Home Truths

He said, I respect Nick cause he will stick by his opinion no matter what...and kudos, you did that man, thick and thin, you are a man with an opinion, popular or unpopular. And I respect that.

Doomie: thanks. The same could be said about you!

Even though I think you are wrong 'cept for the Ivor Cutler bit. Friends of mine followed him home once and finally asked him for his autograph. He looked scared and replied "I thought you were ghosts"...

He is obviously a genius.

Don't intellectualize my rock'n'roll. Though I have tried to sneak Kenneth Halliwell references in to no effect!

Are you not talking about ego. Who defines who is normal and exceptional. I mean, shit, I'm in England, where the class system defines the arts. Is it class that defines the normal and the exceptional? If that is the case then you are talking out of your ass.

Break that down into English for the eejits in the crowd.

But if Momus is defining this as bettering oneself, I agree absolutely, but you are talking to someone who dropped out of university in the second year to work in a factory. So, maybe I am not the best example.

Do we live in a system of mediocrity? Yes. YES. YES.

Are the normal people (who I count myself as part of) responsible for the mediocrity? No.

It is the artists responsiblity for this, the artists and cultural critics, who, as there job, should be responsible for this.

But then it's a tricky question, is there nothing more subversive than normality, nothing more violent and interesting than the psychosis of the american dream?

if the artist or culturalists places himself in the exceptional rather than normal mind set, which is fine, he will have to expect a cult sized audience of people who, as he does, think that they are successful but that way of thinking is hardly successful with the mainstream. You can still educate to some extent but it has to be subtle....

if he were to write a subversive and educating pizza hut jingle I would honestly think that he was exceptional.

but the thing is that he's stuck in the artist ghetto, by his market audience, the only way he can escape if he has some message of intent before entering the mainstream. If he had a pop hit, he would lose his bread'n'butter (his fanbase....who want him to be exclusive/elusive) but me thinks he wants to have the big pop hit and that is the interest aspect of Momus. One foot in cultdom and the other in mainstream superstardom, back and forth. Until he goes fuck it and goes for it, then he really can't complain. His cultdom has provided him probably the income of a city investment wanker or a member of Westlife, he has a couple of pads and meets interesting people...

It's possible to overrate the importance of how people earn their living: some (many) people lead outwardly 'normal' lives while being gloriously strange.

Similarly, Suzy's 'cannon fodder' statements overrate the importance to having a full / rich / strange life of consuming the stuff she considers good.

Both of you seem to be saying "if you're going to be strange you'd better do it like us".

*Something ineffably male too; the kind of lofty contempt tossed around for 'breeders' and hyperbole re artistic 'difference' neglects that the feminist (if not female) take on Momus' account might bring to light whole sets of social and artistic/cultural relationships, contradictions and possibilities otherwise steamrollered over here. Of course the 'life of the mind' (good god) is possible in conjunction with the domestic and the parenting; a history of women artists have (had to) make this pretty clear in ways that a fleeting reference to Patti Smith's retreat into the suburbs to raise a family doesn't address.

I can't help wondering if what irks you about H Truths (and like other people have intimated, picking on it is a straw man for cheap potshots; the issue w/ Home Truths is style of discourse rather than content) is Peel's occupation of what might conventionally be thought of as a woman's role, picking through the detritus of the ordinary/extraordinary in family life (a version of the lady novelist, perhaps), his move from sibilant seducer of sixteen year olds to domestic partner, rather than what it might have to say about the state of culture more generally.

A couple of years a whole ad campaign for an online knowledge service called Questia was based on my cabaret show 'Electronics in the 18th Century'. But by the time it was stripped down to 30 second clips with the URL and the selling line, it was just some guy in a wig with a silly french accent. It had none of the gestalt shock that I put into my original cabaret, the 'what if' proposition about a parallel world where they had Pong games in the 18th century. Was I surprised to have all the interesting bits smoothed off my original concept? Was I fuck. It's the story of the majority of creative people working in capitalism.

Yeah, but my original point stands, you are still attempting as well as drawing money out, to enter the mainstream through the advertisements. It's clever and it's often done. Stereolab/Spiritualized/Lilys/Clash/New Order/etc. Do it. And do it alot. Just not as blatant as you are.

Prog — which was an anti-canonic cross-class space in the late 60s and early 70s — was aggressively de-working classed by punk, a younger-sibling-rival strand of anti-canonic cross-class bohemianism.

(very early prophet of where peel was always headed = julie burchill) (both now shill for difftly shrill versions of normalcy, of course)

1. I came to Peel in the late 80s when he was already domesticated. His show was the first place where I heard reggae, techno, experimental pop musics and any kind of African musics. Yes admittedly at the time I endured these while waiting for that next Weddoes session track but I'm still grateful. Crucially he also played all this stuff with constant asides about Flossie and William and The Pig. Doing this he was setting out an inspiring having-it-all style model to me - he can have the comforting intimacies of family life and still be collecting thousands of records and reaching across the airwaves to shape the tastes of geeks like me, hooray!

2. I want to have children so I can make up stories for them, red others, embellish still more. A huge huge part of the imaginative and artistic tradition, certainly in the West and no doubt elsewhere, is born out of 'normal life'/'family life'. Next to religion it's the biggest artistic motor going - you told stories to entertain the family; you learnt to play, or compose, music in a family setting. So perhaps Momus misunderstands the problem - not one of elites vs normals but a change in the idea of what 'family life' is, one which downplays the self-created family experience in favour of the shop- bought one.

3. I think people are underestimating the wish for individuality, or at least the wish to define one's own environment - it's a motive force for 'creatives' but also for 'normals', too. What Momus is really talking about isn't elitism so much as cliquism, the desire to find a bunch of mates who share similar interests and disinterests. Momus producing art which gets consumed mostly by other artists or wannabe-artists doesn't seem too dissimilar to Pete or Emma or me or John or Tim or Sarah producing jokes in the pub which get consumed by other jokers.

Urgh! Those lines make me shudder. I hope he didn't mean for them to sound the way they do to me. Apparently, this argument is about John Peel but that just made me imagine a row of pretty but moronic girls, knees spread, crying "Impregnate me because I could never hope to achieve anything else in life!". It seems hateful of the housewife, a male disdain for the drudgery, the "less important" role of raising children. Can mothers and fathers not produce some of the most beautiful pieces of art, even more beautiful because it deals with their children? I am thinking of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and Schumann's Scenes from Childhood. Flemish art that depicted domestic life (specifically female roles such as laceworkers and spinners) or Caravaggio's fortune tellers and local peasants were both considered controversial because it deviated from the 'high art' of the typical classical, elevated heroic mode. Jesus, I don't know how old John Peel is but he must be getting up there. He can't be dealing with bouncing girls and perfumed sex gardens forever, can he? That would be incredibly depressing. Everyone else will eventually have to deal with liver spots/sagging breasts/wrinkled penises which will not impress the cute girl/boy out there unless we happen to be fabulously wealthy. By then, will perfumed sex gardens even matter? No, you'll be hoping that you have grandchildren to take care of, tell stories to, admire their potential. Well, that is what I will be hoping anyways. Oh I am letting this thread frustrate me, sorry!

'what things are' is quite open to debate, is not not? what things are depends on what context you are looking from.

'SOMETHING GOOD ON TELLY ALERT' thread: 1 post. Mmm Pies: 76.

Come on, admit it, you love it!