make a blip, and whoever listens, listens.

I mean, even hip-hop in the '80s and '90s, when it was at its purest form, didn't really provide actual change, but instead, it described the angst of the ghetto. So in a way, it was a passive genre, not an active one.

I do believe that radical change will come through technological challenges, not pop culture. Pop culture hits its stride in '60s-'90s, then the Internet came and devoured it (made it a cohort, rather than a fully independent power). For example, the recent SOPA bill, had the geek world up in arms way more than any Sex Pistols song ever did. Then there are ethical questions to still put into law about genetics, nanotechnology, cloud storage, security etc.

Consider Google's Driveless Car. Journalists say that the tech itself will be mature in 4-5 years time, but the current laws do not allow these cars to be street-legal. Just like with the seat belt legal story, they say it will take about 30 years for everyone to agree that they're safer.

Some crazy new technology might get invented that puts people's limits at the end. E.g. what if we could fly faster than light and reach other worlds only if we could burn baby kittens instead of fuel? Such technology-driven ethical questions can lead to radical thought faster than a pop song, or a movie, IMHO.

Of course, an artist would hate my opinions for condescending their craft, but even if I'm into filmmaker now, I still find my old job in technology to have been more influential to me.

Technology is our next evolutionary step too. John sees most gadgets as "bullshit that capitalism forces on us", and while this is true, it's also who we are today. These things drive our decisions more than a pop song does. Heck, there wouldn't be any bedroom recording if technology didn't exist in the first place. The very fact that John is able to record at home with high quality, is testament that he's also influenced by technology. While he used old methods in the past, he moved from Acid to Pro Tools "and the computers, because of what they can do". There you go, his music changed from lo-fi, to lowish-fi.

[AppTrans]

I must read this thoroughly before providing insights.

[AppTrans]

Great stuff. I agree with what you have to say. I'll throw in some thoughts.

I find it nearly impossible to juxtapose intrinsic art (or what's left of it) with our culture's collective insensibility. There's nothing more discouraging knowing that the extent of today's "art" is a 30 second commercial. The fruits of immediacy! The minute-by-minute gallery of mind numbing nonsense. It propagates this newly accepted ADD mentality.

People used to wait days on end to be entertained. That entertainment was surely absorbed, and for hours. I'm talking symphonies, operas, plays, etc.. Naturally, I have had the opportunity and luxury of going to the local movie center to watch live HD broadcasts of operas from the Met, so I can't totally dismiss what's ultimately created us.

Perhaps it's the cacophony of brands and formulas that drives me away from the conventions of today's "art"... perhaps I operate on comparisons and wanting to be this cultural black sheep instead of being it. Despite that notion, I've always appreciated art that's purported to be unorthodox, art formed by ingenuity and a blood-and-sweat ethos. Thank goodness for John. He's successfully created this thick, imploded language that doesn't apply to the big picture. I see him as the wandering ant, thirsty for the unknown. Fuck the rest of the pack, because their destiny will be fulfilled.

Maybe we should relish the fact that there are far and few even willing to congregate or converse over truth and beauty, what art is and isn't, and what it can and can't do. Sorry for my random bullshit!

[Eugenia]

Ganzergrey: In the last few years there are over 100,000 albums released every year. This is of course an astounding number of albums, and they indeed make the recognition of new talents almost impossible. Most of these albums were self-released, and never sell more than 10-15 copies.

However, look at the alternative, as it was in the past. The technology was not there to properly record and distribute music on our own. One had to have a music label. And if the label didn't like our music, we could never share our music with others apart our friends and family, and that, in bad-quality cassette tapes.

So on one hand we have over-availability, and on the other hand we have "elitist curation" (and that's putting it gently). Personally, I'm for over-availability. In our past, we have had whole DaVincis, or Einsteins, never setting foot outside the boundaries of their wheat field, and dying at age 21 from malnutrition. Why? Because the right tools and education was not available to them to explore their talents. Today instead, at least in developed countries, with the help of technology (among other things), we have a *democratization* of the arts (and other fields). This is major societal progress and it can only bring good things.

Sure, there are some good artists that are getting buried in the sea of another 100,000 artists, but I rather have a few Henry Mancinis never making it big, rather than losing a single Mozart to a corn field.

Last month I wrote a post on my blog titled "The Effects of Pure, Unadulterated Art". In it, I explain how bedroom pop artists, exactly because they operate outside the norm of a label, they propel radical art faster than ever before. I also mention there how the golden time of indie movie-making (I'm a filmmaker) is only starting to happen, we're not there yet. And that's something that wouldn't happen if technology wouldn't allow filmmakers to buy extremely cheap tools in the last 2-3 years (from cameras & gear, to 3D/editing software, they all got dirt cheap suddenly). A revolution is coming for filmmaking too, the way it arrived for photography in early 2000s (with the release of good-enough digital cameras), and for music in 2007 (the year indie music started making big waves).

[AppTrans]

Suffering and limitation created much of the greatest, most timeless art. Suffering is a universal reality...and artifice is the ultimate escape from reality, aside from death . Otherwise, why would art be created? Yes, people have the right to express through creating something true to themselves as an outlet, but it's not always necessarily art. In any case, who'd desire artifice, an alternate reality, if a person was completely complacent, free from restrictions, free from suffering? Who'd desire it if it's at their disposal, with a touch of the screen? Call me an elitist curator, but art does not belong on any sort of figurative conveyor belt.

[Eugenia]

You are mistaken utopia with tool availability. It is when we have reached utopia that art becomes meaningless -- as you pointed out. But we are not there yet. Therefore, offering the tools for every citizen to express him/herself is progress. If it makes people happy or if their work inspires others, why not offer these cheap tools? Good art still requires a lot of time & investment btw, even if most of it would come to life after clicking a bunch of buttons. It still requires a thought, a desire. As long these exists, then it's art.

I was listening to this amazing song this morning: http://lesvilles.bandcamp.com/track/tr33s-2
It was written/performed by a kid in San Diego. Without all these cheap tools (that John also utilizes btw), such an amazing piece of music would not possible. Our world would be poorer one artist at the time, one amazing song at the time. And several steps away from utopia too.

[AppTrans]

With that logic, there would be no sense in endorsing artistic progress, especially if it leads to utopia. A world of complacency and no struggle is paradoxical for the artist. What’s the point of getting there? Certain devices eliminate roadblocks, but they don’t always unveil substance. This makes me think that there’s nothing wrong with having limits, or rather, self-imposed limits. I suppose I adhere to the school of “take what you need” opposed to “the options are limitless.” I get more out of looking at cave paintings of yore, as functional as they might have been, than leafing through an obnoxiously colorful magazine. The human condition is what gets me, not any particular means of expression.
There’s a great divide when it comes to art and expression. Given the proper devices, expression could be anything from dressing up in zany garb to going on a highway rampage! However, I will say that I can’t subscribe to an era that embraces iPhone apps that unlock the secrets of a mysterious chord. That’s not progress to me. That’s more like cheating.
Bottom line is that it’s all subjective. I can’t change anything…and that’s probably for the best!

[Eugenia]

>With that logic, there would be no sense in endorsing artistic progress, especially if it leads to utopia.

Art envisions utopia, exactly because there's this struggle you mentioned in the artist's mind/life. But if eventually we do reach utopia, there might not be a reason for art anymore, but people might still enjoy making things. Maybe different kind of art goals would emerge. Or maybe it would die out completely. No matter the outcome, if I had to choose between the two, I prefer utopia without new art, rather than a cruel world with art. In the first case, people live happily and free. In the second case, well, we know how it feels. I see most art as a constant reminder of "you're not in utopia yet", not the other way around. But as you said, it's all subjective. The ideal case for me would be to already be in utopia, but still make art towards a... better utopia. There's always a step beyond, I'm guessing.

[AppTrans]

if I had to choose between the two, I prefer utopia without new art, rather than a cruel world with art.

Beautiful

[Eugenia]

>When something becomes oversaturated it loses something in the process, and often (but not always) quality drops as well.

In the case of art, quality has exploded, not diminished. There has been radical art in the last 20 years, and in new artistic fields too. If photography gets old for example, just because everyone can snap a nice picture and post it on FlickR, then the most capable of these artists just move to the next medium: complex photoshoping, or 3D elements, or video, or animation, or something else. Basically, art re-invents itself so often in new mediums, that it never gets old. But in the process, the less capable, me-too, artists get a chance to publish their work and share with the community too. And this is a beautiful thing, no matter if their art might be lesser.

[AppTrans]

I enjoy this thread immensely

[Eugenia]

We don't always have to have to have equivalents. Art progresses as society does, so some threads are picked up and continued, others are abandoned, as the "language" changes to mirror our societal needs.

Regarding New Order today, I'd say the Swedish The Mary Onettes do a great job. Try the two free promotional songs here: http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2 ... nette.html I love their '80s electro-rock sound, and if you like it too, try their song "Symmetry" too (from the same album). From their previous album, try the song "Void".

[Eugenia]

Times change. There's a difference between the music industry in the '80s and the one today. Genres change fast now because our life runs faster, and this will only continue to accelerate. Also, today, because of the explosion of the indie scene, there are no "stars" (we are on the last leg of stars, with Lady Gaga being the last of that species). And for me, this is something to celebrate about. I don't need "influential", "big" artists in order for me to listen to music or to believe in music as influence. That's like having another authority on top of our head in addition to the ones we already have. We don't need their type. We just need diverse ideas, exploration and experimentation, and hopefully, I'd find out about the good artists on my own, and follow them. Indie blogs do a good job separating the trash from the masterpieces (I spend an hour every day going through new music -- I have time to kill).

I will have to say again that the quality of art did not diminish in the last 20 years, as more people joined the artistic train. It went up instead! Some people are just nostalgic about the era of rock'n'roll and its politics, but today we have much more radical musicality than we had in the past. In fact, I'd say that the kind of music I want to listen to, it has not been invented yet. So there's still leeway for exploration. More artists means more ideas, more mashups/remixes of these ideas, even if these ideas don't change the world in one sweep. Don't forget we're 7 billion humans now, not a few thousand bourgeois as they were in the era of Mozart around Europe. The audience/math changes, the art changes.

A new artist that for me made a big splash and started a whole new genre, it'll have to be Washed Out. He carries chillwave on his back with great success so far. He's been pretty influential, a lot of Bandcamp bands are emulating him.

As for Photoshop vs canvas, they don't always deliver the same result. Not everything that can be done with Photoshop can be done by hand (and the other way around). Both have their place. My husband is an enthusiast photographer, and he owns a big printer to print his best pics (no pixelation btw). He personally prefers pictures hanging on the wall rather than "true" paintings. I don't mind either way, in fact, as the anarchist in the house, I wouldn't mind graffiti. This doesn't mean that I don't like paintings (if anything, I paint/sketch a bit myself), it's just that anything goes. I like to explore new tools that art could use, new discoveries. I like novel things and ideas (as long as they're not destructive). I try to not hold on to the past for any reason. For me, that's a form of progress too.

You said that you prefer a Monet instead of a Photoshop "pixelated" print. This is not different than saying that you prefer a clean classical music recording rather than a home-made lo-fi one. And yet, you're in this forum, a forum about a lo-fi artist, who adds hiss, reverb, and noise on most of his songs. ;-)

Bottom line: just enjoy what you get today. Let people be happy too by doing art as their hobby. If they want to make fools of themselves by releasing bad art, well, let them do so. It's better to have people freely experimenting with the arts or science, rather than having art as a kind of closed profession. I come from Greece as I mentioned earlier, and there, some of the professions were "closed" and government-operated (e.g. teachers, chemists, taxi drivers). This is one of the multitude of reasons why Greece is in the brink of destruction today. We don't need that kind of authoritarian elitism with art too. There's enough struggle in the world (which will increase in the coming decades) to guarantee that good art will keep coming...

[Eugenia]

>today is a revival of some sort

Yes and no. Indeed, most popular music today has its roots to older popular music. But the good artists progress these genres, they don't just imitate them. For example, chillwave is a mix of synthpop, shoegaze, hip-hop, and ambient electronic music. There's nothing like this in the '80s, even if all these genres separately were made popular in the '80s. This IS progress!

Then, there are other bands that indeed simply imitate the old music, e.g. Blitzen Trapper's last 2 albums. Terrible music, not because it's not catchy or technically well-done, but because it brings nothing new to the table. They did innovate the '70s sound with their 2008 album, offering new twists to that musical era, but then with their next two albums they just simply copied the '70s, resulting in cr*p music.

That's a distinction we should make when we complain about the revivalism today, as it's an important one.

>Even (especially) John Maus and Ariel Pink, although they are blatantly pastiche, and more creatively so.

At first listen, John Maus sounds like '80s synthpop. Most people think that. But it's only when you listen to his music from different angle, that it becomes clear that his music is from the future and not from the past. Do this for me please:

Imagine yourself alone in a space transport vessel. 8 days already in open space, another 12 to go. You had a few engine failures so far, but nothing worrying. The loneliness and the coldness of space is bone-breaking though. The on-board computer is no fun at all, and long range communications are not real-time this far out in space. You pass the time between watching old movies, monitoring the damn engine, and listening to the intergalactic radio (your favorite show is "Nebula 387 to Asteroid Belt 23r4 AM"). Suddenly, "Believer" by John Maus starts playing...

And this epic anthem FITS right there, in that scenario, in that future age, perfectly. No other song from our time would fit in that imagined era. Even Ariel Pink's music doesn't. But Maus' DOES. I do believe Maus when he said that: "If my music sounds 80s, you're hearing its medieval backbone". It wasn't until I put myself under such an imagined scenario that his claim made sense. Maybe I have too much time on my hands, I don't know...

>But to say that its a remarkable new genre? Hardly.

To me, chillwave IS a remarkable genre. It is the most impressionistic genre of them all. It is my favorite genre, and I'm on the lookout for new such music almost daily. Call me a chillwave junkie: I can get high with it, without having to use drugs. I'm also among those who believe that the genre hasn't reached its potential yet. (Sorry for all these links btw, it's just that I have already wrote about all that on my blog in the past.)

>Let us say we both agree to disagree

We'll have to. ;-)