Artists and the Reign of the Truncheon King

In a message dated 8/11/2002 2:26:42 PM Central Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:


> And once I have some knowledge, I always
> want more.

I know the feeling. That's Faustian Desire, the drive of art and sex,
vanity, engorgement. More can be too much. Then less. Much less.

"They wake up and do it again, amen."

My word for the day is Vanity. Jack Black's excellent, brilliant musical
episode, with the Strokes (who did a great set–they are impressive artists)
on Saturday Night Live was about Vanity. Vanity was how Black did his
monologue, and some incredible slapstick with Chris Kattan, and a Wagnerian
New Birthday-Song. I mean this is why anyone DOES art, is to gratify
something. Vanity, the id, an outward-craving force (not, as Freud said, a
consumptive one. Freud's wrong.)

Vanity, self-expression, is part of genius. It's a must-use type of deal.
Cumulative expression allows problems to fester and bad systems to crash.
Or, it keeps stuff safe, like Microsoft. The permagrid and its discontents.
That's what self-expression fits into. This bunch of blocks and grids of
nonsense, so you calculate. I wonder if Nietzche meant we had to learn
fiction so we could calculate in chess? Or calculation in general.
Theoretical mapping calculation. The great Art he saw being bron of his
writings. Arrogant Nietzche.

I should mention the Jack Black was a re-run. For some reason I felt like I
saw it in late 2001, thus my "personal" take on the piece, the JBSNL, is it
therefore tainted by filthy emotion and social transcription-bias, or do I
see the piece complete, and see it whole?

Comedy, creativity, history, everything we call genius–our Western
pantheon–are desperate, idealized "disciplines of wise rule-breaking." The
rest, as they say, is cops, the reign of the truncheon king.

I'm also weighing all this in the context of Elvis Costello's compilation CD.
Oliver's Army, You Better Watch Your Step, and the individual artist, cult
thereof, decay, back to say a Bronze Era of heroism. Heroism is vanity.

Jonathan S. Herman
genius2000.net

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