Littlest Ice Age

“If You So Smart…”

I was asked recently, in an interview, why the records I make seem to have so much structural variety.  In particular, the interviewer compared two tracks from two different albums and asked how I could move from one sonic extreme to another.  He wanted to know why I would choose to do so.  

The first song he mentioned was written in a typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus mode, with an emphasis on the lead vocal.  Only three instrument tracks.  The sound itself was captured on a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder.  The second track he mentioned was a long, experimental soundscape from an earlier album.  This track contained many layers of drums and guitars and noises and several intertwining vocal drones.  It had been recorded onto a laptop, and is louder, doomier.  This second track lacks the “lo-fi charm” of the other, but makes up for it in volume and bass/treble range. (That’s the best description I can manage, short of posting the tracks themselves.)

My first reaction to his question was one of frustration.  Would this guy ask the same question to Thurston Moore?  Would he ask the members of Sonic Youth to explain how and why they could make such bold leaps from, say, the wall of sound that constitutes Daydream Nation to the melodic, radio-friendly tracks of Sonic Nurse?  But then I realized the key importance of his question: in our current mode of sonic media production and distribution, our artists write “singles,” not “albums.”  How is it possible to create wildly divergent pieces of media that are all consistent with the single image that you have branded?

I don’t want to speak for all artists (some artists are, of course, writing “full albums,”) but the primary force in popular music today is the mp3 single.  The download.  The popular albums I hear through the channels of Pitchfork Media (and pretty much every other blog out there, since they all seem to blare the same, identical message) have a distinct sonic identity that is consistent from one song to the next.  We’ve developed masterful ways of mastering records so that tracks recorded in different studios at different times can be sequenced into one continuous stream - which isn’t, in itself, a bad thing.  I mean, there’s nothing worse than listening to a homemade CD or mix tape where you have to keep adjusting the volume knob to offset the different productions of each track (especially while driving.)

But when the expectation of continuity extends to the band’s entire catalogue - to the output of a whole career - I begin to hedge.  Listeners used to expect (and become excited - or enraged - about) an artist’s developing sound.  Think about the range of songwriting from The Beatles’ Rubber Soul through The White Album, or the way people reacted to Bob Dylan going electric.  Labels would support artists through the “ups and downs” of sonically-varying careers.  Nowadays, I see more and more artists resorting to name changes in order to preserve the sonic continuity of their - yes, I will say it - their brand.

It’s pretty much a fact that to be a successful artist these days, you have to be a brand.

We no longer have Bands, we have Brands.

Hooray! America.

The other day, I was thinking about a conversation I had with a professor when I was in graduate school.  (I didn’t study music, I studied creative writing.  Yes, in grant applications I am a “interdisciplinary artist.”  Also, you can make money as a person with writing talent and experience.  Few indie-rockers can boast that their mp3 downloads are sources of car payments and health insurance.)  This professor told me, in no uncertain terms, that these were the keys to success:

1.  Figure out the story you are going to write, then write it over and over again for the rest of your life.  Insert poem for story if you are a poet.  Insert song for story if you want to make music.

2.  Make big art.  Big sells.

This professor loved everything I showed him.  He showered me with praise like I had never before received.  Mostly, my professors in graduate school resented me, I think, because I was older than their blindly-adoring advisees fresh out of college and I was already publishing in the same journals as they were.  One explicitly told me that I should quit publishing and hold off until after I had graduated, which is pretty much the opposite of what you should do - check out the advice columns for graduate advisors/advisees offered on The Chronicle of Higher Education. Anyways, back to the guy who offered me interesting advice.  He held up a 2-page poem I’d just shown him and said: “Do this.  Over and over.  For 500 pages.”

I see what he’s saying, and in many ways, I agree.  After all, we’ve culturally survived both Minimalism and Post-Modernism.  We understand how humans are affected and influenced by capitalist modes of productions and their accompanying machines. There are plenty of products on our shelves, so many that the borders of Andreas Gursky’s photographs can’t contain them.  Infinite Jest just keeps going.  I can appreciate repetition and volume for repetition and volume’s sake, I can appreciate having a personal style, but sometimes we want (or need) to change our clothes!

What happens when artists don’t want to be McDonald’s?  

What comes next?

The true way to grow as an artist isn’t necessarily to push the boundaries of how much you can say, or how often you can say it (or how often and how much you can pay agencies to get stations and blogs to broadcast it) but to experiment widely with many forms, many voices.  Try everything on for size.  Think about developing in terms of being a violinist: a true virtuoso doesn’t just experience music and craft in terms of technical skill, loudness, the number of pieces he or she can know, memorize, perform, compose.  A true virtuoso is also able to adapt.  He or she can sit in with an orchestra, a rock band, a jazz quintet, and be flexible enough to contribute in a meaningful way.  

Why should he or she have to change his or her name in order to contribute to each situation?  Why should we force branded identities on our virtuosos?  On our rock bands?  On our writers?  On any artist at all?

Artistic development as a measure of adaptable, flexible virtuosity is based on a biological model of adaptability and survival.  Throw several healthy, strong creatures into a markedly different (yet non-toxic, at least not severely toxic) environment: they’ll adapt to the atmosphere.  Throw a human into a foreign country for a year: they’ll learn the language.  Artists evolve, but only if they are given the opportunity to face a multiplicity of challenges and take on new and changing conditions.  For centuries, painters have learned the styles of many old masters in order to innovate, poets and prose writers have learned all of rules of verse form and storytelling structure before they broke the rules.  But artists only develop if they’re exposed to change, and allowed to express that variation and multiplicity in their work.  And forcing artists to change their names, their identity, with every new direction they take (as though the change were a negative, not a positive thing) is a form of schizophrenia.  A madness.  Our corporate branding of artists is endemic of a cultural madness.

The biological model is also a feminine model - one that allows for non-hierarchical collaboration and communication between forms.  Rather than rigidly branding an artist forcing her to abandon the branded name when the well is dry, or when the cow isn’t milking, or plainly, when the packaged product isn’t selling, why not embrace the change as a strength?  We’ve been hypnotized by the media, by the marketing and advertising machines, to believe that what we want is a Consistent Product.  And artists have delivered, but the result is bland songwriting, predictable instrumentation, homogenous production, and young artists that are so hungry, so laden with college debt and the stigma of unemployment that they are willing to release their first creative works under the imprints of soft-drink companies that aren’t even paying them anything.  

We’ve been sold a burger that isn’t a burger, it’s a manufactured piece of crap.  

It’s up to artists to unbrand themselves and find an alternate solution.

“Generation Catalano”

Just read another article on naming the generation born between “Generation X” and the “Millennials.” The article posted on Slate poses a new name for the generation that spans roughly 4-8 years in time: “Generation Catalano.”

First of all, what happened to the “Generation Y” tag? I thought this generation had already been named.

Second of all, and more importantly, why must we go back and re-title everything to reflect character names from television shows, as though we were engaging in product placement or advertising DVDs? Generational differences have more to do with large-scale economic trends and political movements than what products were marketed at the time.

The movement to brand-name everything, including generations, seems to be a distinctly “Millennial” theme. It’s only been since the “Millennial” age that politicians, artists and musicians (and anyone else that would like to be gainfully employed, it seems) have to be a “brand” in order to succeed. From the music marketing panels of SXSW to the help desks of college campus career centers, it’s unanimous: the “Millennial” age is an age of “personal branding.”

When people consider themselves to be “brands” aka highly ordered, repetitive products, they lose their identity as malleable, changeable, imperfect human beings. Also, this line of logic is what allows people to believe that corporations should have the same rights as civilians. If people are brands and brands are brands, are they equal?

Let’s not reverse-brand everything we see, including generations and political movements. I’d like to see culture at large move away from “personal branding,” and for Infinite Jest and its “Year of Glad” to remain a work of fiction, please?

I personally would not like my generation to be named after Jordan Catalano, a fictional male character whose main desires are to be ambivalent and cool. Why place that burden on an entire generation? We have larger battles to fight.

Gang Bang for Democracy?

Let’s talk about the demographics of Occupy Wall Street.

A concern in the media right now is that the crowd of protesters are being portrayed as “a noble but fractured and airy movement of rightly frustrated young people,” to borrow an early quote from The New York Times. In the weeks since that article first appeared, several media outlets have broached the topic of the demographics of the movement, revealing in prose and photo series that the movement is not just populated by the young, disorganized, entitled and white.

This doesn’t mean that the illusion of the “20-something trust-fund hipster” or the “beautiful, irreverent clown” isn’t still being perpetuated by the media. For instance, I became aware of this article at The New York Observer today:

Occupy Wall Street and the Poetry of Now-Time

This feature article profiles the thoughts of Stephen Boyer, a runway-model-turned-dominatrix, and his friend, Filip Marinovich, a “sometimes professor” of poetry at Columbia University: both male, young, able-bodied and white. In other words, members of the most-elite, most-mobile echelon of society (aside from the actual “1%” itself.)

What is most offensive about this article, however, isn’t even the focus on the white male (we’re used to it by now, right?) What is offensive is the article’s reckless sensationalization and sexualization of the glamor of protest.

“Hierarchies are bullshit,” Mr. Boyer, the British Vogue model, says.

The commentary he gives, and the details revealed over the course of the article show that the opposite is, in fact, true. Fact: men are at the top of the heap when we’re talking about pay scale (a hierarchy.) Fact: people who are perceived as attractive (e.g. ectomorphic body type, high degrees of facial symmetry, exaggerated ocular cavities) earn higher wages and are perceived to be more trustworthy (a hierarchy.) For Mr. Boyer to dispute this claim would be antithetical to his own investment in beauty and in the hierarchy which serves him well. 

When you willingly commodify your visage, your physical image, in order to participate in and reap the benefits of a corporate conglomerate, you become complicit in the messages delivered and meanings derived from the images your body helps create. This is why some fashion models won’t model fur: because they are aware that their image and its implied personal endorsement, have meaning. By participating in the willful commodification of his body, Mr. Boyer has endorsed his personhood to the aims of the luxury goods companies that pay his paycheck.

Mr. Boyer’s image sells a lifestyle, the lifestyle of the “1%.” He is complicit in selling this lifestyle to consumers. Boyer’s station in Zuccotti Park does not absolve him of that responsibility. In fact, as a featured subject in a newsmagazine, Boyer’s presence as a fashion model in Zuccotti Park causes his fellow protesters at Occupy Wall Street to blur and morph into the background, as though the protest itself were a fashion spread. 

With Boyer in the foreground of the feature article, Occupy Wall Street becomes the backdrop of Boyer’s celebrity portrait.

And what of the backdrop, the background, the “beautiful bodies” that Boyer speaks of, enraptured?

The background blur, the subject of Boyer’s hazy sexual longing, is a by-product of the celebrity close-up (in this case, the feature profile.) When confronted with a celebrity’s image, the viewer’s attention is pulled, not to a background’s 20th century busyness, not to a time-dated, Renaissance vanishing point, but to the crisp, clean, airbrushed facade of the celebrity positioned dead front and center. Cropped, stripped of context, the celebrity/image is frozen in time. Devoid of contextual relevance, he is eternal in this moment, the moment of capture.

Celebrity eclipses his background, and yet, relies on his background to congeal and support his heft. Celebrity needs an audience: a faceless sea of fans behind him in the frame, supporting his opacity, and an anonymous ocean of gawkers before him the lens, holding him in their gaze. With smiles and proclamations of gratitude, celebrity romances his audience. He needs to, without an audience, his celebrity wouldn’t exist. 

The function of celebrity is to narrow a viewer’s focal point until the celebrity/image has no context other than itself - then - to endlessly reproduce until the audience knows nothing else, not even itself. Desires nothing else. Hungers for no other nourishment.

This is why Occupy Wall Street does not have a signified leader: because this movement is not about celebrity or the repetition of a singular image. This movement is not about one person, or two people, or their uniqueness or genius. This movement is about context. This movement is about the people that stand in the background.

The background is the 99%.

Once Boyer commodified his image in order to reap personal benefits from the fashion industrial complex, he willingly became a commodity, an object, a foreground object. A product. In a capitalist system, once you are a product, you are always a product. Your value may be discounted with a loss of status, but you will always be a commodity. You can’t escape it. It’s not like laser tattoo-removal. Your facade and its implied focal point, its meaning, and its reproducibility will forever alter a viewer’s perception of a photograph that you are in, or its textual equivalent. 

This is why the tabloids are still interested in Lindsay Lohan, even though she hasn’t appeared in a popular movie in years. This is also why we have Hollywood Squares, or D-list actors in reality shows. Celebrity is made to last, like Teflon, and when the commodity value of a celebrity’s image is devalued, the image can and will be re-appropriated as kitsch.

Whether or not a celebrity’s career escalates or implodes, the human on the inside of the image dies, estranged from his or her true body. The fashion/media-industrial complex profits either way: fame, cult-status, kitsch, there’s money to be made. (Especially in a comeback - it’s the American way.)

Aside from Boyer’s participation in the corporate world of the image, Boyer himself - and the propaganda that is his episode of slumming it in Zuccotti - are further sensationalized by the author’s repeated focus on Boyer’s other career: Boyer is also self-employed as a dominatrix.

There might actually be valuable material to mine here: an exploration of domination/submission and it how relates to the sexual proclivities of a dominating class. Fetish and the power of taboo are interesting on a socio-cultural level. But any intellectual curiosity is soon quashed as soon as the author asks:

“Ever have any famous clients?”

Again, focusing not on Boyer’s potential as a thinking, reasoning, (feeling?) human being, but on his access to celebrity. This time, at least the author’s blatant about it. Instead of oh, randomly deciding to interview a runway model about politics (why not interview an activist, a food server, a police officer?) we have the author openly pursuing the sensational. The glamorous. The fame.

Pursuing anything except what Occupy Wall Street is actually about: the large, diverse crowd that is stationed in Zuccotti in order to protest corporate greed.

Where are the women? Where are the people of color? Where are the disabled? The true demographic of the Occupy Wall Street protest blurs in the background, obscured by the hazy sexual dreaminess of these two young, white men. (Boyer expresses interest in having sex with the protesters in a “gang bang for democracy,” but I hardly think that includes nookie with the WWII Veterans, the off-duty Marines, and the union workers.)

At this point in the narrative, I literally begin counting.

Where are the women? Let me see.

There is an account of Boyer’s girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend:

Mr. Boyer suggested his girlfriend come to Zuccotti. She said no. Her room was overlooking the reconstruction of  the World Trade Center site, and at one point, Mr. Boyer stood on the balcony, peering down at what felt to him like a graveyard. Then he turned back to watch her on the luxurious bed in the sleekly minimalist room. “She looked so isolated. And I was like, ‘You sure you don’t want to come to Occupy Wall Street?’” No thanks, she said.

The image painted here is of a nameless, young, female model from London that Boyer has traveled and rented a hotel room with. The two of them are wealthy enough to afford a room with a balcony overlooking the financial district. The woman here is described as laying down on a “luxurious bed in [a] sleekly minimalist room.”

I could write a book about this image. John Berger beat me to it - it’s called Ways of Seeing.

The image of a deferring young woman, splayed on a bed in a luxurious setting, is one of the oldest images in the history of Western art. For the uninitiated, this type of image is referred to as a “nude.” The nude is an image of ownership. An image of white male power. Specifically, the power wielded by a man who owns both the image (the painting, or in this case, the quoted words in the text) and the objects depicted in the image. The power wielded by the man is vested in the viewer (in this case, the reader.) The man/owner and the viewer/reader are the only two people in the paradigm who have the freedom, the voice, and the means to express, deliver, and behold her in this way.

Of course this woman is turning Boyer down. He isn’t viewing her as an equal - she is presented to us as a “nude.” Boyer could have shared a memory of her standing at the balcony. He could have presented us with an image of her fully-clothed. Or in a restaurant, the public sphere. No, she is presented as object of opulence, and a fuzzy one at that. She is naked, in bed, faceless. All we know of her is that she says, “no,” languid in repose.

I am not surprised to read the following excerpt, a portion of a spoken-word piece that Boyer has performed for his Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and faux-“new-journalist” comrade in Zuccotti:

“We need a sex space in the park, a space surrounded by tarps, held by the people, so we can get naked and fill each other with ourselves” … “I want to moan as the bankers and men on Wall Street watch with their binoculars, and in this way we shall win. They’ll come, demanding our naked bodies, and we’ll share ourselves. Sasha Gray, where are you? Get down here and gang bang for democracy. And show them just how beautiful our bodies, and the way we glow when we make one another radiate.”

This passage isn’t about sex.

Clarified: this passage isn’t about sex between consensual individuals.

A gang bang is rape. Rape by many.

This passage is a dreamy, rape-masturbation fantasy where faceless figures cavort in their submission, first to the “poet,” then to the “bankers.” The “poet” presumes a “we” in the conversation, but who does this “we” presume to represent? Who is “we”? Does it include members of the Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, Permanent Wave, or the airline pilots union? It seems to me, in the context of this poem, that both “poet” and “banker” are separate from this sea of bodies, delighting not in the sex act, not even the orgasm, but in the act of gawking.

Look at their faceless, beautiful bodies, so enraptured in their submission. 

It’s like, you know, modeling? 

Also, I have to say - person opinion here - this is a terrible poem. I teach writing at a university, and I don’t a have freshman poet in my introductory workshop that wouldn’t vomit into their hand after reading the words “fill each other with ourselves.”

What does it mean exactly, to “fill each other with ourselves?”

Read:

“We need a sex space… to get naked and fill each other with ourselves.”

The primary gesture isn’t an expression of one being wishing to be filled.

Or the wish of one to invite another to fill her.

It’s a gesture of a being who wishes to fill. Anonymously. Again, and again.

This is a poem about rape. Folks, he wrote, “gang bang for democracy.” Earnestly, not ironically. How can you ignore the fact of it?

This poem is the gesture of man who has been emasculated, perhaps by investing too much of his life and his psychic energy into breaking his body on the hull of the image machine. He wishes to be powerful, but his expression of power can only manifest as a wish for penetration - and sadly, not the penetration of a particular woman, not a loved one, but a faceless mass. In this gesture, how is the poet better than any wayward politican-businessman advertising for a cheap fuck on Craigslist? The poet wishes to fuck as many faceless, blurred figures as he can, in his anonymous “sex space.”

The poet doesn’t even give Zuccotti Park the privlege of being a “sex place.”

I could write a book on the significance of the use of “space” and not “place,” but Henri Lefebvre beat me to it. Please read, or at least Google, it.

And to go one step further into my inquiry - where are the women? - well, nowhere.

[Mr. Marinovich] compared Zuccotti Park to Sherwood Forest. “It’s the true Akademia,” he said, referring to the original school founded by Plato in an Athenian grove of olive trees.

Really? Sherwood Forest? Robin Hood’s merry band of (male) thieves? Akademia? Plato’s group of (male) students? Are there really no women in this narrative? No women at all?

Oh wait, I found some. Not women in the flesh, but women invoked by name: Anne Waldman and Adrienne Rich. Boyer and Marinovich make sure that each and every reader is aware that they are including two notable women in their poetry anthology: Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology. It’s nice, the gesture, but ultimately, I’m not convinced that these “poets” are doing anything more than name-dropping. I’m curious, actually, to see how many women and people of color are represented in this anthology. I’m curious to see how legendary feminist poet Adrienne Rich would react to the use of the phrase “gang bang for democracy” used by an author born into the privilege of being white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied and good-looking.

Honestly, I lived in New York for a decade and spent ample time working in media. I’ve spent time with models in luxe bars, and not a single one gave a rat’s ass about anything other than looking good, wearing the right clothes, being chosen for a shoot, and appearing alongside other tall people. I had a model-friend once tell me: “I only take cabs because I don’t like riding the subway, there’s too many ugly people.” But regardless of my own personal experience - back to the text, the unassailable facts -

Just how sensational does this coverage have to get? 

One thing is for certain: our media machine will reformat our revolt into sexy little packages. It will use fashion models and aristocrat wanna-bes to sell us a manufactured “rebel poet” lifestyle, accessories not included.

Good thing is, we don’t have to buy it.

Cheerleader

Yes, the article is titled “Cheerleader.”

Granted, “Cheerleader” is the title of one of Annie Clark’s songs, but why was this one word, this one song, chosen to summarize what is supposed to be a broad review of St. Vincent’s music and career for a general audience?

Well, maybe when you’re using these kinds of terms to describe her:

“Her Snow White image is captivating. She is wide-eyed, fair-skinned and delicate.”

Really? When will we stop reviewing women’s appearances when we should just be reviewing their music? I like St. Vincent, love her newest album, but I want to hear more about her music, writing process, equipment, recording gear than how pretty she is. Only women receive this kind of treatment from the press.

Would we ever think to review the Fleet Foxes, or (insert other trending, male-based popular “indie” artist here) in terms of how “captivating” their press photos are? Whether or not they are “wide-eyed, fair-skinned and delicate?”

When I search out news articles to learn about people and events, I’m hoping to learn something new. When I open an article and see that the words are as superficial as the staged, glossy publicity stills, I don’t learn anything. I am a bit older and have worked in the media industry, and understand image, perfection and publicity, but I’m concerned with the lessons that younger, less experienced girls and women learn when they become intoxicated with a new female artist and seek out journalism in order to learn more.

Instead of discovering the ins-and-outs of the awesome guitar set-up that Annie Clark has, they read “Snow White blah blah” and learn that she’s “delicate,” over and over again. We learn that she recorded in a studio, sure, musicians record in studios - but what equipment did she use? What microphone captured the high-end of her vocals? Did she record to tape? How did she learn to rig up the contact-mic stomp-box that she used to create beats with her foot when she used to play solo?

When I approach music journalism with real questions about music and creative process, and when I fail to find answers, I begin to wonder if the artist is complicit. I don’t want to be anti-woman or critical of Annie Clark if I don’t have to be, but I do wonder if it’s easier for her to allow journalists to focus on her good looks than revealing her technical know-how. Does she willingly play into the game in order to move up the Billboard charts? (Maybe.) Does she want to give away her hard-won technical secrets? (Musicians do it all the time in TapeOp Magazine.)

Annie Clark doesn’t have to explain her looks to anyone, she was born with them. Other creative choices sometimes require tough answers. Is she taking the easy way out? Is she aware of the way she is portrayed?

Perhaps Ms. Clark needs to realize that by allowing journalists to focus on her “delicate” features, she is aiding and abetting a harmful system. Publicists and artists have control over the images and information that appear in articles. Sleater-Kinney reportedly refused to sit down for photographs. Joanna Newsom’s publicist requested that the New York Times “was not to describe the exterior [of her house] in any way that might give an overly zealous fan clues to its location.”

Why do some women omit certain kinds of information (technical, practical) from their own music features but seem to be complicit in the beauty story? Do they have a deep, inner need for this kind of affirmation?

Both music journalists and artists need to realize the consequences of their actions, and take responsibility for the media they release into the world.

Without a massive change in the way women are portrayed by the media, young girls are going to fall in love with female-made music and turn that love into a reason to criticize their bodies. When equipment and recording processes are kept locked away in secret, because Image is King, young girls aren’t going to learn what kind of microphone to buy, what kind of software to download. Image-obsessed music journalism keeps young Rapunzel locked in a tower of consuming music, separate from the world of making music. (Sorry, the journalist at the Houston Press used “Snow White,” I had to slip a fairy tale somewhere in here.)

The last thing I want is for young women to read articles like these, then YouTube St. Vincent’s interviews and performances to examine her proportions, wondering, is she really so delicate as the pictures and reviewers assert? I don’t want young women to click over to a new tab and Google-search diets and exercise tips. Young girls need to know the hours of unglamorous work that goes into practicing, writing, recording, and touring, with less focus on the (false! yet implied) easy solution: JUST LOOK GOOD AND EVERYTHING ELSE WILL COME TOGETHER. 

Lana Del Ray gets this treatment, too. And to some extent, seems to ask for it. Has she really had plastic surgery? Why do we care? I think Amy Klein summed up the Lana Del Ray situation the best, over here.

“I-I-I-I-I don’t want to be a cheerleader no more!” Annie Clark sings.

Me neither!