Thursday, May 26, 2011

DJ Resuscitation: The Loft (SiriusXM 30) and The Mansion of Fun

SiriusXM's channel 30, The Loft, poses as nothing specific, and is therefore such a repository of unique, free-form broadcasts by intelligent individual DJs, that the station as a whole serves as a monument to a form of entertainment that might be in the process of being swallowed up by the podcast: back in the day, when we'd all gather around the hi-fi (mono) and hear voices speak to us from afar, and people who knew music would pick songs to contrast and flow, and carry all of us along.

There's a variety of celebrity-guest-show-hosts across SiriusXM's music channels; enough to support at least twice as much discussion as you'll find here. And anyway, I find I can't tear myself away long enough to flip channels, and be willing to miss what's going on on Channel 30. The Loft carries in its roster some of the 20th century's most important music people, including longtime New York DJ Vin Scelsca, whose "Idiot's Delight" is piped in twice weekly from his home in New Jersey. Bernie Taupin's "American Roots Radio" comes live on Saturday nights from the songwriter's western ranch. Both shows mix banter with careful and premeditated choices, of artists and songs; Lou Reed and Hal Wilner's late-night Saturday "New York Shuffle" is especially unpredictable in this: a few months ago, Lou and Hal called for requests, and shouted out an email address. After a set of electronic trance, jazz, and rock, the pair returned and talked about how great their picks had been-- so good that the set needed to be repeated, and all requests flatly ignored. This contemptuous audience participation stunt might be expected from the man who released revolutionary garbage noise AND started the Velvet Underground shuffle-pace in rock. But what's important here is the autonomy The Loft imparts to its DJs-- are they performers themselves, even, as they create that "rich musical tapestry" that might compete with our playlists and self-generated shuffles?

There are no voices on Pandora, no sense to the juxtaposition of tracks that a database of taste determines a listener is likely to enjoy. I find there to be little soul behind automatically-selected music, because I have always known the cumbersome and human alternative to be available: I grew up listening to 1590AM WCZN, 94.1FM WYSP, 88.5FM WXPN, and 93.3WMMR, and each station had its human and musical identity-- built of people, making choices for the good of the group, live, to whomever was listening.

So SiriusXM's structure permits stations such as The Loft, and The Loft enables the biggest of musical brainiacs a few hours of thematic and musical exploration. Perhaps one of the format's finest hours comes each week between 12pm and 3pm on Sundays, as New York Doll and musicologist David Johansen ("Shri-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong" is his broadcast surname now; it was "Buster Poindexter" in the 1980s) presents a compilation that is true musicology, leaving the magic to be discovered by the individual in the juxtaposition of wildly divergent tracks. Johansen insists on dramatic opera (specifically arias, usually Callas), jazz (Paul Desmond is an obvious favorite), country (each show ends with Billy Joe Shaver's "Old Chunk of Coal"), reggae, do-wop, Brazilian arrangements and energetic Cuban swing, big band (Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Prima), Appalachian field recordings and original blues music. Johansen introduces sets with digestions of philosophy-- as if, beneath a massive reel-to-reel recording deck in his home studio, Johansen has stashed all thirty volumes of Brittanica's Great Books of the Western World. 'Why does a history of humanity identify an unecessary move away from a place of innocence?' 'How is music the lone redeeming response to a less-than-fluent experience of life?' Each show ends with his personal promise: "we'll be back next week with a much better show, because out of perfection, nothing can be made." Since when, through the presentation of other's recorded material, is a human 'putting on a show?' Like a projectionist in a theater, the radio disc jockey-- and their knowledge, of the form and the content-- are valuable, and perhaps not relics of an antique form. Since the Dawn of the Mixtape, and its evolution into the digital preference-building at play online today, radio DJs are a rare breed-- for this and so many reasons, I cherish Sunday afternoons in David Johansen's "Mansion of Fun."

Friday, May 20, 2011

Discussions of Creativity

[excerpted academic writing, Spring 2011]

I am glad for having read Csikszentmihalyi's [herein, Csik] dissection of the Creative Personality, but my knowledge of psychology warns against too quickly categorizing, or seeking to understand more fully, any individual who may hold contrasting beliefs, and their creative inclinations: the smart and simultaneously naïve, the responsible and simultaneously irresponsible, the “extroverted and introverted” (p. 65). Csik typifies creative individuals, and employs unfortunate labels of ‘bizzare’ and ‘normal’ thoughts, for lack of better classification. I am also hesitant to endorse Csik’s designations, as “genetic predisposition for a given domain” (p. 52) of creativity sours notions of interdisciplinarity: some of my creative heroes have made movies as well as music, performance as well as publication. Csik used Warhol as an example of how popularization of a specific artistic stance and disposition was employed on a larger and more public scale; I felt as though at times the narrative was asking of that “bizarre” artist, “hey, what’s with the soup cans?” Or of Lou Reed: why, after a platinum FM hit in the mid-1970s, release a four track work of nothing but noise (“Metal Machine Music”)? Or, of Frank Zappa: why did the epic “200 Motels” have to be a movie, and not just a long and disjointed album?

These choices reflect each individuals’ embrace of their craft, and their careful or careless choices. I agree with Jon [Ross]: an awareness of the world is essential. A larger understanding of one’s environment is enabling of creativity: its resources, its hazards, its strengths and weaknesses. Picasso’s studio contained much space, and allowed his pursuit of any and all media at hand. In my work, I feel raw material of every sort is important to keep on hand. Unlike Andrea [Scarpino], I don’t fear creativity at work for negative purposes: echoing a far-earlier post, I do agree with some divine nature of creativity, one that is unpredictable and cannot be categorized by any method.

And, I appreciate a definition of Positive Psychology toward this end: Nobel’s invention of dynamite, and his creation of a Peace Prize serve as one example of humanity’s constructive and creative and noble tendencies. Egyptians’ use of social networking (CNN tells me it’s called “liberation technology” now) is another good example of positive, unanticipated creativity. I like how Csik draws attention to an artist’s ability to be objective about their own work (p. 72), having the ability to discuss the products of their creativity, removed from moments of inspiration. This principle of self-criticism is important, fickle, dangerous (I don’t think Mubarak has publicly discussed the decision to shut down Internet communications?).

While Csik writes with a profound and prescriptive tone, I don’t feel empowered to any greater extent to assess another’s creative work—Kath’s question of “who judges” draws attention to the distinction between assessing a creative personality as an individual (and the choices, good or bad, therein), and assessing an individual’s creative works. “Who judges” (first and foremost, the artist/creative individual themselves?) and Faulker’s advice “kill your darlings” [cherished but useless work] combine to reinforce my original point: psychologically, the maintaining of opposing beliefs (extroversion and introversion) is dangerous ground, if not a rudimentary diagnosis of a problem.

Dylan Thomas is an example of one who may be read as literature, or as the bleak words of creative individuals, so ‘genetically predisposed’ to a “given domain” (p. 52) that he drank himself to death—which perhaps misses the point of his art having been created in the first place. I could stay mad at Yoko Ono, for having enabled John Lennon’s secretive heroin years in the Dakota in New York City, and I could ask big questions of how he, as a creative type, gave up to a new extent, producing only a fraction of the material of other Beatle alum. I heard songwriting guru speak a few years ago at Harvard, and he joked about how people ask him why it takes five years for him to write an album; he laughed as he said it takes him four-and-a-half years of doing nothing. From Abbey Road Studios to Ben Folds’ occupation of Elvis’ RCA Nashville studio, to the streets of Cairo to Zappa’s Studio Z, environment is key in understanding a creative personality’s process....

...my fear comes in Csik's categorization of behavioral trends that can happily oppose each other in an individual, and the result may be magical bursts of creativity. I like seeing a split of internal and external forces at work in an individual, over Csik's stuff like identifying "convergent" and "divergent" thinking, or thinking there's some knack to being both wise and childlike. It isn't that I disagree with Csik, but I would appreciate he be more outrightly psychological, as these personality types-- including those who willingly choose to alternate between fantasy and reality-- are diagnosable, if you buy into modern psych. Is Csik a behaviorist, a Jungian, or pontificating without acknowledging psych research into individuals holding opposing beliefs?

I'm guarded against establishing visions of a lofty sense of creativity: sometimes it's been the result of depression, of "convergent" and "divergent" ways of thinking meeting up and being explosive. There are no atheists, and no non-creative types, in a foxhole, I guess. My experience working in mental health and in elementary special education tells me that individuals who hold contrasting beliefs are as likely to tell you they're your friend and proceed to punch you in the nose as they are to paint you a picture to express themselves. I worked for a time with a banjo-based musician, and our tenuous relationship was based as much in his brilliant creativity as much as it was in his ever-faltering ability to trust a world he couldn't predict-- his art, however humble and scrawled, served as his response to that world, in place of his actually meeting and greeting the rest of us. My father brought canvases and paints to patients in a hospital mental ward in the mid-1970s; the best of these remain hanging on his walls because they're beautiful and brilliant, and born of another's attempt to express their experience using something other than verbal language.

It's this action-- the practice-- that defines the creative personality, for me: anyone who tries, from those wailing away in a non-audition community choruses to those locked in attics perfecting their visions and dreams, having their mothers bring them lunch and dinner in on a tray. It's hard work to ask anyone, including a creative type or an aspiring creative type, to be both "humble and proud" at the same time; like the craft itself, I think such humility takes conscious work, and practice. It may seem like I'm pushing for some big "the-soul-of-a-poet-is-mental-illness," but I'm surely not. What I do believe is that a truly transformative and experiential educational environment may, for students of any age, incite new perceptions of the world that are themselves creative-- and may, if an individual is so inclined, manifest in creative products, if not provide motivation to literally transform their environment by whatever creative means are accessible. Instead of paying to have it hauled away, my sister Jessica built a sculpture of old bike parts and mattress springs left in the woods; I have recently spray-painted it red, white, and blue.

Creative products are seeming secondary to our discussion's focus on Creativity as Applied Across Genres, so it becomes less useful to understand any grittier edge of the creative personality (for which Gardner's work, as cited by Csik, sounds great, and is likely more clinical). I'm on a quest to figure out more about why Dylan Thomas fell off his barstool, and what that says about Raging against the Dying of the Light. To answer this question, I need to know more than his propensity toward both extroversion and introversion, but-- ask any creative individual-- Why Do You Bother? The quote below, a response by Thomas in answer to a critic's inquiry about Freud's influence in his work, makes clear a deeper intention for a creative pursuit: something more important lies within:

"Whatever is hidden should be made naked. To be stripped of darkness is to be clean, to strip of darkness is to make clean. Poetry, recording the stripping of the individual darkness, must, inevitably, cast light upon what has been hidden for too long, and by doing, make clean the naked exposure. Freud cast light on a little of the darkness he had exposed. Benefiting by the sight of the light and the knowledge of the hidden darkness, poetry must drag further into the clean nakedness of light more even of the hidden causes than Freud could realize." (Thomas, as cited by Brinnin, p. 103)...

...Thomas Unger's essay “On Inspiration: Thomas Wolfe, Jorge Luis Borges, & Raymond Carver” goes far to establish, through examination of three modern authors, modes and practices of creativity and inspiration-- inspiration being the initial movement, the inciting action that brings forth creative writing and revision. This essay compares and tries to make general sense of how three male authors-- two white men and one Argentinian poet-- produced their original work during the twentieth century. Unger speaks with authority, and drops personal connections liberally; many MFA programs seek to use literature as a means of propulsion for creative writing curricula: using Unger's axiom “focus on craft does inspire” (p. 1) as a springboard for the practice of inventive written expression. While Unger's discussion of each author provides different insight on a creative process, some statements may apply to all those who pursue the building, making, designing and construction of art. Some big ideas to chew on:

  • this essay is written to dispel notions that “poetic inspiration might be better left undiscussed” (p. 1); talking about the production of creative work informs all those who seek to be creative, regardless of artistic venues

  • Thomas Wolfe's practice included his leaning over a refrigerator, and moving about Unger's grandmother's kitchen; Mann, on Wolfe: “under creative compulsion he was extraordinary” (p. 3).

  • Borges' inspiration came at will (generally, when he closed his eyes), and his creative practice included a regimen of dictation, as well as socialization and regular meals; Unger describes Borges walking around rooms, bumbling around the distinction between this world and when “a kind of 'dreaming' came over him” (p. 8). Borges was pensive and thoughtful, delivered orations and edited the transcripts carefully; in this, Unger uses him to show that “impatience is the enemy of art” (p. 9).

  • Raymond Carver provides an example that “poetic inspiration can be earned” (p. 13), and that not all creative processes are as methodical and strategic as Borges' eyes-closed visions and Wolfe's all-night kitchen-based writing jags. Carver, between poverty and alcoholism, struggles to write-- in basements, spare bedrooms, where ever, and with whatever resources were available. Carver's own essay on inspiration, “Fires,” is cited, for providing an example of a ringing telephone interruption in an individual's creative process: he ends up writing into the story he was working on the character on the other end of the phone. “'The telephone rings and your life changes,' Ray would say” (p. 12); moments of inspiration and creativity may reach us at unexpected times, and not necessarily within the finest circumstances.

To ask 'what creative practices do you have?' may seem too blunt a question in response to Unger's discussion of these authors-- though some of us seek to be creative writers, and some of us do not, thus the accessibility of this essay may challenge any singular prompt. Like Wolfe leaning over the fridge in the 1930s, what environmental conditions help your “creative compulsion” (Mann, as cited by Unger, p. 3)-- light, dark, public, private? Like Carver, and so many other writers, have you ever pursued creative work while living in poverty, or under less than perfect 'personal conditions?'...

...thanks for answering my prompt; I lived out of a vat of spare change, too, while working on a Masters. Times like that, of circumstances that may drive one closer to one's art, may offer us more definition than times of affluence. One winter around the turn of the century, an impoverished Picasso burned his paintings to stay warm (http://www.buzzle.com/articles/pablo-picasso-biography.html). If inspiration is not a mythical Tinkerbell-fairy that descends upon our shoulder, then some times and places of our lives might be more useful than others in understanding how and why we're creative, and inspired-- what times were more formative than others, in being inspired? What semesters or classes have been more inspiring than others?

A step further: I heard one of us say during the residency, "I don't like to go to long without meeting my needs-- food, water, sex, a beer..." Of the three writers discussed in the article, maybe only Carver is seen as going without meeting his own needs: did transience and alcoholism feed Carver's process, or did Carver's process bring about these less-than-sustainable choices? Or are these choices fully separate from the creative process? Of the three, Borges' form of inspiration may be the safest, healthwise-- bumbling into walls and rooms due to distraction by eyes-closed visions probably isn't as bad for the body as Wolfe's all-night kitchen chain smoking, and not as bad as Carver's struggle with sobriety. I'll admit I don't pay as much attention to my physical needs when rapt in projects, choosing coffee and grapes over breakfast, and chips and hummus over dinner. One substance I spent my vat of loose change on, and became essential to all-night poetry jags, is Moxie, the original soft drink. Its mix of gentian root and anisette creates a licorice-flavored pop that holds magical powers-- for me, there can be a poem in every serving.

This self-moderation in support of inspiration can go too far, leading to anything from artificial writers' block to untimely demise-- as Dylan Thomas rages against the dying of the light and falls off his barstool. If we make careful choices, our inspiration may still fall prey to external circumstance, from unexpected heartbreak to the combustion of our computers, finding ourselves in worlds that require us to hide our typewriters beneath floorboards, or to burn our paintings for heat. Inspired by Charlie Sheen's irrational and wild media blitz last week, and his rambling about "tiger blood" and "winning," I picked up Borges' seminal collection of poems, "Dreamtigers" (1964). As described in Unger, Borges' fascination is consistently with the limitations of our perceptions, and our ability to act upon what we are able to see. In piece that gives the collection its title, Borges uses "the tiger" as a metaphor for his inspiration:

"[...] Childhood passed away, and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but they are still in my dreams. At that submerged or chaotic level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: This is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger. Oh, incompetence! Never can my dreams engender the wild beast I long for. The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or the bird" (p. 25)....

...The language regarding the production of creative work might be collapsing; a professor of English begrudges the collapse of vocabulary both among Freshman Comp populations and professional individuals: new constructions of technological expression only aid “verbage spewing” that is itself “garbage.” Teachers of language arts are left swimming upstream against a tide of shortening, quickening, and twittering, old patterns of linguistics that probably help students understand less in the classroom than ever before. And thus, is the distinction between “inspiration” and “creativity” such 'verbage-spewing?' Literally, these are both nouns-- notions-- and may both, in this language, be changed into descriptive terms, “inspired” and “creative.” None of the authors mentioned in Unger seem 'inspired' but NOT 'creative,' or 'creative' but not 'inspired.' Maybe there is a place in which one may sit on a couch and claim to be “creative,” but “uninspired,” but would this look like laziness?

Perhaps the state of creativity is a light-switch: an individual with creative potential (all of us) becomes “inspired,” seeking to react and make sense of the world they perceive. To me, this action is solitary and complete when one hands someone a product....

...I share your concern about poets who don't choose to reveal their process, only their finished work-- but I can't characterize such secrecy as immediately elitist. And, I'm glad Unger answered your concerns directly in his introduction: it is, to be sure, discussion of the creative process that gave rise to, and has kept afloat, many an MFA-in-creative-writing program ("many of these are cheap, or even free" joked Annie Dillard once, in an essay addressed to college students). By nature, creative pursuit (of the kind discussed in Unger, via the examples of Wolfe, Borges and Carver) might be voluntary; while writers seek to fulfill deadlines set by publishers, and creative types like Tharp work towards production dates, the literal presence of their work is what they're paid for, and maybe their creative choices-- autonomous, un-ownable, reside in a different place. What authors are you thinking of, that keep close and secret their creative process?

For a while during the last decade, writing "manuals" of many types were in fashion, to be found in places like suburban Borders and Barnes and Noble stores, to be bought by people like my mother: a nurse of nearly forty years, whose metaphorical "garden" might be her collection of Elvis stuff, including songbooks, pictures, figurines and the like. These writing "manuals" included both how-to-write instructional guides as well as a slew of 'on writing' tomes from famous authors; commercial success of works like Stephen King's own nonfiction account of his process helped define a genre that supports work like Tharp's bestselling guide. The snottiest of authors or artists I know or have known, the ones who have or do keep their inspirational and creative cards close to their chest, I find are usually doing so because they seek attention to be paid to their work itself: true or not, I've been in a few discussions in which 'writing-about-writing' was dismissed as less useful and poignant than writing itself. I can-- I must-- respect artists who may choose to remain "elitist," and not to disclose the sources or methods behind their work, for it is through an audience's consumption of the art itself by which such an artist is seeking to be understood.

In this, I believe a healthy dose of "idol worship" may bring one closer to any individual or group's creative productions: having all the albums from a favorite band, or owning a poet's collected works are examples of perhaps a milder form of what you're describing. I believe there's nothing wrong with young writers liking old writers, or for one to follow the other around, even. In "waving the wand" (p. 10), Tess Gallagher (Raymond Carver's longtime partner, y'know!) may be speaking of what anxious crowds of MFA students seek: a sudden, and fairytale story of useful inspiration. In most of these writers, a regimen of diligent work seems to drive both creativity and inspiration...

...one with a poet's eye may be inundated by the “complete and utter chaos” at hand. I wish I could agree; I wish I could better keep at bay this 'chaos,' but the older I get the less able I become. This program acknowledges this regimen by declaring Fridays unfettered by assignment, a day during which we may pursue creative projects without being encumbered by our academics. I wish I had such a distinct handle on my perception, and could turn off my emotional, visceral, political and overarchingly creative responses to the bombardment of information and stimuli alive in my world; some days, I have so much to say, am so compelled that I cannot truly acknowledge the task at hand, and instead must deliberate through creative pursuit.

Lately, I've been increasingly wary of the revolutions in the Middle East; besides prayer, I have been writing/compiling an ode to Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian who set himself on fire weeks ago (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2043557,00.html), and whose choices have been said to have initiated public protest on a larger scale. Because, what if he were to be viewing the Iranian warships moving through the Suez Canal; what if he were to hear Gaddafi's call for peace, and his own continued leadership? My creativity has led me to ponder: if Bouazizi is able to see any of these actions taking place now, after his demise, I believe he is likely to see beyond our sense of chronology, and is able to see the sum of these individual revolutions, and perhaps the outcome itself.

As I flit about between jobs, work and life, fulfilling obligations and having experiences that are altogether enjoyable and relevant to me, too often I am reminded of the lyrics and narrative break in the middle of They Might Be Giants' song “Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head,” appearing on the debut album, and offering insight into their creative process: “memo to myself: do the dumb things I gotta do/touch the puppet head”. It's a damn silly metaphor-- the touching of a puppet head as being itself a the construction of a creative 'leap,' perhaps, as described by Bly-- but is one that characterizes the creative process as being tied essentially and necessarily to experiences in life.

As your body floats down Third Street

with the burn-smell factory closing up

yes it's sad to say you will romanticize

all the things you've known before

it was not not not so great...

and as you take a bath in that beaten path

there's a pounding at the door

well it's a mighty zombie talking of some love and posterity

he says “the good old days never say good-bye

if you keep this in your mind:

you need some lo-lo-loving arms

you need some lo-lo-loving arms

and as you fall from grace the only words you say are

put your hand inside the puppet head...

Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head,” They Might Be Giants, retrieved from http://vimeo.com/7725950

...creative interdisciplinarianism, which is released by poetry, music, and almost all manner of creative pursuit outside of one's modern means of 'making a living', includes the fabrication of new words, instruments, and application of existing resources in new ways. If individuals on a grand scale were released from such narrow vocational and recreational practices, Murdoch's control of the media might be only one of the casualties: “If engineers and scientists could publish learned articles on the future of music, what would happen if a professional musician acquired the tools of an engineer-- actually became an engineer? What kind of music would that produce?” (Edwards, p. 23). And, what type of building might get made? I think often of the archetypical 'Renaissance Man,' at least the characteristic that sought capabilities and proficiencies across an array of physical and artistic venues-- not out of compassion, but perhaps curiosity or general interest...

...sporadic moments of mystical creative magic seldom happen, to an extent that those moments help make available a new, full, finished product-- for me. Kerouac's "On The Road" was not the result of diligent journalism, but a result of long days at a typewriter, equipped on unending scrolls of paper; Ginsberg's early and ample revisions of "Howl" have been repackaged and republished; Dylan's legendary demos were finally officially released this summer, and one may be impressed by Bob's earliest acoustic guitar chops, if nothing else-- each of these were the result of practice, and practice that took place prior to the inception of any specific creative project. Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett's series of live, improvised European concerts ("The Koln Concert" is regarded as the most notable of these) serves as an example of on-the-spot, influenced-by-the-present-tense and present-environment creative work: the art produced represents a practiced musician sharing his craft, and making public use of his practice...

...while I recognize the creative choices inherent in altering written expression to make a rhetorical statement, I believe a clear line between proper and improper syntax, grammar, and spelling is essential, if doctoral programs and education itself shall continue. I agree that the “appropriation of provocative words like “fuck” and “cunt”” aid in proving a larger rhetorical point, but the example at hand is the use and repetition of existing and specific words. The intentional manipulation of language is another discussion, and one that presents a host of contexts, from the academic to the conventional, including the name of a music festival. In my view, poetry is the appropriate realm in which to indulge subversions of our conventions of language, lest we all start writing in our own useless jabber. The spelling of womyn with a 'y' and other distortions of what we're all supposed to know as our common language proves a point, but-- ya gotta admit-- may be more confusing or distracting than immediately useful...

...thanks for citing some real-world creativity, from Spock to Bob "happy little clouds" Ross. Can an artist create art without themselves having the "benefit" (yuk yuk) of a tragic experience? Have I ever met anyone who hadn't had an experience that they had come to view as tragic? If I followed along to those cool public television instructional oil painting programs (I don't have TV; does stuff like that still exist?), and came out with hideously different than Bob Ross' version, was the product any less valuable? There is a weird and slippery slope to all of this "evil" creativity, and the ability of any individual to create products, goods, services or institutions that are detrimental to civilization: and how could we have stopped there? The effective pro-life billboard discussed earlier in this thread makes me glad for our freedom of speech-- and that there are still brains to make use of such rights-- over deducing where the creative intentions of the offensive billboard's designers fall, on a "positive" and "negative" spectrum.

I’ve got little response to this week’s readings, as I feel they purport a classification of personality and human behavior that, however valid, stands as separate-and-assumed-equal from the whole of formal psychology. Karen cited this quote, from James and Taylor (p. 41): “negative creativity may be driven primarily not by negative affect toward others but by excessively positive affect (e.g., narcissism or grandiosity) toward self.” I’ve met creative extroverts and introverts, and many have sought and/or continue to seek professional mental health services, and willingly admit and compare their diagnoses. I don’t know why the formal study of creativity seems to insist on residing fully outside of the standard texts and references of psychology? Outside of the box we built, I find myself wondering what purely Positive creativity, or, even more challenging, Neutral creativity might look like. If Einstein regretted his research that has led to this terrible new nuclear age—that’s still Einstein’s business, the acts of an individual and their effects. What’s our retroactive wag of the “negative creativity” at Einstein’s work supposed to accomplish, as meltdowns continue? Is there something about creative pursuit that “increases the prospect for damage,” Andrea asked? There is something about Living Life that does such, I think; some are blessed with creative gifts as well. Live Long and Prosper...

...the argument against the repression of all creativity, in the name of its potential negativity, is a weak one: prove it or not, but good luck. Einstein types will fail to be locksmiths, and their research will lead them to discoveries they didn't forsee the ramifications of, like Zuckerberg, and his brain-child Facebook. My faith enters as my strongest argument regarding the dismissal of creativity's negative ramifications: that Hitler types may stick to painting, and a higher power directs individuals' creative choices toward the improvement and sustainability of humanity (creative solutions to plugging an unknown leak in a nuclear reactor, anyone?). The opportunities each of us encounter to exert our creativity, and discover and invent what may not have been thought of before, cannot I believe be rendered or forecast by any scholar or body of knowledge as 'positive' or 'negative,' and to do so is a useless presumption. How are we do dismiss negative ramifications of creativity? Prayer; also, music.

Andrea said: "many more people have OCD or bipolar disorder or frontal lobe seizures who don't produce great works of art than who have those illnesses and do." What's fascinating to me most about mental health is that we don't know the common, collective quality of our frontal lobes; in all this high-falootin' cognition on creativity, it's mostly dealt with trying to understand the organ of the human body we understand the very least, the one that, if any, contains the magic, or at least very certainly real electricity. Is creativity-- good, bad, indifferent-- the occasional, perhaps-trainable, spilling and mixing of cerebral fluids, a cranial chemistry set with a spectrum of abilities and responses?

Much of what we know of the brain is about regulating: the emotions, the nerves, the process of perception. What we don't know as much about is the brain's ability to abstract, to draw illogical conclusions, to act out against logical norms. Sometimes, this can be great art; sometimes, this can produce madness, or at the very least, a summer spent on Phish tour. It's absolutely tiring and repressive-- to ME, and my ability to have fun and get shit done-- to look into any given individual and see anything but the potential for incredible, unprecedented good works. Of course, knowledge is constructed in interpersonal relationships, and conclusions are drawn. But any conclusions as to patterns of individuals and their creative abilities-- including the mentally ill, the lovestruck, or worse-- are useless, and get in the way of my own creativity, at the very least. Creatively, I turned it into a joke: If Cropley walked into our Threaded Discussion/a bar and declared all creativity negative and should immediately be repressed I'd post a Youtube link of Bob Ross/the bartender would immediately invent a drink called the Cropley...

Brinnin, J., ed. (1960). A Casebook on Dylan Thomas. New York: Thomas Crowell.

Cropley, D., Cropley, A. and Kaufman, J. and Runco, M., eds. (2010). The Dark Side of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and The Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial.

Dawson, E. (2007). Big-Eyed Afraid. Baltimore: The Waywiser Press.

Edwards, D. (2008). Artscience: Creativity in the post-Google Generation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. Print.

Ross, B. (2011). YouTube. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MghiBW3r65M&feature=related

Unger, D. (2011). “On Inspiration: Thomas Wolfe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Raymond Carver.” Retrieved from tui.edu

from Aristotle's Rock: Foundations for a Tragic Pop Music Canon

[excerpted academic writing, Spring 2011]

The 1950s:
"
Psychopathic Brilliance, Security, Boredom, Elvis Presley,
and the Day the Music Died

America in the 1950s found itself in a unique and transitional period: the post-war industrial boom, as well as the rise in new cultural phenomena and technology established new levels social, political, and economic success. From this, artistic and creative movements in poetry, film, and music rose, embodying characteristics Aristotle would view as tragic. After less than a decade of the public's exposure to celebrities like James Dean, Chuck Berry and Bill Haley, Norman Mailer (1959) identified a growing cultural schism in popular culture, in his essay “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster”:

...whether the life is criminal or not, the decision is to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness, and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention, the life where a man must go until he is beat […] The unstated essence of Hip, its psychopathic brilliance quivers with the knowledge that new kinds of victories increase one's power for new kinds of perception; and, defeats, the wrong kind of defeats, attack the body and imprison one's energy until one is jailed in the prison air of other people's habits, other people's defeats, boredom, quiet desperation, and muted icy self-destroying rage. One is Hip or one is Square (the alternative which each new generation coming into American life is beginning to feel), one is a rebel or one conforms (Mailer, 1959, as cited by Charters, 1992, p. 527-528).

While Mailer (1959) sought to identify “psychopathic brilliance” in a new “Hip” pervading culture, record companies' creation of celebrities became quickly calculated, seeking to package and distribute a lucrative version of “muted icy self-destroying rage” through the evolving genre of rock. In part a rejection of domestic security available during the economic prosperity that followed World War II in America, the security that Mailer characterized as being sickeningly boring to the “Hip”-- this rejection, along with racial categorization in music, helped shape the genre of rock. Rhythm and blues record sales came to reflect a host of musicians whose beat and lyrical topics classified them quickly as the opposite of “Square,” to such an extent that record companies sought to redefine rock into a lucrative and acceptable genre.

Few musicians provide as clear an example of Aristotle's foundational elements of tragedy as Elvis Presley: he image was of a creature of Christian goodness, bearing both patriotic and American Southern propriety, both a consistent and inconsistent creative individual who found it 'necessary and probable' to record for his mother a simple recording for Mother's Day, 1953, at Sun Records in Memphis. While scholarship regarding the tragic plot of Elvis' rise and fall in popularity and creativity is extensive, a 1994 essay by Velvet Underground front man and rock icon Lou Reed on Elvis identifies how the identity of the King of Rock and Roll resided “where the Complication and Unraveling are the same” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XVIII, para. 3), amid a mass of contractual obligations and prescribed cultural roles. At the time of this writing, Reed (1994) had himself pursued a career of risks, transformation, and the partial and public unraveling of his identity in his music included work as the creative force behind the Velvet Underground, a series of adventurous solo releases in the 1970s, and notoriety as a producer during the 1980s. Reed (1994) chose to address the deceased Presley directly:

There's no in depth interview with you. Early on you said you wanted to be Dino and you weren't being sarcastic. What are we to think. A lack of certain knowledge leaves things in a pure state. We have your work. The movement from the exciting to the most mundane. A movement from polar opposites. You became exactly what we had all imagined you despised […] I think you saw every dream vanish in a flurry of money and that you were so scared and so much tied up with being Elvis that whoever you were never had a chance and that all you knew was that you were terribly unhappy and that if Elvis-- the Elvis you played at being-- couldn't be happy well then who could. I figure you thought you had less talent than a coon hound, cryin' all the time (Reed, as cited by Sammon, 1994, p. 25-26).

Reed (1994) mentioned “Dino,” identifying a host of popular crooners whose careers were marked by security and record companies' extensive promotion, and who provided: Tony Curtis, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Perry Como, Pat Boone and others offered listeners choices other than the rebellious and uptempo rock music produced during the 1950s. Presley's personal sense of identity was of concern to Reed (1994), and the “flurry of money” that distracted the King of Rock and Roll may further define a relationship between economics and tragedy at work in specific creative individuals. Elvis was not a songwriter, and his personal life was characterized by the results of his fame, which came early in his life and preempted much of his functioning within normal parameters of society: legends of his rental of full movie theaters and amusement parks for his and his family's use help identify the confining nature of early music celebrity.

An unexpected and defining tragedy came as the result of a live collaborative concert tour: promoters grouped together popular acts to attract larger audiences, making each event more lucrative. On February 2, 1959 a plane crashed in rural Iowa, causing the untimely death of the influential electric guitarist and front man for the Crickets, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, an important and defining figure in Chicano and ethnic rock, and the J.P. Richardson, whose recording career as the Big Bopper followed his success as a disc jockey in Texas. Known for his version of “Chantilly Lace,” Richardson sought to extend the scope and abilities of the new genre of music, setting an early world record for consecutive hours spent broadcasting, as well as coining the term “music video,” recording an early prototype of himself (“The Big Bopper,” 2011). The plane crash came only eight months into Valens' career; Holly and Richardson were each not yet thirty. This widely-publicized event, referenced famously in Don McLean's 1971 epic narrative hit “American Pie,” may provide a foundational event by which to assess the genre of rock music and its themes of tragedy.

As the 1950s drew to a close, instrumental rock music gained popularity, as record companies' direct response to the problems associated with rock's controversial lyrical subjects. Trends in popular music had developed in the United States and in the United Kingdom; these two locations would continue to provide rich international and creative relationships and interaction between unique artistic communities.

The 1960s: Hip and Mod Celebrities, Abbey Road Innovations, and Escapism and Excess

Transformations in rock music in the early 1960s reflect a diversification and broadening of the genre: do-wop, British Invasion, 'new crooners' and blues-inflected music. Much scholarship on the Beatles has detailed their embrace of chaotic, excessive and individualistic seriousness, moving from outright-love pop songs like “Eight Days a Week” to the dark rapture of “Helter Skelter” in only a handful of years. If there had been any humor to rock and roll music during rock's formative years, of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, social revolution and war, 'consistently inconsistent' events exterior to the craft of rock music, promoted among some musicians an embrace of a dark and chaotic transformation in the 1960s.

The influence of the Beatles and Bob Dylan on themes of tragedy in rock music through the 1960s may be informed by a separate theory of comedy not found in Aristotle's Poetics. If tragedy is built of “identity [that] exists where the Complication and Unraveling are the same” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XVIII, para. 3), and thus poetic construction of tragedy regards plot over character, comic dimensions may regard and discuss the efforts of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and Bob Dylan, among others more fully: the embrace of comic themes in rock music may be served by full study of the evolution in the Beatles' catalog alone.

The rise of rock music celebrities and their public choices alongside their artistic choices continued to permit experimentation in instrumentation and lyrical themes. British rock, including the Who, the Hollies, Jimi Hendrix, and others influenced regional communities of rock musicians in the United States (New York City and San Francisco are regarded as two notable areas in this respect). Social and political transformations came to redefine artistic and creative intentions in rock music, and some recordings presented ranged in their responses, from the folk activism of Joan Baez to the black liberation theorist-rock of the Detroit-based MC5. Escapism, its own tragedy, characterized psychedelic music produced by groups as Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Byrds and others: as the Beatles' performance of “All You Need Is Love” from Abbey Road Studios represented Britain’s contribution to a satellite broadcast in 1967, new communicative abilities for rock music became more clear.

For many, drugs and indulgence became associated with rock music; the tragic plot of rock music celebrities began to accumulate grim statistics, centered around odd coincidence. The 27 Club is an informal collection of individuals whose passing at age twenty-seven, alongside their involvement with the genre of rock music, provides a poignant example of the genre's tragic themes: “tragedy endeavors, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit, whereas the Epic action has no limits of time” (Aristotle, Part V, para. 3). The following recording and performing artists may be regarded within the genre as more Epic than others, if not for their musical contribution, at least for their inclusion in the 27 Club.

  • Robert Johnson, influential blues guitarist; 1938; cause of death unknown

  • Brian Jones, founding member of the Rolling Stones, multi-instrumentalist; 1969; “death by misadventure” (coroner's report, as cited by “27 Club,” 2011)

  • Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, founding member of Canned Heat; 1970; drug overdose

  • Jimi Hendrix, experimental and influential guitarist; 1970; death caused by asphyxiation related to a combination of sleeping pills and wine

  • Janis Joplin, vocalist and songwriter; 1970; “probable heroin overdose” (“27 Club,” 2011)

  • Ron “Pigpen” McKerman, keyboardist, vocalist, founding member of the Grateful Dead; 1973; “gastrointestinal hemorrhage associated with alcoholism” (“27 Club,” 2011)

  • Jim Morrison, vocalist, songwriter and poet, lead singer of The Doors; 1971; heart failure likely related to heroin use

Writing on the overdose of Janis Joplin, rock critic Lester Bangs reeled in the acceptance of such tragedy across the genre: “it's not just that this kind of early death has become a fact of life that has become disturbing, but that it's been accepted as a given so quickly” (“Lester Bangs,” 2011). The extent to which the celebrities above continue to define a genre of popular music helps identify how tragic celebrities-- their personal agents of thought and character, as Aristotle seeks (Part XVIII, para. 3)-- continue to define an ever-evolving definition of “hip,” popular, cool, common, lucrative, in popular rock music... [full text available at smithforecast.com]

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Atlantic City Reprieve

It were better to be alive in a world of death

than to be dead in a world of life

—Gregory Corso

The Press of Atlantic City had hard news for its town all last week. High gas prices, unemployment, and a dour economy are not conditions that help populate slot machines, no matter how digitally stimulating of an experience they may offer. But Atlantic City is taking hits these days other than casino attendance, and these hits are starting to bruise. Most slots offer gambles for only pennies a pull, and while quarter and dollar slots are scattered across the dozen mega-hotel-casino complexes, there are fewer high rollers than ever before. On any given casino floor, slot fans have has his or her choice of ten similar machines, and half of the green felt tables go unused, even during peak evening hours. Twice as many people could fit into any bar, eatery, or gaming parlor I saw. Five card poker offer lower minimum bets than ever: Bally’s broadcasts to the Boardwalk foot traffic a recording that promotes its new dollar Blackjack games. In keeping with its American Old West marketing scheme, Bally's New Big Bar offers dollar drafts and two dollar shots, all happening at a 24-hour happy hour that features dancing girls in cowboy boots maneuvering around, clothed, on the bar.

Most of who’s walking the Boardwalk has heard that recording before; this includes the homeless, the cart pushers, and persistent tragic gamblers. Each casino pumps out its booming energetic rock and promotional messages, though most on foot appear to know where they’re going: those who stroll leisurely, on vacation, are less in number than those walking with mission, fast. Most travel in groups as the Jersey oceanside sun crosses over; some walk on the beach and stare at the waves. To gamble, to drink, to eat, to gamble with themselves and who they are: there was more interaction between strangers in Atlantic City last week than I’ve ever seen in my life (and I am old enough to remember when Tropicana was Trop World, and my grandmother rode the indoor ferris wheel). People seem ready, willing, and able to talk to each other, as if through our common and difficult conditions have come to find new ways to be human to each other—as we squander some time and some wealth on the risk of gaining more. There is a reason why Charlie Sheen mumbles still the word “winning,” perhaps the same drive that has Larry King hosting his own stand-up hour coming up on a glitzy stage in the Jersey heat of summer, perhaps what drove my grandmother to ride buses here on daytrips in the 1980s and 1990s.

Bad news began on Tuesday: the announcement of layoffs at the Borgota, the Trump Plaza, and the Trump Taj Mahal, “following deregulation of the gaming industry that includes the elimination of minimum staffing requirements” (Wittkowski, D., 5/10/11, The Press of Atlantic City) reinforced some locals’ animosity towards New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, for relaxing the rules that the Casio Control Commission needs to play by. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, Tropicana and other casinos posted their last month’s profit and loss statements, and Trop came out as the biggest loser: during April 2011, amid dwindling slot and table revenues, the wealthiest property on the Boardwalk lost $5.8 million dollars to gamblers' winnings. The next morning’s headline was announced to me by an exuberant valet attendant, who distorted the story into one smart/lucky player/cheater taking the place for all he could—the house was, for once, beat, it seemed.

Atlantic City has changes since its turn-of-the-century hilt; since the 1970s, gambling industry interests have created a new environment of urban development, a specific, transient, and risky economy. The lot where the Sands, one of the first generation casinos, stood, is still empty, following the demolition of the massive building a few years ago: outlived its usefulness, ‘not economically viable.’ The skyway that once led there from the Boardwalk is gone, its entrance serving as a bleak pavilion where ‘Official Atlantic City Information’ is distributed. One can’t find the menu to the Irish Pub here, however, or its specials—those are distributed by a man with a placard two blocks down (whose Boardwalk collapse on Wednesday night drew a crowd and ambulance, but he’s said to be alright). I was enjoying local drafts, a massive salad, and cheese fries at the Irish Pub on Wednesday night when negotiations between Local 68—the maintenance union, represented at all the casinos on the strip—and Tropicana collapsed. All of the other casinos had signed on to the union’s new contract, except Tropicana, who at the last minute demanded a five-dollar-an-hour pay cut. On Thursday, a crowd in hardhats, surrounded by television news cameras, waved American flags on the Boardwalk in front of the Tropicana.

One worker on strike described to me how The Quarter at the Tropicana is a marvel of engineering, a complete and synthetic southern environment, with faux sky ceilings, rotating fans, upscale shops, and food choices that offer a range of entrees, with prices from single-to-triple digits. I walked back to my room (and past some terrible, one-step-above-karaoke singing taking place in the casino bar) and thought of the feats of engineering, the accomplishment at work in the walls, ceilings and floor of the Tropicana--as well as the at the Taj Mahal, but also within the brick majesty of Resorts, built decades prior. There’s a lifespan to every structure, especially in a climate beside the ocean: the wind and sun carried the taste of salt all week in Atlantic City, and most were used to it. This includes the homeless, the chronic gamblers, the locals, and those standing in solidarity over a few dollars an hour.

I’m no high stakes gambler; fifty dollars in video poker over two nights led me to a couple free nights at Trop. In part because of the labor dispute, and in part because of my own thrift, I spent little at Tropicana on my last night—finding myself at the faux Irish Pub, Ri Ra, located near the popular dance club Providence. They could have been charging double; Harp pints were still two-fifty, and the crowd that straggled in and out of the no-cover bar were mostly waiting to go in or out of the dance club (open 11pm-5am). The band, however, was a highlight, perhaps one of the best ways to conclude a week of relaxation, in a place built for such, but a place that is having a hard time relaxing itself: Eleven Eleven (www.eleveneleven.com) is what you’d want from a Jersey Shore bar band, and their extensive touring schedule speaks to their proficiency. The band has over a dozen years under its boozy beach-based belt, started by frontman Jeff Guilani and drummer Rich Franchetta. According to their website, it’s “Mike D!!!” on guitar and “Stebs” on bass, backing up the two band founders. But they’re booked every night in May and June for good musical reason: they listen to each other, even crowded into a corner of a drunken casino, even at three am. At that hour, there’s nothing wrong with a carefully chosen Sublime cover before Bon Jovi, “What I Like About You/You Hold Me Tight,” and other schlock—unless it’s played badly. Eleven Eleven can be relied upon to not mess up anything familiar: high energy live classic rock happening before one’s own eyes makes the conflicts and strife of a rough week of news easier to swallow, aural and artistic truth to match the ever-popular liquid kind in Atlantic City.

I spent my last moments in the hot tub, attached to the pool, which is attached to the health club at the Tropicana: on the sixth floor in the unremodeled West Tower, a faux-gold-frame points to the pool, a remnant of a previous branding of the complete complex-- once, those gold frames were everywhere. I thought of the engineering involved in a sixth-floor swimming pool with attached hot tub; I thought of the workers, likely in the 1980s, tiling this and most other pools on the Boardwalk. Dried off and packed up, I pulled out of the Tropicana parking garage and into the New Jersey sunshine, which was warm, and bright, and free.