The Triforce of Art: You can't spell "Authentic" without "Ethnic"...?
The Robot Gospel, Part 100000
When’s the last time you called in sick?
Not the last time you were sick and needed to stay home and rally so you could be a good, productive member of society the next day, but the last time you felt perfectly fine and said: Fuck it. I’m staying home.
Your alarm goes off, you wake up. You’re lying in bed and it feels so good and you don’t want to get out from under those warm covers and you say: No!
You look up to the heavens and cry: No! Not today. Not today Chronos — you have no power over me! I deny you. I deny the very passage of time and your hold on me! Fie and be gone with you!
You say: I spit on you God Money. I will not make tribute to you in sweat, nor in coin. I will not be productive! I will stay home and do utterly nothing. You say: I could have done the responsible thing and scheduled to take a vacation day, but no! Your Capitalism can go to hell! I spit on you and say “Fie1!”
The last time you did that was probably back when you had no responsibilities — at least less than you have now if you’re a middle-aged adult2. Kids, bills, always another errand that needs to be run. Doctor’s appointments that you should make to see if there’s something they can do about that pain, other than what they always tell you: Well you could stand to loose a little weight...
I’m not talking a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off3 situation, because that’s just a fantasy. That’s maybe what you think it felt like when you look back at skipping school when you were a kid. The danger and freedom and reckless abandon of youth and the energy.
Oh, how we all wish we had just a fraction of that energy.
My Senior year of High School, I was Senior Class President. It was a joke that sort of back-fired on me. My bluff was called, and since Comedy is one of my Triforce pieces, I had to commit to the bit. I remember one of the weekly meetings we had during lunch with other members of the Senior class that I guess had nothing better to do, or maybe just really cared and wanted their voice heard, someone brought up Senior Skip Day. What day were we going to agree that the whole Hug High Class of ‘97 was going to not show up for school?
“If you wanna skip, just skip — you don’t have to make it a whole thing,” was an approximation of what I remember saying. It was the sentiment, at least.
After all, where is the line that separates a Tradition from a Cliché? I mean, this was The 90s, when there was nothing more important than being an individual. Being yourself. Not being a sheep, or jumping on the bandwagon. In a word: Authenticity.
I think the fixation on being authentic back then4 had to do with people being fed-up with hypocrisy — at least Gen X being fed-up with the hypocrisy of adults.
(Early) Generation X was growing up in the shadow of the Vietnam War, Watergate, increasing divorce rates, and Yuppies. Distrust for authority was encouraged, because so many of our institutions were abusing their power and betraying the public trust. Latchkey kids left in front of televisions or secluded in bedrooms with walkmen (walkmans?), the art that found its way into their hearts had to mean what it said. It had to be honest.
Therefore: Authenticity.
And if it wasn’t, then it was fake. It was phony. You were a poser. A sellout.
And with hormones and recessed economies and drug wars and an ever present specter of the Cold War warming up to Hot, there was societal darkness seeping into music. A nihilism finding its way into the background of films. An unspoken anxiety woven into the zeitgeist of the Late 70s to Mid/Late 90s. Sure, there was lightness and powdered sugar (or was it cocaine?) and good times, but that was Pop Culture — that wasn’t Art with a capital “A.”
Art is magic. It’s spiritual. It comes from some place outside one’s self, yet nestled inside a pocket dimension within an unconscious liminal idea-space. It’s aspirational. It’s something not everyone can do. It’s a fetish object that is worthy of being in museums and — depending on if the creator is still alive to be able to make money from it or it’s just an investment to the wealthy — worth fortunes.
How else would you explain how it can reach into your heart without physically touching you? How it can know the secrets you keep from yourself? How it can feed your very soul?
I mean, to some of us, that’s how Art can feel. That’s how powerful it feels — like it could change the world!
And something that powerful has to come from Truth. It has to come from a good honest place, right? That’s what makes it authentic.
But who gets to decide? Is a finely tuned, labored over, edited to oblivion piece of art more authentic than something hastily thrown together, rough around the edges, and not inhibited by second thought? If something can be reproduced and removed from its context and be given a meaning that the creator never intended, was it even authentic to begin with?
Does pretension preclude authenticity? Are the Sex Pistols or Fugazi more authentic than John Cage or Captain Beefheart? How much effort is too much and then you are trying too hard and that means you can no longer be authentic?
I could go on...
Is mystery more authentic than illumination? Emotion or reason? Tradition or progress? Curiosity or certainty? Anonymity or notoriety? Accessibility or esotericism? Documentary or fiction? Darkness or light? Literalism or metaphor? Nudity or a costume? Intentionality or coincidence? Empathy or apathy? Brutality or kindness? Success or failure?
I mean, if authenticity is something that Art should be aiming for, then there have to be parameters — there’s got to be a way of figuring out if it meets those criterion. Where along the spectrum does it lie? And still, who gets to decide? The scholar, the critic, the loudest voice, or the coolest person?
Maybe it’s different for everyone? What’s authentic to one person could be patronizing to another. Maybe we all get to decide what rings as true to us?5
Telling the truth — being honest — is a virtue. No one wants to be manipulated or lied to. Artists & entertainers are the only people we encourage and accept for them to lie to us. They pretend to be people they’re not. They tell stories about things that never happened. They create things that can’t exist in the physical world.
We know certain elements are inherently fantastical and have no direct analog in the real world, however the impact of those stories and the ways they touch us can be as real and authentic as anything we have personally experienced in our lives. Truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction, but sometimes fiction can tell more truth.
I think along the way, we’ve conflated Art with Products. Consumables. Collectibles. It used to be, you could only experience Art, you couldn’t own it. You had to attend a performance, go to a museum or gallery, be in the audience of a concert.
But now you can buy and re-experience and digest and ruminate on content to your heart’s content. And if you can buy and sell the Art, why not the artist?
Next time.
-bcp
Fie is a good archaic sort of “fuck you” but not as harsh. It sounds like something you’d say on the battlefield with a sword and armor and there’s dragons and shit, and shout to a god or someone more powerful than you, like: “Fie and curse you! Zounds!”
I have no idea if anything I have to say is relatable or even comprehensible to persons under the age of 31.
I always identified with Cameron more. Depressed. Sullen. Along for the ride... Also married the first woman I slept with, but we’re happy and respect each other. Take that, Ferris!
Because in this Age Of The Algorithm, it certainly doesn’t exist now.
Which is a pretty convenient way of getting to have it both ways — everything and nothing is both authentic and inauthentic at the same time. That’s some mealy-mouthed bullshit, right there.