the pernicious and silly term "influence"

I was actually thinking about this subject this morning. As someone who writes songs, the influences I think of as most significant have more to do with methods of working. There was an appeal for me in how some people went about creating a body of work. Influences directly affecting musical materials seem to be hazier, more general, more subconscious.

A prosaic interpretation of the word might be: band A liked band B, tried to write something a bit like them, then probably came up with something interesting in a different way, or if they didn't we wouldn't be talking about band A.

Mark S's crusade against 'influence' has been going on at least 20 years, as this thread shows. I'm slightly amused and touched to be reminded of it, though ultimately I'm now not especially convinced by it; at least not by recent restatements of the cause.

3 notes:

1: FWIW I am quite sympathetic to deliberate attempts to use particular words less, as an intellectual exercise to sharpen thought. (I said this above, 20 years ago.) This wouldn't make 'influence' a special case, though. All kinds of words could be affected.

2: as far as I know, the discussion has talked surprisingly little about the etymology, which presumably implies liquid and 'inflow'. A tributary influences a river, and vice versa? Is this a good metaphor for human action or not? Mark S says not, ever. I think: more likely it sometimes has been (it seems likely that a great many etymologies originally encoded something suggestive, rather than inaccurate), but has also been over-extended and this has obscured the most useful instances.

Not very helpfully for my purposes, discussions of this also always talk about 'the general sense ‘an influx, flowing matter’, also specifically (in astrology) ‘the flowing in of ethereal fluid (affecting human destiny)’'.

Here it is worth noting the parallel term 'inspiration' which clearly derives from something 'receiving a divine breath'. That breath might roughly resemble the 'ethereal fluid''.

3: related, it still seems to me (cf 2002 post) that thought around this is clouded by a conflation of what, in dull words, I may as well call 'conscious' and 'unconscious' 'influence'. This would be the distinction between eg:

"yes, on this record we tried to sound like The Ramones"

and

"without really knowing it, this late 1970s band found their sound shaped by the other music and recording techniques of the period".

It still seems to me that the latter is closer to the original sense, as in the non-conscious flow of an enveloping force (cf water) which has effects on phenomena it encounters.

Actually I add a 4th note:

4: Mark S, still furious at 'influence' after all these years, alleges that it is a piece of magical hand-waving. This kind of allegation may risk becoming what it describes, and I am not especially convinced that 'influence', specifically, is a good candidate for this category. However, again, there is, to my mind, a hint of transferrable truth in what he says, in that *some* words do indeed function like this. A major instance would be 'Modernism' (more clearly, I think, than mere 'Modern') - I have probably never seen such a magical, wish-fulfilling philosopher's stone of a word.

Your third point is my preferred argument against the use - or lazy use - of the term, i'd expand it to include not just less conscious but less 'cool' influences or less obviously musical ones, e.g. some people they played with in school, some guy who taught them a cool lick, anything that might have helped develop confidence, attitude, ambition.

i have definitely happily raged abt the fact that "influenza" as a concept emerged from astrology

but possibly on LJ rather than here

"i put on the doors and influenza"

‘Influences’ also rankles me as it’s often the way for an “artist” sitting in leather trousers to claim instant connection with a self-selected hip canon and pantheon and place themselves firmly in it , in a Patti Smith/ Bobby Gillespie way:

“My influences? Oh too many to mention but… Burroughs obviously, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Alice Coltrane, early Dylan, Suicide Spacemen 3, Lee Perry, MC5, William Blake“

I readily believe artists who claim it's best to reduce your exposure to other art to preserve your own pure creative juices, to reduce the risk of contagion of ideas and motifs, to force you to cultivate your own art. At the same time, nothing comes out of nothing, you can't always be reinventing the wheel.

I take the conclusion of this thread that influence is a real but complex phenomenon for artists (you don't necessarily sound like your inspirations, you can learn the same skills from different artists), that the public schematizes very crudely, adding on top various misconceptions that being good equals being influential etc.

The idealization of being the first, the creator. That's what it all comes back to right.

"contagion" is a good word, ppl should definitely go with spread-of-plague style metaphors

music hack: "what is the colour of the sky on yr planet?"
band member: "blondie and oasis!"

^^also an improved reworking

Something that I've talked about with a few artists I've interviewed has been the difference between "inspiration" and "influence," with influence being "Ooh, that's a really cool thing [other band] did, I should try doing that" and "inspiration" being "[other band]'s music is so awesome it makes me want to make my own music more awesome."

artists often refer to themselves as "influenced by" other artists. what do they mean when they say this?

imo the best definition of influence (in the context of art/music) is this functional one, rather than one found in its etymological roots in water metaphors, astrology, or epidemiology

i know a writer who keeps 3 books on his desk and each day before he works on his novel opens one to a random page and reads it. this is an extreme example in how deliberate it is, but i don't think influence that is less intentional or methodical is conceptually distinct

is it accurate to say his novel will be influenced by these 3 desk novels? he wouldn't do this exercise if it didn't have some effect on his own writing. presumably this effect is something he wants to impart upon the work

what's the effect? you can imagine two counterfactual novels, one written with the random-page-a-day method and one without. the former bears the "influence" of the desk novels in a way the latter doesn't

skimming the 2002 posts upthread and there's a kerfuffle over how the phrase "under the influence of" suggests the influencer has some measure of control. i.e., Pere Ubu dictating to Joy Division how to play guitar. i don't see it that way, a driver "under the influence" of alcohol is still "in control" of the steering wheel; alcohol has no agency of its own, but it does have an effect

it would be convenient for derivative artists if influence didn't exist, because they could pass themselves off as sui generis, like academics who claim originality but didn't read the prior literature. people like to dismiss artists who are not "more than the sum of their influences" as mere "pastiche". i personally like a lot of art that is considered derivative and don't really care when people say this. but i think it's a sign of artistic maturity to be able to acknowledge one's influences

it certainly helps to narrow down the meaning -- and render it a more useable and perhaps useful word -- if you declare by fiat that some of its confused overlapping and contradictory meanings just don't apply. i don't think it's as good as my solution -- "Use other words please." -- bcz my solution means thinking abt what yr saying instead of not thinking abt it, choosing yr phrasing carefully to pin down what you want to say instead of using a word that doesn't do this and then having to expand at length abt what you precisely choose it to mean and not mean (which others wil immediately contest). what not be precise instead of casual?

the random-page seeding practice you discuss is a case in point: why not simply describe this practice and NOT then muddle and blur it by scrobbling it all back into the ragbag of all the other kinds of relationship (some very distinct!) that art has with the context the artist was thrown into or painstakingly made for themselves

(again, i don't disagree this *is* a solution, it's just that i feel my editor's red crayon twitching)

also derivative bands LOVE the concept of influence! they reel it out non-stop: a mix between The Stone Roses and Primal Scream with the swagger of Oasis

declare by fiat that some of its confused overlapping and contradictory meanings just don't apply

I don't see how flopson is doing this in his post.

is it accurate to say his novel will be influenced by these 3 desk novels? he wouldn't do this exercise if it didn't have some effect on his own writing. presumably this effect is something he wants to impart upon the work

not sure i buy this! you could make the same argument about people who check the horoscope every day - surely they wouldn’t do it, if the stars didn’t influence their lives?

BUT WAIT, you say! surely the act of checking a horoscope every day influences what you do? well, yes! everything you do has some effect on your future. andy warhol ate a can of campbell’s tomato soup every day at lunch (it was his favorite, and he loved routine). did campbell’s soup influence his work?

so i think the book reading probably does influence his work, but maybe not in the sense that the results would be different if we swapped the books for different books. and are the books influencing the writer, or is the writer … influencing himself? and why is the “picking a book” routine more of an influence on the writer than his morning toilet routine, or midday ham sandwich routine, or late night nose picking routine?

i’m not saying i have the answers to any of these questions, but i think they are interesting (particularly whether the influence is in the book vs the routine, cf andy’s tomato soup) and i think we start answering them with “use other words” vs just saying “come on that’s absurd, the ham sandwich has no influence on writing”

did campbell’s soup influence his work?

I mean, yes, pretty famously(!)

well duh? but would the work have been significantly different if he ate progresso chicken soup every day?

answer carefully because if you say “yes because then he would have painted chicken soup” i will lose all hope for western civilization, and who knows what might happen then

ha ha - well, it's hard to explore that counterfactual, isn't it? "If this artist had been a different person, would their work be different?"

you’re fucking with me, right?

Harold Bloom to thread!

Oh wait.

And I see Aerosmith already mentioned.

the random-page seeding practice you discuss is a case in point: why not simply describe this practice and NOT then muddle and blur it by scrobbling it all back into the ragbag of all the other kinds of relationship (some very distinct!) that art has with the context the artist was thrown into or painstakingly made for themselves

you are really positing here the existence of a human who might read a short description of that practice that includes the word "influence" and not understand precisely what is meant by the usage?

marketing term

And I see Aerosmith already mentioned.

― Jean Arthur Rank (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, September 15, 2022 4:03 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglin

Bloom (Looks Like a Lady)

Honkin on Ho Blo

“Under The Influence (She Told Me To Walk This Way)”

you’re fucking with me, right?

No, haha! I guess I don’t understand your point.

It seems clear (to me) that artists are “influenced” by the details of their lives, as well as other art; and an artist with a different life wouldn’t be the Warhol we know. And his art would different too; we just don’t know how. Is that wrong(?)

I think I understand Mark's points: that agency should be attributed to the artist who is 'influenced' rather than the 'influencer'; that there are so many kinds of 'influence' that it is more informative to explain whether someone learned to play guitar by copying someone else's riffs vs whether they were inspired to make music when they heard someone vs whether they literally sampled them vs whether they wanted to achieve a similar mood etc. I'm just not sure, though, that I find these arguments convincing enough to consider "influence" completely useless as an easily parsed umbrella term.

Not sure I do follow late great's point either, though, tbh.

to speak to the specific point about warhol: i don’t really think his paintings of soup cans were specifically about campbell’s tomato soup, i don’t think those paintings would have meant anything different if he’d painted chicken soup cans instead of tomato soup cans

You said that’s what you didn’t want to hear!

i never said that

i said the opposite: i didn’t want to hear that the art would have been significantly different if he’d painted chicken soup instead of tomato soup

i don’t mean to sidetrack this into an analysis of andy warhol though

also sund4r i think you do understand my point, inasmuch as i’m just restating what mark is saying. the agency is in the person checking the horoscope and choosing to follow it’s dictates, not in the astrologer or the stars and planets themselves. could make similar point abt the writer’s routine of picking up the books every day or the routine warhol
followed for lunch (that the agency is not in the book or the lunch itself)

ftr he painted all 32 delicious varieties extant in 1962 and revisited chicken noodle in 1986

well there you go

So you think in a world where Warhol had no interest in Campbell's, he would have just made a bunch of paintings of Coke cans or another product? Don't know how you can say that for sure, but yeah no point debating the hypothetical.

you’re fucking with me

Nope, still not!

https://whitney.org/collection/works/3253

^^ ??

But I mean, that's a different painting, isn't it? Obviously he didn't think they were so interchangeable in meaning as to not be both worth doing

Yes, exactly (that's actually why I said Coke cans - b/c he was interested in Coke, too - though I see how it may have have muddied the point)

I feel icky stooping to the copy-past-from-Wikipedia level, but here's some shit from there:

Several stories mention that Warhol's choice of soup cans reflected his own avid devotion to Campbell's soup as a consumer. Robert Indiana once said: "I knew Andy very well. The reason he painted soup cans is that he liked soup." He was thought to have focused on them because they composed a daily dietary staple. Others observed that Warhol merely painted things he held close at heart. He enjoyed eating Campbell's soup, had a taste for Coca-Cola, loved money, and admired movie stars. Thus, they all became subjects of his work. Yet another account says that his daily lunches in his studio consisted of Campbell's Soup and Coca-Cola, and thus, his inspiration came from seeing the empty cans and bottles accumulate on his desk.

In the great PBS American Masters on Warhol, it said that he had Campbell's soup virtually every day as a kid.

i posted that fact myself!

don't think his devotion to Campbell's soup or Coca-Cola represented influence, though. more just subjects to impose his ideas on. I think Duchamp was a godfather to him in that sense

I think this is an interesting discussion about Warhol but I also think people are kind of deliberately missing what is typically meant by "influence" so that they can sustain a challop.

I would definitely not say the soup itself "influenced" Warhol. It may have helped inspire him or served as an emotional touchpoint. I would probably say that the graphic design of the Campbells soup label and other commercial design (a field he actually engaged in before he was Andy Warhol) "influenced" him though.

people are kind of deliberately missing what is typically meant by "influence" so that they can sustain a challop.

definition of a challop imo

also good discussion but i hate the premise. everyone is influenced by everything. no idea's original. yawn.