Also, I have a great understanding of what musicians are doing: E.g., band in rehearsal, song peters out, the keyboardist says to the guitarist, very tentatively, "Was what I was playing all right?" and the guitarist says, "Oh, yeah, I guess so," while thinking to himself "How the fuck should I know? I was so busy struggling with my part that I wasn't paying the least attention to what you were doing." Meanwhile, the bass player tells the drummer, "You need to play with more concentration," and the drummer snaps back, "What are you talking about? You come here and play with 'concentration,' asshole," and throws a stick in his direction. The singer, meanwhile, hums to herself and goes and fiddles with something on one of the amps.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:19 (eighteen years ago) link
I'm sure his plim is very soulful.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:23 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― Haikunym (Haikunym), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:59 (eighteen years ago) link
According to Denver-based Village Voice rock critic Frank Kogan, real punks don't wear black. Kogan is not talking about punks in the incarcerated definition of the word, but in the street definition: all those you see with piercings and tattoos who presumably listen to music that derives its attitudes from genuine alienation and a desire to express something desperately outraged.
Kogan - a member of a writer's group which I have attended along with him for years - has entitled a massive collection of his work, Real Punks Don't Wear Black. The work Frank has assembled here (University of Georgia Press, 2006, 384 pp $24.95) takes us back to his very early years growing up in Connecticut on through his attendance and graduation from Yale University.
Kogan's autodidactic obsession with making a precise point reminds me a lot of the short stories of Woody Allen. With both writers, we are treated to large quantities of self-deprecation that result in humor which makes the traveling through discussions that might otherwise get dry a fascinating trip.
In bygone days, I myself turned to rock criticism with some of the same ambition and scholarship that Frank Kogan wields in his art. Personally, I feel a tremendous relief in having left the field to write poetry and fiction, but I regard Frank's efforts as an inspired look into the world of sounds we make and the attitudes of those who make them as well as the dances we do because of them.
Besides writing for the Voice, Kogan has written for Spin, but not for the venerable Rolling Stone, which I feel is to his credit. He speaks with sincerity but never with the kind of hip authoritarianism that would dictate a required attitude on the part of the reader. The man wades into piles of cds with curiosity and erudition, unearthing treasures and trashing icons. He reveals that he never bought a Beach Boys record, but is not above mentioning the influence of Brian Wilson.
Kogan's insistence on grilling every song he hears against a kind of existential litmus test makes fascinating reading for me. The title of his book comes from a letter he received from someone who spoke as a lone warrior in the quest to hear music that would speak to his own condition, which was, in this case, a condition of being a complete outcast in school and a general nobody.
Frank Kogan's definition of punk unfolds as follows, here from a section of his book entitled "Hero of Fear." "A decade after junior high a woman from my home town who'd gone to my school was at Max's Kansas City (a New York club, at the time probably the main place along with CBGB for punk or strange or decadent or dangerous music) listening to the songs piped in between sets and she said to me, 'This sounds like junior high but more intense.' This is the best definition of punk rock I've ever heard." (pp 36-37)
As it is with a lot of criticism and with almost all rock criticism, Frank Kogan's work is highly solipsistic; he gets into his task by examining himself and his own personal history and niche. A virtual autobiography, Real Punks Don't Wear Black tells the reader reams of information about the author. Whether someone who does not know Frank Kogan would necessarily want to know all that he tells is a central question. The book reaches to achieve a state of universality by zeroing in on the psyche of the author. For me, the book offers education of our taste in music by the kind of scrupulousness Kogan employs to trace the social influences he holds up as the backdrops for the art which we hold dear. Nobody who ever called up a radio station with a request for "96 Tears" with a panic verging on desperation should dismiss this book.
Real Punks Don't Wear Black offers an adventure by pairing a university mind with a high school dropout phenomenon. Frank Kogan to me is a writer who would write fascinating treatises even if he were comparing new brands of carpeting. While the rest of us in our writer's group encourage Frank to write about other things, the man is clearly set on a life's path of writing about something he can't let go of, and his obsessive compulsion is to our benefit.—Denver Daily News, January 20, 2006
Freddy drastically misinterprets the letter that gives the book its title. Among other things, the letter is an obvious work of fiction, written by me. (Obvious? Well, I didn't imagine that someone could take it for real.)
And one of the things the book does is to challenge the claim of the pierced and tattooed to speak for all of punk.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 14:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 14:52 (eighteen years ago) link
I think "solipsist" gets over-used to mean anyone who's self-involved or writes mainly about their own thoughts and internal mental states and perceptions. Clearly any critic who gets deeply into constructing a personal system of aesthetic values is going to be accused of building castles in the air that no one else can see. There is a very real debate here which has been held many times on ILM about whether critical judgments can ever be anything other than subjective. Perhaps "solipsist" is a short-hand way of denoting someone who takes the position that critical judgments are inherently subjective and it's pointless to deny that they are.
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 23 January 2006 16:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― pdf (Phil Freeman), Monday, 23 January 2006 16:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 23 January 2006 16:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 23 January 2006 17:06 (eighteen years ago) link
Never even rented one. (Nor read Vollmann, though he and Woody Allen are now on my to-read list.)
uga library still ain't got the kogan book.
Well, I don't think the for-reals version (rather than the reviewer's promos) are even printed yet.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 18:04 (eighteen years ago) link
Except what I keep trying to hammer home in the book is that critical judgments are inherently social, and I keep emphatically rejecting the idea that you can talk about yourself or about the world but that you can't do both at once. I wish the word "subjective" (and "objective," its partner in infamy) would vanish from the language. People don't know what they mean when they say it.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 18:09 (eighteen years ago) link
hurrah!
― bugged out, Monday, 23 January 2006 18:10 (eighteen years ago) link
Well, in my sentence where I used the word "subjective" to refer to a view of the nature of claims of truth in aesthetic criticism, I simply meant that one who held that aesthetic judgments are "subjective" would hold that such judgments are only true for the person who makes such judgments and are not true in a universal sense. Perhaps an example would make this more clear. If I say "The Rolling Stones are the best rock band of all time" and if it's true that such judgments are subjective, then there is an implied "to me" that should be added to the end of that sentence (and any sentence which makes claims in this manner).
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 23 January 2006 18:20 (eighteen years ago) link
And I'm saying that those aren't the only two choices, which is why I think "subjective" and "objective" need to be shitcanned.
"The Rolling Stones are the best rock band of all time" is obviously not only true for the person who makes the judgment, since more than one person has made that judgment, and someone's stating it as a judgment rather than a matter of taste is in itself a claim that the judgment has a validity that goes beyond oneself; i.e., more than one person should make that judgment.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 18:46 (eighteen years ago) link
Let me take another example. Suppose there are several people in a room. One person says "It's cold in here". Some others agree. Another person says, "Actually it's warm in here." Some others agree with him. So is "It's cold in here" a subjective statement or not? Clearly more than one person agrees with the statement, and the people making that statement are implying that the others should agree with them. However, not everyone does agree, and there doesn't seem to be any objective way of measuring whether or not the room is in fact cold - simply because there is no objective definition of the word "cold" that will resolve every grey area. Say they had a thermometer in the room - would that settle the issue? No, because regardless of what the temperature reading was, to some people the room would still be cold and to others hot.
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 23 January 2006 18:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 23 January 2006 18:56 (eighteen years ago) link
unless it's like 10 below then everyone would be fuckin' freezing.
― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Monday, 23 January 2006 19:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 23 January 2006 19:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 23 January 2006 19:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Monday, 23 January 2006 19:32 (eighteen years ago) link
― JD from CDepot, Monday, 23 January 2006 19:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Monday, 23 January 2006 19:34 (eighteen years ago) link
Yeah, I think that's the point I'm trying to make, that "subjective" and "objective" leave most of the map untouched. My feeling is that you and I aren't seriously at odds here, but my other guess is that if you dropped the word "subjective" from your vocabulary, your thinking wouldn't be inhibited thereby. E.g., if in some instances by "subjective" we mean "we can get away with disagreeing without being called insane," that's what we should say: not that we're being subjective, but that can get away with disagreeing. This is because the word "subjective" implies a deeper principle than "what we can get away with saying," and furthermore implies that there are only two choices: you're either speaking for yourself alone or your speaking for everybody.
In your example, everyone in the room could agree, "It's too cold for some of us but not for all of us." But as soon as someone says, "No, it's too cold, period," the situation has changed. Either the guy is dismissed out of hand - is in essence dismissed from the conversation - or at least some of the other participants have to acknowledge that one person's judgement of coldness may be better than another's (in which case it's no longer just up to the individual). OK, that'd be a strange argument, to argue over whether someone feels cold or not. But to bring up an example that I use in my book, what about the person who claims that Jay-Z is too pop to be real hip-hop? Or what about the person who claims that there are witches? Or the person who believes in Intelligent Design? You can call all of these judgments and their corresponding counterjudgments (Jay-Z is real hip-hop, there are no witches, Intelligent Design is vacuous bullshit) "subjective," but how does that help you? What does it tell us about these judgments that we wouldn't otherwise know, if there were no such term as "subjective"? Once something jumps social roles from "matter of taste" to "matter of judgment" (which often then links up with "matter of definition"), then not everyone is agreeing to disagree, since some people's ideas can be better or worse than the others', some people can be right and others wrong, and we have no process that everyone will adhere to that determines who is right or wrong.
If you want to, you can call matters of taste and matters of judgment "subjective," but I don't see what you've gained by lumping the two together. "I don't like spinach" and "witches are real" seem at a pretty far remove.
But all this is also at a pretty far remove from why people call me solipsistic. In Real Punks, where I tell my story I'm not doing so just for its own sake but because there are resemblances between my story and some other people's, so by analyzing and probing my own predicament I'm analyzing and probing a lot more, too. I make this clear right on the first page of the preface, where I say that my sentences don't just come from my pen, they're a social product; and I ask, therefore, not just what do I gain by producing such sentences, but what does a society gain by producing people like me who write such sentences. So I'm saying that my story is relevant even for people whose experience doesn't match up with mine, since I'm still playing a role in the society of which they're a part. Of course, one can dispute this claim, but whether I'm being "subjective" or not doesn't touch the claim one way or another. Rather, what's at issue is whether or not my experience resembles other people's; and whether the principles I'm illustrating in telling my story can be applied to other people; and whether my social roles relate to the social roles of poeple whose story doesn't resemble mine.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 19:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:03 (eighteen years ago) link
You think you know me?
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:05 (eighteen years ago) link
And if that surprises you, then either you don't know me as well as you think, or you don't know her.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:07 (eighteen years ago) link
You think you know me Word on the street is that you do You want my history What others tell you won't be true
I walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep Nobody's really seen my million subtleties
Got stains on my t-shirt and I'm the biggest flirt Right now I'm solo, but that will be changing eventually, oh Got bruises on my heart and sometimes I get dark If you want my auto, want my autobiography Baby, just ask me
I hear you talking Well, it's my turn now I'm talking back Look in my eyes So you can see just where I'm at
I walked a thousand miles to find one river of peace I walked a million more to find out what this shit means
I'm a bad ass girl in this messed up world I'm the sexy girl in this crazy world I'm a simple girl in a complex world A nasty girl, you wanna get with me? You wanna mess with me?
Got stains on my t-shirt and I'm the biggest flirt Right now I'm solo, but that will be changing eventually, oh I laugh more than I cry You piss me off, good-bye Got bruises on my heart and sometimes I get dark If you want my auto, want my autobiography Baby, just ask me
― JD from CDepot, Monday, 23 January 2006 20:12 (eighteen years ago) link
well, i think this relates back to my issues above with readers claiming to not understand writer's metaphors, and feeling like instead of not understanding them they are just rejecting them b/c they cannot see how anyone's peculiar experience is of use, b/c it has to be individual to them and therefore must be different from everyone elses. there's no understanding how getting into someone else's understanding might help with making your own map. anyway...
― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― geeta (geeta), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:23 (eighteen years ago) link
Except the lyrics on the page don't convey how sexy it is when she says. It's a come on. The song is like the world's most brilliant personal ad.
And I never in my life wrote a line as great as "I walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep." I don't know if Jay-Z or Eminem ever did either. Or Dylan. It's like she's saying, "Here I am, stealth genius, and you didn't know." Of course, she's making promises in that song that she probably won't be able to keep, just as Dylan and Jagger and Iggy and Lennon and Johnny and Johansen never lived up to their promise.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:32 (eighteen years ago) link
When I go out I'm a go out shootingI don't mean when I dieI mean when I go out to the club, stupid
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:51 (eighteen years ago) link
That's actually a pretty good definition of "subjective". And since the difference between "subjective" and "objective" is a continuum and not a black-and-white divide, then I think perhaps you're right that the word obscures more than it reveals. It's basically a lazy way of saying, "I don't think you're right and I don't think you can convince me." And in any case, I don't think the word is absolutely necessary to an understanding of criticism. Because criticism (or at least good criticism) is a social process, good critics quickly move beyond the "AC/DC rules! Losers drool!" school of thought and they start to ask "Why do they rule?" and "What other bands rule in similar ways?" and so on, and pretty soon they find that there are things they can hold a conversation about, even with people who might not agree that AC/DC rules.
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:52 (eighteen years ago) link
It's actually "And I'll walk a million more to find out what this shit means."
See what I mean about her making promises? I admire her for making them.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 20:59 (eighteen years ago) link
Or it could be a way of saying "I think you are right but there's no sure-fire way that we can convince even the people we respect." But my major problem with the words "subjective" and "objective" is that they divide up the universe between what's in the psyche and what's in objects; that way of mapping the universe pretty much leaves out most of the universe. Leaves out society, and culture, and people's lives, and the fact that people use objects in their lives.
(Not that people who use the words "objective" and "subjective" actually map out the universe in this way. Another thing I imply but don't really get into in the book is that the problem isn't that people's views are distorted by their belief in a mind-matter split - normally people don't think about that split at all, and it really doesn't play a big role in social discourse - but that they run to such splits when they don't want to deal with social conflict.)
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 21:09 (eighteen years ago) link
Frank I really really like this point - I think I've verged on thinking it dozens of times without ever actually finally articulating it. e.g. I used to be broadly in favour of Ned's "Radical Subjectivity" position but now I'm somewhat uncomfortable with it, not because I believe in objectivity but because it feels like a conflict-avoidance-mechanism.
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, 23 January 2006 21:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, 23 January 2006 21:17 (eighteen years ago) link
hahahahaha. you have brass balls, and i love you for saying this. youve just sold another copy of your book, which might have been your intention.
― JD from CDepot, Monday, 23 January 2006 21:20 (eighteen years ago) link
When I first listened to Bob Dylan's mid-'60s stuff I thought it was especially honest. It was honest to me because the vocals weren't pretty and didn't sound like singers were supposed to sound, and mistakes were left in. The lyrics to "Visions of Johanna," "Memphis Blues Again," etc. were honest because they were self-destructive. The earlier protest stuff, attacking power, prestige, and everyday commonplaces, fit into a genre of "folk" music; the electric stuff seemed more individual and true. Dylan got to be "honest" not by attacking power, prestige, and everyday commonplaces, but by attacking Dylan.
I thought if you were going to get to see Ashlee's come-on, you should see mine as well, so that's the first paragraph. Ashlee's has a better lilt. I should work on my flirting technique.
I wrote the piece 22 years ago, and it's not about any actual Dylan autobio. "The true autobiography of Bob Dylan isn't an account of his life, or how he got to be that way; but of how it got to be that way, how we got to be that way." In other words, I'm saying we get to complete Dylan's "autobiography" in our own lives and our own stories.
Harold Bloom to thread.
Yes, this thread's all about selling copies of my book.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 21:23 (eighteen years ago) link
and i wish harold bloom would contribute, but isn't he very sick? (im reading genuis at the moment. pretty good.)
― JD from CDepot, Monday, 23 January 2006 21:26 (eighteen years ago) link
I like these lines, but I don't think I'd like them as much if I didn't know about her family background (ie., ex-pastor father).
But my major problem with the words "subjective" and "objective" is that they divide up the universe between what's in the psyche and what's in objects; that way of mapping the universe pretty much leaves out most of the universe.
This is also a good point. When I say "It's cold in this room", I'm talking about things both outside myself (ie., molecules vibrating in the room, how much clothing I'm wearing) and inside myself (ie., my nerve endings, body temperature, etc.). When I say "AC/DC rules", I'm also talking about things both outside myself (Angus Young's abilities as a guitarist) and inside myself (personal listening history and tastes). To say that either statement is "subjective" may be a useful corrective to someone who denies the "inside myself" part of the equation, but it's not the whole truth.
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 23 January 2006 21:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 23 January 2006 21:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 21:45 (eighteen years ago) link
Well, admittedly these people in my example are kind of straw men, but so is the person that denies the "inside myself" part of the equation. The whole thing is only constructed as an example to clarify some distinctions that in most real situations would be mired in grey, hence the straw men.
But I think that people who criticize critics for being "subjective" or "solipsistic" misunderstand the nature of criticism. In some ways the process is more interesting than the conclusion - the journey is the destination. This is the same reason that the considerations that led a critic to vote a certain way on a year-end poll are more interesting to read than the ballot itself. You might maintain that a conclusion is "subjective" but that doesn't mean it's not about something real, and that you can't learn something by reading how it was arrived at.
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 23 January 2006 21:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 22:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 22:17 (eighteen years ago) link