Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier music?

[Peterb]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

So beautifully put. Only a great, subtle, complex artist can achieve that level of sophistication. If something is complex enough to require revisiting, if a book or a painting draws me back again and again and slowly unfolds with meaning, then that is a mind of great complexity speaking through a given medium. Everything else is decoration or entertainment.



Really?

When you go to a museum and you see a great canvas, or a magnificent bronze, or when you find a song by someone you've never heard before, are you not able to judge whether or not it moves you? Unless I'm living hopelessly in the past, I usually come to art with no preconceived notions and little (if any) knowledge of the artist; the art says all it has to say about the mind that produced it. Even if I fall in love with an artist's work, I seldom look into their autobiography. This applies even to artists I have known and loved for years: a long time passed before I looked into the "facts" of Louise Bourgeois' life, but her art changed me, and that is all that matters. When an artist creates something great, they are revealing a part of themselves that, ideally, cannot be easily articulated. It is a different part of the brain that engages in the creative process, and in the consumption of it, too.

Occasionally the autobiography of an artist matters: case-in-point, Mark Rothko. Far more often than not the appreciation of art exists on another level, where facts don't matter, where inspiration is all.

Which all leads to the fact that Morrissey conveys everything he needs to convey through his art. The man said so himself: it's all in the songs.

Yes Anaesthesine, but don't you see. You make my point. When observing art by artists from the past we don't know much about them and to a large extent we are free of the barrage of personal emphemara we get today ( I did make this very point a few posts back). For modern artists we know a lot more and I think what I'm attempting to describe hear applies to the more modern era where we get gossip and loads of biographical data almost if we like it or not.
Oh yes and I at least do not live in a vacuum and it is all about context.
Yes Really!

 

[Qvist]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

I seem to recall something about a wall up yonder in the North...

Ah, so he's alluding to Roman Britain? Actually, that'd work a lot better.

The song touches on first principles. The song is effective precisely because they're so self-evident as to escape our attention. I humbly submit to you, Qvist, that your line of reasoning ("That's all very nice, Billy, but there's a little thing called reality you may want to watch out for...") is exactly what Bragg wants to start. It's the same line of reasoning Morrissey tries to initiate with ""Meat Is Murder". Both songs force you to rehearse the reasons for going to war, or for eating meat, thereby-- so the hope might be-- forcing a change in perspective. Evidently you've followed your own chain of reasoning and reached the same conclusions, which is fine. But (and this is my only point here) I don't think that makes "Between The Wars" silly or stupid.

Okay, perhaps I am too committed to the way I've been listeniing to that song for 25 years.

I agree, but neither is your explanation. That's because we both know there's no point in rehashing, step by step, what caused the two World Wars. I will stand by the assertion that if you go back far enough in any conflict you are going to find elites squabbling over power and money.

My dear Worm, you are going to find elites squabbling over power and money everywhere and at all times. That's how and why they're elites. As you say, that is to agree with you in a sense. But the point here is that exactly that fact makes it rather weak as a historical explanation. Since it's always part of the picture, it doesn't explain why one thing happened rather than another. At the very least, you'd have to go further into it.

The origins of World War I are complex, it's true, but the war's byzantine complexity is a key to understanding why the war had so little to do with the common man, i.e. Mr. Bragg's mythologized factory worker.

Oh, the war had a great deal indeed to the with the common man. As a war, it was virtually unprecedented in the level of popular involvement it engendered - and it would not have been possible to sustain otherwise. Ordinary men signed up by the million, enthusiastically.

But, again, the important thing is to revisit the basic questions: why do we fight wars? Who leads the charge? Who does the dying? Who benefits? What are the conflicts really about?

The answer to that is as simple as it's unsatisfactory; for all sorts of reasons - some good, some bad. Point is, it doesn't do to generalise it down to some simple and singular factor.

There is something naive about saying "Let's tear down the walls and live by faith in our fellow man", yes, but there's an equal amount of cynicism in saying "That's just the way it's always been". I appreciate songwriters like Bragg and Morrissey who nudge us to look at familiar subjects in a new way.

It depends on whether the point is being made in general, or in some specific context. I assumed the latter, and in that specific context I think there is nothing cynical in rejecting it. Not sure I'd agree that the way Bragg looks at it is in any way or sense new - on the contrary, it's rather staple British leftism as we've known it for the past 150 years or so, wouldn't you say?

I happen to agree that the argument for appeasement was a bad one, and there's no doubt the fight against the Axis powers in World War II was fully justified. From your post above you have either read George Orwell's essays from the Thirties and early Forties or you are doing a fine job channeling him. Either way, I think there's room for a point of view which might lead us to look at the situation differently and explore the roots of the conflict. Sure, Hitler's rise to power was based on a confluence of factors, not any one reason, but unquestionably the depressed German economy played a major role, as did the disarray of the German left. The Nazis began as a small minority and rose to power exploiting the weakness of the state.

We're seeing this in the United States right now. Look at the recent fight over the debt ceiling, which very nearly caused a catastrophic default. There is a direct correlation between the bad economy and a minority of elected representatives who are dictating the governance of the entire nation. A minority pushed a majority to the brink. There are multiple reasons for why that happened, but ultimately it comes down to, yes, elites fighting elites for money and power.

Mythology, politicization, crudeness...let's not forget we are addressing these matters in the context of art. I don't expect Billy Bragg or Morrissey to give me an accurate, book-length dissertation on the causes of war. I expect their positions to be crude, even childlike. Those positions have immense value when we find ourselves too embedded in the dominant ideology of our time. There are always good reasons to go to war. There were good reasons to invade Iraq, good reasons to invade Afghanistan, good reasons to conduct drone strikes in Yemen, good reasons to open black sites around the globe, sound reasons to torture people, excellent reasons to kill U.S. citizens without a trial...

Not accusing you of herd-think, Qvist, just illustrating that a topic is sometimes best viewed in all its full complexity, and sometimes it helps to stand apart for a moment and re-evaluate its basic premises and assumptions.

Well, this is a serious issue. All in all, I don't find the German analogy suited to the US situation. The differences are far too many and a bit too fundamental. The nazi phenomenon rested, among other things, on centuries of central european authoritarian politics. Remember, Germany became a democracy in 1918. The Weimar republic that Hitler overturned was not, from the German perspective, normality - it was an enforced aberration. The United states have a democratic tradition that stretches back to the beginning of the country. There is no tradition of authoritarian government in the US to fall back on. I'm far more worried about certain places in Europe (to say nothing of Russia) where such traditions do exist, in recent history, and where the dynamics repeat themselves under certain circumstances. The key thing is always, always the effect of successive blows to the system that erodes public confidence and trust. It takes a lot - even the unwanted and fledgling German Weimar democracy needed a series of catclysmic disasters before its powers of resistance were reduced to the point where Hitler could take over peacefully. I'm not saying bad things can't happen in the States, but not so much that particular bad thing, I think.

Mythology, politicization, crudeness...let's not forget we are addressing these matters in the context of art. I don't expect Billy Bragg or Morrissey to give me an accurate, book-length dissertation on the causes of war. I expect their positions to be crude, even childlike. Those positions have immense value when we find ourselves too embedded in the dominant ideology of our time. There are always good reasons to go to war. There were good reasons to invade Iraq, good reasons to invade Afghanistan, good reasons to conduct drone strikes in Yemen, good reasons to open black sites around the globe, sound reasons to torture people, excellent reasons to kill U.S. citizens without a trial...

Well, no. There aren't sound reasons to torture people. And there weren't good reasons to invade Iraq, at least not the actual reasons given. There frequently aren't good reasons to go to war. And I'm not giving Billy Bragg or anybody else special license to be silly. Unless it's in a way that is amusing enough or outrageous enough to make it worthwhile.

That being said, the song is in any event a favorite and perhaps I have judged the lyrics on the wrong terms.

Anyway, to move beyond songs one like despite the political content - more should be said about songs that have political content but which somehow manages to transcend the very issue of agreeing with it or not.

I'm thinking of a song like Bright Eyes' I must belong somewhere, which to me exemplifies a really successful way for a pop song to be political. You can't miss Oberst's approximate position as an angry left liberal-something, but the effect of the points he makes doesn't depend wholly on sharing that platform (though of course it helps). He just builds the whole song as a sort of devastating critique of knee-jerk conservatism and inertia by ridiculing our inherent sense of location, the concept is so elegant and forceful it almost makes you want to weep while roaring with laughter. Another remarkable thing about it is that it's not every day you hear a lyric that manages to sound nearly despairing in its enumeration of the seemingly endless ways in which human life deadens itself by clinging to static form (which I suppose is effectively what he employs belonging as a metaphor for), but which nevertheless feels like an accusation that demands action of some sort. Leave the ocean's roar in the turquoise shell/Leave the widower in his private hell/Leave the liberty in that broken bell today. And who can best this as a one-line critique of religion's irrelevance: They locked the Devil in the basement, threw God up into the air.

Oberst is underrated, I find. He is in my opinion, at his best, a quite remarkable lyricist - up there with the best, including St. Steven himself. A sort of Tom Lehrer put through the mincer of the age of irony and thrown out the other side, a wounded but wiser man?

 

[Qvist]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

Qvist, I think you are taking a very broad term, 'the left' and applying a single observation. I admit I also used that term but then as now, I don't think that the Labour party was necessarily representative of the socialist position. Secondly, anti-militarism is not the same as appeasment.

No, certainly not. But the strength of anti-military sentiment in British public opinion was the key fact that made appeasement inavoidable, because it left British politicians without any other options. They simply would not have had the political support neccessary for a policy of greater confrontation.

This of course does not show that anti-militarism is neccessarily and always bad and misguided, it was just horribly misplaced in that specific situation. This is infinitely easier to see today than it was at the time, but then there is also greater reason to expect people today to understand it.

You forget that up to the late '30s the nazis were not a military threat.

I think I understand what you mean, but that misses the point. From a policy point of view, the nazis should clearly have been treated as a deadly menace from the moment they assumed power. Essentially nothing had changed in Hitler's aims from 1933 to 1939, and those aims were of a nature that, given Germany's potential, inherently constituted a deadly threat. The only reason they were not a direct and immediate threat in 1933 was that it took time to transform a nearly demilitarised country into a military great power. The moment that was achieved was not the moment when they became a threat - it was the moment when it became too late to meet that threat with any means other than general war in Europe, at the cost of tens of millions of lives worldwide. If the Western powers had been prepared to enforce the treaty of Versailles - if neccessary by entering Germany with military force - German re-armament would quite simply have been impossible, and there would have been no second world war. Do you really think, with the benefit of hindsight, that it was wise to wait until Germany was armed to the teeth and required 5 and a half years of total war to be pacified? Of course, this was again a lot less obvious in 1934 than it is today, but it's not as if there was a lack of danger signals from quite early on.

I must argue with you about the stance on Spain and resistance against Mosely not being representative of where the left stood. These were enormous movements very much representative of socialists at the time. And this is what Bragg was singing about.

Sorry, but outside of the Communist international, no major grouping of the left in Western Europe was prepared to go to war for the Republican cause. France even had a socialist government. A few thousand idealists went, a bit of money was raised, and that was it. In the end, the only foreign actors who mattered were the dictatorships, on both sides.

I'm not saying you are totally wrong. We are talking about the past here and it is all interpretation of recieved information which will be filtered through our own political beliefs. I guess all we can do is bat to and fro our thoughts.

Please believe me when I say this is not directed at you, but to me that always sounds as a cop-out. Don't trust people who tell you it's impossible to be objective - they obviously don't intend to try to be. In my opinion it is not particularly difficult to avoid filtering information through your personal politics, provided you want to.

 

[Peterb]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

No, certainly not. But the strength of anti-military sentiment in British public opinion was the key fact that made appeasement inavoidable, because it left British politicians without any other options. They simply would not have had the political support neccessary for a policy of greater confrontation.

This of course does not show that anti-militarism is neccessarily and always bad and misguided, it was just horribly misplaced in that specific situation. This is infinitely easier to see today than it was at the time, but then there is also greater reason to expect people today to understand it.



I think I understand what you mean, but that misses the point. From a policy point of view, the nazis should clearly have been treated as a deadly menace from the moment they assumed power. Essentially nothing had changed in Hitler's aims from 1933 to 1939, and those aims were of a nature that, given Germany's potential, inherently constituted a deadly threat. The only reason they were not a direct and immediate threat in 1933 was that it took time to transform a nearly demilitarised country into a military great power. The moment that was achieved was not the moment when they became a threat - it was the moment when it became too late to meet that threat with any means other than general war in Europe, at the cost of tens of millions of lives worldwide. If the Western powers had been prepared to enforce the treaty of Versailles - if neccessary by entering Germany with military force - German re-armament would quite simply have been impossible, and there would have been no second world war. Do you really think, with the benefit of hindsight, that it was wise to wait until Germany was armed to the teeth and required 5 and a half years of total war to be pacified? Of course, this was again a lot less obvious in 1934 than it is today, but it's not as if there was a lack of danger signals from quite early on.



Sorry, but outside of the Communist international, no major grouping of the left in Western Europe was prepared to go to war for the Republican cause. France even had a socialist government. A few thousand idealists went, a bit of money was raised, and that was it. In the end, the only foreign actors who mattered were the dictatorships, on both sides.



Please believe me when I say this is not directed at you, but to me that always sounds as a cop-out. Don't trust people who tell you it's impossible to be objective - they obviously don't intend to try to be. In my opinion it is not particularly difficult to avoid filtering information through your personal politics, provided you want to.

Hey Qvist, ofcourse you're correct to say that the nazis should have been treated as an enourmous threat immediately but if you think the fact that they were not was due to anti-militarism and the socialists then you are, ofcourse wrong. The Bolshevik revolution was only something like 20 years past. The governments of the west were terrified of the power of the workers and the possibility of a similar revolution in their backyards. The reason the British establishment hob nobbed with nazis is not necessarily because they were facsists too but because the nazis really hit the communists hard and they must have been seen the germans as some kind of bulwark against the red threat.

By 1939 it was a done deal and those on the left knew that at that stage there was no choice to make except fight or die.

And by the way, if you think you can see things objectively then mazeltov for your god like powers.
As I have said before there is no objectvity, no absolute truth to find and believe me your politics come through very clearly (as I'm sure mine do too) in your interpretation of the past.
I have to say the opposite to you, in my experience, people who claim they know the 'truth' are the ones who have no intention of listening to a word you say. (In no way are you guilty of this. You clearly read and take in everything posted).

 

[CrystalGeezer]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

Thanks for a great response CrystalGeezer. I guess if you say that your appreciation of art is completely unaffected by any other knowledge then you're right. All I can say is that for me when appreciating art, it is not just the qualities of the work I am digesting but also my knowledge of the artist (and everything else) and this will have an effect. Ideally we should be able to separate art but we don't live in vacuum. It's all about context.

Well , it takes a certain amount of discipline to separate the art from the artist, I'm guilty of judging myself at times, though I try not to. I liken the practice with talking to God. Sometimes the devil will slip in and give you misinformation and you'll be talking to someone you dearly love, you don't want the messenger to represent the message, you have to separate the person from the spirit. Not easy, especially if you're tired or hungry or your basic needs aren't being met, you just kind of give up and start to mistrust everyone, it's just easier. I feel feel like I'm digressing. I'll turn the stage back over to worm and A's tennis match.

 

[realitybites]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

As far as musical artists go, I'm not all that concerned about their political views. (Though homophobia and antisemitism are both unacceptable IMO.) And the same goes for performance artists as well. I could care less if opera singers, ballerinas, and Cirque du Soleil performers are Republicans, Communists, or Scientologists. Where I draw the line is with non-fiction writers. I prefer my authors to have similar values to myself. This is why I admire and adore Christopher Hitchens.

 

[Qvist]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

It doesn't require any godlike powers to see things reasonably objectively, it is easily achievable for anyone who wants to, and who has a bit a bit of plain sense. As far as my diagnosis of the left during the 20s and 30s is concerned, I don'¨t accept that this is due to my politics. Certainly the left was not singularly responsible for appeasement and that is not what I am arguing either. reflexive pacifism and with it lack of support for an affirmative foreign policy made itself felt elsewhere along the political spectrum too. and of course other factors played into it, including those that you mention, at least to some extent. It is not the left's fault, uniquely, that HItler was not opposed. My point is simply that the pacifism that Bragg's lyric mirrors did work in that direction. And sorry, the conviction that the european left can look back at a proud and unbroken legacy of staunchly oposing fascism , that's just too simple. It's just not true, or at any rate, there are glaring holes in that peicture that you choose not to acknowledge. And those, just to underline this, are factual and not a result of anybodys politics. You could recall, for instance, how communists throughout Europe opposed the whole war against Germany for as long as the pact with the Soviet Union was in place. Of course moderate socialists everywhere were opposed to HItler, but there is also the question of whether the solutions they advocated were the right ones.

I have to say the opposite to you, in my experience, people who claim they know the 'truth' are the ones who have no intention of listening to a word you say.

That is not the opposite of my experience. Why should anyone claim to know the truth just because they're not prepared to argue that everything is just a mirror of people's politics anyway? On the contrary, to acknowledge some objective basis for fact and to expect your discussion partner to adhere to the standards that imply is to create a basis for a rather more meaningful activity than narcissistically bashing each other over the head with our uniquely personal politics.

 

[Peterb]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

It doesn't require any godlike powers to see things reasonably objectively, it is easily achievable for anyone who wants to, and who has a bit a bit of plain sense. As far as my diagnosis of the left during the 20s and 30s is concerned, I don'¨t accept that this is due to my politics. Certainly the left was not singularly responsible for appeasement and that is not what I am arguing either. reflexive pacifism and with it lack of support for an affirmative foreign policy made itself felt elsewhere along the political spectrum too. and of course other factors played into it, including those that you mention, at least to some extent. It is not the left's fault, uniquely, that HItler was not opposed. My point is simply that the pacifism that Bragg's lyric mirrors did work in that direction. And sorry, the conviction that the european left can look back at a proud and unbroken legacy of staunchly oposing fascism , that's just too simple. It's just not true, or at any rate, there are glaring holes in that peicture that you choose not to acknowledge. And those, just to underline this, are factual and not a result of anybodys politics. You could recall, for instance, how communists throughout Europe opposed the whole war against Germany for as long as the pact with the Soviet Union was in place. Of course moderate socialists everywhere were opposed to HItler, but there is also the question of whether the solutions they advocated were the right ones.



That is not the opposite of my experience. Why should anyone claim to know the truth just because they're not prepared to argue that everything is just a mirror of people's politics anyway? On the contrary, to acknowledge some objective basis for fact and to expect your discussion partner to adhere to the standards that imply is to create a basis for a rather more meaningful activity than narcissistically bashing each other over the head with our uniquely personal politics.

Yeah, that's all fair enough Qvist. In my defence, I never set out to document the history of the left in Europe (which is jjust aswell as I couldn't).
To continue the debate about objectivity would require me simply repeating what I have already said. You either buy it or not. Although this does link up with the original thread question.
My main point is that when appreciating art we are doing so in a particular context, what we are, what we know, where we are, when we are, and this is all a part of the process. It's the same with history (and the present) to think of reality as simply a collection of facts is misguided. You can try to ditch your preconceptions but you will not achieve objectivity.
Your view of the present reflects a political position, why not the past?

You talk about an 'objective basis for fact'. This is just words. Try and name one. The war started in 1939? Well, you could say it started in 1933 when Hilter came to power, or in 1918 at Versailles. There are no facts that are not open to interpretation.

 

[Qvist]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

Okay, this is against the position you are expressing, not you as a person.

It's not something you buy, it's something you do.

Your argument amounts to a total relativism that is quite unneccessary. To point out the limits of objectivity is not to prove its redundance or non-existence. The point is exactly the territory that lies between pure and self-defining data like dates, and subjective assessments that just mirror preferences and hence lack relevance to people who do not share those preferences. Within that field, we exercise judgment, and can choose by what standards we act and reason. And among our options are choosing to, you know, seek to understand how things work and why and how the things that happened occurred. I may have my politics, but that interests me a good deal less than understanding history does. I have no desire to reduce one to the other, and do not expect them to be in perfect accordance with each other. As per above, it doesn't even much limit or define my taste in something as subjective as music. Of course, there is in any case an inherently subjective dimension to judgment, but that doesn't mean we just have to collapse everything into that dimension and pretend that's the only thing that judgment contains. History is not some formula of physics, but there is such a thing as a more or less well-supported interpretation, according to criteria that matter to everyone regardless of their politics. HIstorians don't just make things up - if you want to argue that certain people believed certain things or did things for a certain reasons, you actually have to find facts that support it. On which assumption rests the whole existence of Academia, as well as the notion of a public debate that allows people of different persuasions to have a rational discussion. To me, this seems greatly preferable to a mode where the various tribes just shout their mantras at each other in the misguided belief that nothing else is possible.

You talk about an 'objective basis for fact'. This is just words. Try and name one. The war started in 1939? Well, you could say it started in 1933 when Hilter came to power, or in 1918 at Versailles. There are no facts that are not open to interpretation.

No, it is not just words. YOur example does not show that facts are open to interpretations, just that concepts (in this case"the beginning of the war") can have different definitions. You could make a case for each of the three options you mention - ineed, you could perfectly well support all three simultaneously. But they are three different points, not three different takes on the same thing. In each case, you would be dependent on supporting it with convincing reasoning, which would ultimately be dependent to some extent on facts.

That facts are open to interpretation does not mean that they can always be interpreted in any way one chooses, nor that the fact of interpretation causes them to cease being facts.

 

[Qvist]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

I prefer my authors to have similar values to myself. This is why I admire and adore Christopher Hitchens.

How depressing! That's the logic that brought Fox Television into being. What's the point with reading Hitchens if you already agree with him? If I were you, I'd worry less about whether authors share your values and more about whether they have something interesting to say that would stimulate your intellectual processes. Something which often unfortunately involves challenging your present perspectives. Without that, you might as well just give up thinking right away.

 

[Peterb]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

Okay, this is against the position you are expressing, not you as a person.

It's not something you buy, it's something you do.

Your argument amounts to a total relativism that is quite unneccessary. To point out the limits of objectivity is not to prove its redundance or non-existence. The point is exactly the territory that lies between pure and self-defining data like dates, and subjective assessments that just mirror preferences and hence lack relevance to people who do not share those preferences. Within that field, we exercise judgment, and can choose by what standards we act and reason. And among our options are choosing to, you know, seek to understand how things work and why and how the things that happened occurred. I may have my politics, but that interests me a good deal less than understanding history does. I have no desire to reduce one to the other, and do not expect them to be in perfect accordance with each other. As per above, it doesn't even much limit or define my taste in something as subjective as music. Of course, there is in any case an inherently subjective dimension to judgment, but that doesn't mean we just have to collapse everything into that dimension and pretend that's the only thing that judgment contains. History is not some formula of physics, but there is such a thing as a more or less well-supported interpretation, according to criteria that matter to everyone regardless of their politics. HIstorians don't just make things up - if you want to argue that certain people believed certain things or did things for a certain reasons, you actually have to find facts that support it. On which assumption rests the whole existence of Academia, as well as the notion of a public debate that allows people of different persuasions to have a rational discussion. To me, this seems greatly preferable to a mode where the various tribes just shout their mantras at each other in the misguided belief that nothing else is possible.



No, it is not just words. YOur example does not show that facts are open to interpretations, just that concepts (in this case"the beginning of the war") can have different definitions. You could make a case for each of the three options you mention - ineed, you could perfectly well support all three simultaneously. But they are three different points, not three different takes on the same thing. In each case, you would be dependent on supporting it with convincing reasoning, which would ultimately be dependent to some extent on facts.

That facts are open to interpretation does not mean that they can always be interpreted in any way one chooses, nor that the fact of interpretation causes them to cease being facts.

Qvist, (sigh) you keep on telling me what I position is when I say nothing of the sort. I would agree about the territory you define but that that does not lead to people in different camps just yelling at each other.
History is interpretation and that interpretation changes over the years, like fashion, that is because we change, we learn more, our perspective changes etc.
"No, it is not just words. YOur example does not show that facts are open to interpretations, just that concepts (in this case"the beginning of the war") can have different definitions. You could make a case for each of the three options you mention - ineed, you could perfectly well support all three simultaneously. But they are three different points, not three different takes on the same thing. In each case, you would be dependent on supporting it with convincing reasoning, which would ultimately be dependent to some extent on facts. "
Qvist, this was just an extreme and simple example to illustrate a point that there are no facts that cannot be interpretated.

And your last bit
"That facts are open to interpretation does not mean that they can always be interpreted in any way one chooses, nor that the fact of interpretation causes them to cease being facts.". Again just words, nobody said this, I certainly didn't.

 

[Peterb]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

How depressing! That's the logic that brought Fox Television into being. What's the point with reading Hitchens if you already agree with him? If I were you, I'd worry less about whether authors share your values and more about whether they have something interesting to say that would stimulate your intellectual processes. Something which often unfortunately involves challenging your present perspectives. Without that, you might as well just give up thinking right away.

I'm sure realitybites is capable of defending himself but I had to throw my oar in here in view of my other posts with Qvist.
We are not gods looking down on humanity we are people with viewpoints and beliefs and I think it is quite acceptable to seek out those that concur or take your ideas further. We all want to explore further our positions. Also it is comfortable to read thoses that agree with you.
I see myself as someone on the left, what am I gonna put on my bookshelves, John Majors autobiography?
And anyway, this doesn't preclude exploring other ideas.

 

[Qvist]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

Qvist, (sigh) you keep on telling me what I position is when I say nothing of the sort. I would agree about the territory you define but that that does not lead to people in different camps just yelling at each other.
History is interpretation and that interpretation changes over the years, like fashion, that is because we change, we learn more, our perspective changes etc.
"No, it is not just words. YOur example does not show that facts are open to interpretations, just that concepts (in this case"the beginning of the war") can have different definitions. You could make a case for each of the three options you mention - ineed, you could perfectly well support all three simultaneously. But they are three different points, not three different takes on the same thing. In each case, you would be dependent on supporting it with convincing reasoning, which would ultimately be dependent to some extent on facts. "
Qvist, this was just an extreme and simple example to illustrate a point that there are no facts that cannot be interpretated.

And your last bit
"That facts are open to interpretation does not mean that they can always be interpreted in any way one chooses, nor that the fact of interpretation causes them to cease being facts.". Again just words, nobody said this, I certainly didn't.

Well then, if this was not your point, what was?

 

[Qvist]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

I'm sure realitybites is capable of defending himself but I had to throw my oar in here in view of my other posts with Qvist.
We are not gods looking down on humanity we are people with viewpoints and beliefs and I think it is quite acceptable to seek out those that concur or take your ideas further. We all want to explore further our positions. Also it is comfortable to read thoses that agree with you.

Yeah, it's really comfortable. That's sort of the problem. I'm not saying you shouldn't read anything you're in sympathy with, but to generally stick to only doing that, that's pretty much a recipe for stagnation and narrow-mindedness.

I see myself as someone on the left, what am I gonna put on my bookshelves, John Majors autobiography?

Er, yes? Why the hell not? Well, maybe not John Major, but that has more to do with the man being of limited interest to anyone. Point is, why would anyone choose to not read about politicians they don't like? To me, that's a frankly amazing point of view.

 

[Peterb]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

Yeah, it's really comfortable. That's sort of the problem. I'm not saying you shouldn't read anything you're in sympathy with, but to generally stick to only doing that, that's pretty much a recipe for stagnation and narrow-mindedness.




Er, yes? Why the hell not? Well, maybe not John Major, but that has more to do with the man being of limited interest to anyone. Point is, why would anyone choose to not read about politicians they don't like? To me, that's a frankly amazing point of view.

Well if that's what you want on your bookshelf, enjoy!
As far as I'm concerned, life's too short.

 

[Anaesthesine]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

Yes Anaesthesine, but don't you see. You make my point. When observing art by artists from the past we don't know much about them and to a large extent we are free of the barrage of personal emphemara we get today ( I did make this very point a few posts back). For modern artists we know a lot more and I think what I'm attempting to describe hear applies to the more modern era where we get gossip and loads of biographical data almost if we like it or not.
Oh yes and I at least do not live in a vacuum and it is all about context.
Yes Really!

Boy, I wish I had time to read this thread properly.

We don't have to listen to gossip and we don't have to google/wikipedia everyone: it's usually a load of half-truths, innuendo and misinformation anyway. Art speaks for itself - everything else is superfluous.

If you need a context in which to make a judgement about whether a work of art is good, meaningful or moral, then that is your choice. For me it's a visceral, aesthetic experience, and no amount of information that I may glean from gossip, press releases or articles can change that initial fact; that's the profound, transcendent beauty that is a great work of art. Great art reaches beyond its time and its context - it is always, always about mystery.

 

[Worm]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

OK Worm, take a stab a what art is and what isn't. I know this is just a forum and it's quite difficult, but you see you go on about meaning but you give no clue whatsoever to what it is. So go on, help me understand.

Do you want me to define art? Or define the difference between good art and bad art?

 

[Worm]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

Since it's always part of the picture, it doesn't explain why one thing happened rather than another.

No, it doesn't explain anything in terms of history. I wasn't offering it as an explanation. The main point is that the recognition of the real cause of war-- squabbling elites-- matters a lot to the sort of working man in Bragg's song. If a peon looks at history, he sees a number of colorful, complex dramas unfolding. Behind them there are a handful of people pulling the strings. This is not an "explanation" per se, it's simply a viewpoint which might allow one to start questioning the make-up of one's society. If I live in a democracy, it matters a great deal whether power is located in the hands of the people or the hands of a few wealthy elites.

Oh, the war had a great deal indeed to the with the common man. As a war, it was virtually unprecedented in the level of popular involvement it engendered - and it would not have been possible to sustain otherwise. Ordinary men signed up by the million, enthusiastically.

And what role did propaganda play? Received opinions? Ideology?

Point is, it doesn't do to generalise it down to some simple and singular factor.

Well, I agree with you, but from the beginning my entire line of reasoning here is that "Between The Wars" and other songs of its ilk are useful in that they force us to revisit our understanding of first principles. If you go back and look into history, you're going to find any number of complex, well-reasoned, well-researched reasons as to why wars are fought. We often do this with preconceived opinions; we are already inclined toward certain answers based on how we begin our inquiry. If I want to know what caused the First World War, am I looking into the question as an historian, or as an average citizen far removed from the power struggles which cause wars? As a highly intelligent man with a thirst for objective truth, you are probably answering as an historian. I am taking a different perspective, that of the average citizen who may want to know why it is he might be asked to die a few thousand miles from home.

In 1940 such a citizen might have weighed the case for war and willingly signed up to fight Hitler and defend England. But he might also have asked himself if his chosen form of government was going to keep drawing him into more wars, and his children into more wars. Again: a different line of questioning starting with a different premise.

All in all, I don't find the German analogy suited to the US situation. ... I'm not saying bad things can't happen in the States, but not so much that particular bad thing, I think.

Historical analogies are always limited, of course, and I know there are many differences. American fascism will look very different. It has to for a variety of reasons. Still, I think it's useful to look back on a situation in which a democracy (nominal or not) was taken over by a minority because of a handful of factors which came together in just such a way to allow a takeover to occur. Was 9/11 our Reichstag fire? Vast differences, and yet the parallel is useful in that it helps to understand how certain events trigger the revocation of civil rights and the entrenchment of fascists with the "consent" of the masses.

I'm not giving Billy Bragg or anybody else special license to be silly.

I think we as listeners shouldn't turn off our intellects when confronted with stupidity. But I think the issue appears differently if we start off admitting the whole medium of pop music is always already compromised. "Mixing pop and politics" is always silly. It just is. Discourse designed to influence with anything other than reason is categorically silly, to use your word; Plato's attack on poetry in Republic has never really been refuted from an epistemological perspective. Speaking of rationality, there's no difference between Billy Bragg and Conner Oberst, or between Marilyn Manson and the Dixie Chicks. They're all making sub-rational appeals to our intellect in one way or another. This is why a filmmaker like Michael Moore, even when he's right on target with this or that individual point, is always fundamentally wrong.

In practice, we don't apply standards with that kind of harshness. We couldn't do it. We get lots of meaningful truths which make their way to us from less-than-rational sources. Our knowledge is always compromised. So it's just a matter of sifting through different levels of silliness, really. And more often than not Bragg's silliness is worthwhile, as was Joe Strummer's and Paul Weller's and many others'. I suppose I don't try to filter out the stupid, I just avoid the grossly stupid. When I find a worthwhile perspective, it becomes a gateway into exploring it through other, more respectable channels. As I've had occasion to say many times over the years on this site, "Meat Is Murder" is a dumb song, but as a catalytic work of art it took me to the library to look for better justification for why one might give up meat.

Anyway, to move beyond songs one like despite the political content - more should be said about songs that have political content but which somehow manages to transcend the very issue of agreeing with it or not.

I think I know what you mean (and I appreciated your appreciation of Bright Eyes) but I've got two reactions which are tentative until I better understand your question: one, doesn't all music transcend its political content in one way or the other? Two, aren't you the least bit concerned that you are moved by music that transcends your faculty for sussing out what's right or wrong-- don't you feel conned, in a way?

 

[Peterb]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

Boy, I wish I had time to read this thread properly.

We don't have to listen to gossip and we don't have to google/wikipedia everyone: it's usually a load of half-truths, innuendo and misinformation anyway. Art speaks for itself - everything else is superfluous.

If you need a context in which to make a judgement about whether a work of art is good, meaningful or moral, then that is your choice. For me it's a visceral, aesthetic experience, and no amount of information that I may glean from gossip, press releases or articles can change that initial fact; that's the profound, transcendent beauty that is a great work of art. Great art reaches beyond its time and its context - it is always, always about mystery.

If's thats your position then great. I stated what I believe and if you don't buy it then that's that.

 

[lilikoi]

Re: Does your knowledge of an artists politics affect your appreciation of thier musi

How depressing! That's the logic that brought Fox Television into being. What's the point with reading Hitchens if you already agree with him? If I were you, I'd worry less about whether authors share your values and more about whether they have something interesting to say that would stimulate your intellectual processes. Something which often unfortunately involves challenging your present perspectives. Without that, you might as well just give up thinking right away.

gimme a break! are you seriously suggesting people should torture themselves in their spare time and read books that they will hate? of COURSE people like to read books by authors whose point of view they respect, and of course people will read topics they are interested in. anything else would be perverse. oh yeah - we need to force those stubborn astronomers to read foolish astrology books to stimulate intellectual processes and those narrow minded scientists to learn all about creationism to broaden their horizon. lol...