High Meadow vs. River/Ocean

Okkervil River's Will Sheff

I think this Don Henley vs. Okkervil River and Frank Ocean brouhaha might be a good discussion.

Don Henley is all protagonist, all individuation, all tragic hero, all rules and rationality, imposing these Apollonian concepts on the fathomless swamp from which inspiration arises.

Okkervil River and Frank Ocean are all union, all chorus, all lawlessness and inspiration in their clearly Dionysian interpretation of music's origin and destiny.

Both want to deny the right of the other.

Without River/Ocean, Henley dries up.  Without Henley, well...

This generation of artists is much more comfortable with never being a "star" in the sense that flourished in mid- to late-20th century.

In some ways, they win because they know what Henley represents and they don't want any part of it.

Frank Ocean

One of Henley's arguments is "Would you want someone doing that to your work?" And I honestly think that River/Ocean's answer to that question is "We don't care."

They might go on to say, "I am part of this formless flow of music and I would rather have access to it, wherever it flows, than to divert it into my own narrow channels, into my walled villa, and use it to irrigate some classical garden with well trimmed rows and marble statues" (okay, it's pretty unlikely they would say something like that--especially in unison).

Do we need this lawless period to drag these ossified baby boomer protagonists back into the mire whence they came? I thought our generation was the one who finally got out from under that shadow. But this generation are the ones who are finally doing the really dirty, bloody work, ushering in an era of "anarchy and collapse" (McLuhan) so that the culture can renew itself and new genius emerge.

Henley (second from right) was an outlaw once too

The baby boomers had such a powerful dose of the Dionysian...it's so ironic that they are engaged in these kinds of battles. River/Ocean may be wrong, but it's true that they are part of the more primordial, foundational reality in music. And Henley isn't wrong. In his words, though, you hear a kind of measured language not spoken by people who are still tapped into the dark, formless, chthonic source of music. Can't take him to court about that, but can you speak that way and still write songs? When did their last big song come out? 2004?

River/Ocean's? Probably yesterday.

I guess the upshot of all this is how it all relates to our own concerns about copyright. Now, I would have a much bigger problem with someone stealing our stuff if it were some kind of monster corporation (I will always love you, King Ad-Rock), not River/Ocean. So, I'm not saying there isn't a "standing up to the man" component of this impulse that could better harmonize with the artistic impulse. But this trend that Henley is trying to beat back may, in fact, be the Zeitgeist.

And, as Hegel claims, "no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit."

Farthington's Voicemail: the day the day quote to be in realities

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has recently been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.



4/6/14 8:51 PM 6 days ago

But I think I come back down to the the logistical. I think it is a good question to ask about pretty much everything that we embark on since we do have limited time and energy, and resources. 6. Letter that we really need to make the most of all these things that we choose to do, and I think we should ask that question does does this house. Those critical aspects. Those aspects from both sides of the spectrum. On the one hand, is it something that can and some sense be realized. In the present. As. I was on the product end of the spectrum, or the process end of the spectrum, where we really can Not just wait around for this ideal. And point. Where there can be some realization in the present. And then the second thing is is the getting us any closer toward products in the future. Really those sort of more idealize products that we are our imagining on this horizon. Those one server, we not within reach, but we really need to be reaching toward those, products. Not in a way where we're gonna have this impoverished present. Where we take away all present human value and then do well in the strand send them hopes and dreams, of the future. But at the same time. Not just was not just living in the present and in the day the day quote to be in realities. I'm not. Because at that point, it becomes assist with the in the task. But accommodation those to the synthesis of those two. And whenever possible ask that question and in the really can't evaluate a lot of the things that we've done. As. Having fallen into. One or the other category. It would be nice in this next phase to see if we can get one. The falls into that synthetic category that you had a great it synthesize is the strengths of. Both sites because that is the one that I think, as the best chance of realizing that concrete reality, that we all What.

Farthington's Voicemail: Process vs. product

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has recently been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.



4/6/14 8:24 PM 6 days ago

Transcript not available.

Farthington's Voicemail: working in very real waste toward a future products

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has recently been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.



4/6/14 8:12 PM 6 days ago

So continuing. It's. It's not an ideal neither of those. Sorry a good thing. I think those are not the ideal you have on the one hand you have the The things that are biting time where you have a product in the moment you have something that you can put out and make available in the moment you our continually providing a steady stream of that. That's. That's one aspect. And you have the full flat nicht, fully realized, traditional completed work of art. As it is Ben, understood to be and past decades and centuries, that that almost impossible to realize, thing product. You have those two extremes, and I think maybe this is just you know, maybe I'm just talking about something logistical here. Maybe there is something eager to this but synthesis of those two extremes. Is Really this thing that is more concrete than either of them. Both of them house and abstract this to them, and and the middle option. The synthesis is the one that seems most concrete to me. Is the incremental step. That. Is it sells for product, is itself something that can be put out fairly frequently, is not one of those far off nearly impossible to realize dreams. But at the same time is not just reading water is not just biding time. It's a product in and of itself. But it is also working in very real waste toward a future products. You know that future product may never be realized. It is working toward that. To me that's the sweet spot, and again that may just be simple logistical matter I want to know if it is something central if it is something for the medics about the project, and of itself. Something about the project, is about. That antithesis, the synthesis of those two extremes.

Farthington's Voicemail: this is just the Robert trip

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has recently been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.



4/5/14 4:05 PM 7 days ago

Basketball metaphor for all of this is taking what the defense gives you You know if you have an option to run your game plan whatever it is that you master minded. Then. Great you about run it run whatever it is you can. You know more common thing is sort of. That You can't run What you've master minded. You need to take what the defense get you in that somewhere between the the intersection of the Collision of those two realities Whatever it is you originally planned and what the defense or the universe. IS giving. You. That's where you get your product. Yeah. In some ways, it. It may be the better for the 2 better. The two options is to have to take what the defense is giving you that something in the collision something in the intersection, on something in the synthesis of those 2 AM to set a cool realities that is where the creation happens. When you when you do have, probably falsely to some extent, hey sense that you can do whatever you want and and I guess the examples I get off and this is just the Robert trip. Of of modern day modern day Robert trip. Who has You know just sees intense processors and You know top of the line guitar whatever it is probably custom made for him all the him alone and just really getting to that point where. There is no tension no friction between what is conceived. And what is boring, and going along with that metaphor. That is not natural. If you go with him at a for pregnancy and birth. There is going to be some tension. Obviously, bringing these things into reality. And that there is some role. At that substrate, or That template, place. And then the whole creation So, That's. That's kind of the reality that we deal with and and I think it begins to get into this question of a frame and, I just came back from The art museum today and kind of thinking about Hall, modern art. If you know that liberated as it is from more traditional frames how it really do man.

We're a Nietzschean Dialectic!

The following is a January 2014 email exchange between Art and Will.

Will:

I think constructing the story of Arthur White fits my Apollonian leanings and throwing it in a postmodern blender fits your Dionysian leanings.   

I'd love to talk whenever you have the chance, but I think it's clear that as far as we and our alter egos are concerned, after we come up with ideas, my job is mostly to impose order and your job is mostly to mess with it.   

I'm most in my element trying to form the legend in my head from start to finish.  I think it's best that you take charge of the architecture of all things stream of consciousness, meta-narrative, disjointed, post-structuralist, tangential, and destabilizing.   

I'm hardwired to write an epic morality tale...that's the strength and the shortcoming I bring to the table.  I'm depending on you to screw that up in meaningful ways...I hope you'll depend on me be the straightening force. 

I think carltonfarthington@gmail.com falls under the purview of your wisdom, not mine.  I think it's a good idea not because I get it, but because you do.

Art:

Yes, I remember now: we're a Nietzschean dialectic!  

Nietzsche was bent bringing back the Dionysian, which he felt had been paved over by the Socratic man, the Alexandrian age, the Enlightenment, his own age...   

But I would like to rewind back to the Hegelian and say, you're right: we need to "know no shrinking or half heartedness" in being the thing we most are.  That's what the all-important sublation/synthesis most needs in order to occur.   The "only wrong" in this dynamic is when "one desires to deny the other power" not realizing itself as just one part of the synthetic whole.   

And I'm referencing Hegel's ideas on tragedy, so there is danger in this.   

As A.C. Bradley explains in his lectures on Hegel, what is tragic about tragedy is that the observance of one power involves the violation of the other (usually with one or more deaths in the process).  But Hegel also pointed out tragedies in which the synthesis is achieved through adjustment of demands/repentance.   

Like how Athena is able to save Orestes by brokering a deal between Apollo (Apollonian/Olympian) and the Furies (Dionysian/Chthonic).  I think we want to go for that latter option, appreciating and making room for the demands of the other...all without falling into half-heartedness.   

And yes, I do look to you to be that other, straightening force!

Will:

It's working...I'm already questioning whether you wrote that response or Dr. Carlton Farthington did!

Aufheben

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 3 January 2013.

As for playing the old material...

There are certainly precedents for not playing it.  For instance, Gerard Manley Hopkins burned all of his pre-priesthood, secular poetry.  

I want to play the old stuff, even during the Brand New Life phase.  I want to because, whether he is lucid about this or not, even the most worldly of these songs originated in an impulse toward intimacy with the other...and, ultimately, with The Other.  

I don't want to get to the point where we are always parsing who "you" is in the various songs.  I love the mystery of Shakespeare's dark lady, of the feminine ideal Barry White is always serenading...  We need to allow a good amount of that to happen "in the dark" without always saying who's who, who did what with whom, etc.  

The bottom line is that Arthur turned his attention from The Other to the other (and more probably, the others).  This happens to a lot of saintly-seeming children when adolescence hits.  But with one is destined to be a mystic, it takes on its own character...in short, it becomes a distortion of the antecedent ideal.  Once the "fall" occurs, one has to go through something of a platonic process to get back to The Other again.  

As in sex, the speaker and spoken-to can get fused together in some seemingly paradoxical ways:  "The Treatment" and "Venetian Blinds" could be seen as Arthur speaking to some shadowy, unnamed woman (namely a certain past girlfriend), but they could also be seen as the words of a jealous God as his bride (namely me) prostitutes herself.  

My point here is that we should play the old material because it has been, in some sense, redeemed and--to use some Hegelian terminology--"sublated" into the comprehensive whole.  Not redeemed in the way that insipid Christian music and poetry tries to redeem itself all the time (thus making it impossible to be modern), but in a way that surpasses human understanding, rationality, or contrivance.  Words that were profane and mundane become pregnant with hidden mystic heft (I first wrote down "meaning," but, again I don't want it to be something to be analyzed or attributed or otherwise "figured out").  

More pragmatically, I think Arthur is past the point of falling back into sin again, broken as he is.  So playing his songs in a loose redemptive framework would not be putting him in any danger at this point.  

I think even our counselor priest would see the psychological/spiritual benefit in playing through the old material, if for no other reason that it has grounded Arthur back with his brother, given him something productive to do, has him going to Mass again, etc.  

But, again, I want that framework of redemption to remain fairly loose...I don't think we should downplay anything thing that was said/done by saying that it was all about The Blessed Virgin Mary or his wife or this or that cult member. 

Hope that helps.  And again, thanks for all your amazing drum work!

Working on My Frontman Swag!

The following is an excerpt of a 19 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will.

Joe Lazarus intersects with all of this in that he simply sees the makings of a great documentary.  

Maybe he represents the ethical sphere.  He is definitely beyond Will in that he has some social consciousness and wants to draw out some comprehensible message or moral.  Maybe he sees it as a simple triumph-of-the-human-spirit-type story.  

Now that Arthur has been turned into a 2001-type catalyst for existential/religious evolution, however, Joe  is going to get a lot more than he bargained for.  Arthur isn't going to give him anything that can be clearly articulated or comprehended within the ethical sphere.

He'll have to evolve or turn back.

I also see Will's character through the Nietzschean lens, as representing the Apollonian impulse to control, rationalize, and package the formless Dionysian horror that Arthur represents.  If we are to baptize Nietzsche, that formless horror is akin to your Catholic parents' utter horror of mysticism, of the religious sphere, of sainthood, of ecstatic visions, of dark nights, etc.  

This is a good impulse on Will's part, because a lot of people with this disposition tend to stick with things that are easily packaged, or that are already packaged in some sense.  Will recognizes the necessity of the Dionysian and he's going to get as close to the event horizon of the black hole without getting sucked in.  Like Willy Loman, he's going to reach into the darkness and pull out a diamond!

Incidentally, I want to, as Covey puts it, "value the differences" here.

Apollonian and Dionysian are like oil and water.  But without the other they produce nothing.  Pitted against each other they produce the great works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Ibsen, and Wagner.  I don't want to say that you and I represent one more than the other, but I do think some of the creative tension we are experiencing now is a good sign.

Hegel would think so too.

Anyway, I hope that doesn't sound too arrogant and self-centered again.  I am, after all, working on my frontman swag!