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This is the first of a long, tedious series of posts speculating about how things might have come out, had history taken a different turn. Hang on to your hats!
What if the English, under the leadership of Henry V on that fateful St. Crispin’s Day in 1514, had defeated the French at Agincourt?
Oh, wait, they did,
Never mind.
Not Henry V of England
Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_V_Boynton_arms_crossed.jpg
My imaginary fan keeps insisting on more how-to posts, hence this, on how to interpret book blurbs.
On the back of every book* you will find helpful comments and short reviews of the contents, so you can make a wiser decision whether to read it or not. My investigative unit, however, has discovered that these reviews are not always what they seem. For example, sometimes quotes are shortened, and meanings can be subtly changed by elision. Here are some comments overheard at a local Starbucks; see if you can pick out what parts might end up as book blurbs:
“That book was horrible. I’d rather be riveting my eyeballs shut than read it again.”
“I’ll say, I couldn’t put it down fast enough when I tried to read it!”
“If I were a real barn burner, I’d throw that book in with it.”
“Another Tolstoy, he ain’t!”
“If you don’t read another book this year, it’ll be because you read this one.”
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*An ancient medium consisting of bits of paper and ink bound together.
The woods around Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in the late 60s were scrupulously maintained by a cadre of forstmeisters. Deadfall was cleared promptly, and cords of firewood kept at intervals along the well-groomed paths. This was to be used elsewhere; open fires in these woods were strictly prohibited. Germany, like all of Europe, was well trodden through centuries of settlement and resettlement, and Mother Nature was more a well kept mistress than a matriarch.
But this was, after all, the late 60s, and certain paths through certain quarters were undeclared free zones, and the minions of the psychedelic diaspora ran unfettered there. In one such area, we maintained a kind of salon-in-the-wildwood, with a commandeered military shelter overlooking a campfire that was more or less permanently smoldering. That fire saw faces and feet, new and familiar, come and go through many nights. Tall tales, laughter, music, and in one case, an improvised artistic stick-throwing contest, filled those days and nights like the billowing cannabis smoke pouring from the tent. It was, as I believe I’ve mentioned, the late 60s.
On one particular sodden day, after a solid week of rain, a friend, call him Chuck, and I arrived with the idea of cheering things up with a nice, cozy fire. After a half hour of rummaging through the surrounding woods, we managed to collect a halfway decent pile of not-so-wet wood. For kindling, there was always sufficient litter in the tent, partly collected for that purpose, partly the natural detritus of exuberantly youthful living.
So we began. First, a crumpled piece of paper, with informally piled twigs atop, failed to catch. Then Chuck suggested a teepee.
“What?” I said, “You mean the tent?” Chuck snorted and rolled his eyes.
“No, it’s a Boy Scout thing. You stack small firewood in a kind of pyramid, then light it.”
“You were in the Boy Scouts?”
The teepee, too, smoldered hopelessly, as another friend, Herbie, arrived, surveyed the situation, and declared the obvious solution.
“You need a log cabin.” Great, I thought, we’re going to run through the entire history of architecture here.
Nevertheless, what we were doing wasn’t working, so we carefully laid small sticks, of a size precisely to Herbie’s specifications, and stuffed paper from the dwindling supply into the ground floor. The lighting ceremony was accompanied by the lighting of a large joint Chuck had been preparing. All went marvelously well.
Except for the part involving the campfire. It produced lots of smoke, but not much else. Herbie declared all was going according to plan, that the wood just needed to dry out a bit. Chuck pointed out the fire had been planned for that day, and not the next. Chuck and I laughed uproariously. Herbie grunted and stuffed the last remaining kindling into the structure. We watched as the fire blazed up, consumed the dry paper like it was … dry paper, then died back to a dull occasional flicker.
Jens arrived. Jens was from Antwerp, and as far as any of us could figure, had been on the road since shortly after birth.
“What’s happening?” he said. From anyone else, this was a standard hippie greeting, the equivalent of a grunt of acknowledgment. From Jens, it was a reasonable question.
“Trying to build a fire,” I offered, “but it’s just too wet.” Gloom.
Jens looked at the pathetic little pile of semi-charred sticks, and, without a word, turned and walked away. Just not willing to sit in the damp woods without a fire, I thought.
We continued our discussion of what to do next, whether the attempt was even worth continuing, when he returned. He was dragging a sodden-looking, moss-covered log, about a foot in diameter and roughly five feet long, which he promptly dropped squarely on top of the remains of our fire building exercise. A few halfhearted sparks flew out in protest. A collective groan arose to compete with them.
“Jesus, Jens, thanks a hell of a lot!” Herbie said. He had still not used up the last of his theories in defense of the log cabin method. Jens shrugged and sat down to join us.
We moped in silence for a good ten minutes, until the first flames began licking up the sides of the log. In a few more minutes, the fire was roaring away; I was dumbfounded. I looked at Jens with incredulity.
“What?” he said.
“Jens,” not his real name
Recently, a blogger whose views I usually respect wrote a piece about Easter, lamenting that people just don’t believe in anything these days. There were lot of comments; mine was the only one that disagreed with the writer’s premise. I’d like to go further, and examine the widely held notion that faith, in and of itself, is a great and wondrous thing, without which we would soon founder.
You hear this a lot, accompanied by a lot of sage nodding, amening, and otherwise approving responses. Faith supposedly saves us from all manner of barbarism we would otherwise inflict on one another. I don’t see any evidence for it, period. It wasn’t 19 atheists who flew their hijacked airplanes into public buildings full of innocent people on September 11, 2001. It wasn’t in the name of evolution that the Tsarnaev brothers blew up the Boston Marathon. Down through history, you will find almost no atrocities perpetrated upon innocent victims by people who lacked faith, even the Nazi and Communist atrocities arguably fall in the category of faith despite lack of a supernatural power. Where is there a single shred, the merest mote, of evidence that our hearts’ desire is to maim and persecute, and that we would cheerfully indulge ourselves were it not for faith? I’ll grant you that we seem to torment each other with glee when it is to our perceived benefit, but belief in a higher cause only seems to confer a sanctity to it. I’m reminded of Himmler’s famous admonition to the SS that while it may be emotionally difficult to slaughter Jews, one must grit one’s teeth and do it for the greater good of humanity. He was only echoing Torquemada and all the other grand inquisitors since time immemorial.
And isn’t it more than a bit disingenuous to profess respect for all people of faith, when almost all religious faiths stipulate that those who believe differently will suffer an eternity of anguish? Think about it. You believe that if I have a different faith than yours, after a few years of life on earth, I will suffer incomprehensible torment, not for a few millennia, but for all eternity. Because you believe your God is perfectly just and merciful, you also believe I deserve every bit of it. Yet you insist you respect me, and my faith. Now that’s a Mystery!
Still, you might say, a person needs something to believe in, if not a religion, then at least a coherent set of principles. That’s certainly an interesting assertion; it’s not clear what it actually means. Will just anything do? The ancient Assyrians believed their god Assur commanded them to conquer and humiliate as many people as possible as brutally as possible. Very clear and consistent; their inscriptions brag about the heaps of flayed enemy youth left at the gates of conquered cities, and the rape and enslavement of the women and children. Men of strong faith, all, not an atheist among them.
Victory stele of Naram-Sin
But wait, don’t faith and religion do a lot of good? Yes, some do. And some do a lot of evil. Essentially, it’s a wash, so what’s the point of lamenting a lack of it? The biggest irony of all, of course, is that far from suffering from a dearth of faith in these particular times, we seem to be positively deluged with it. Religion is everywhere, and New Age faux religions seem to flow endlessly from an inexhaustible source. Ideology has become a way of life even in this most pragmatic of nations.
A crisis of faith? I’ll say. We’re drowning in it.
Ringo Starr, it seems, got up in the middle of the night to feverishly write down the lyrics to “Back Off Boogaloo.” He even attributed the inspiration to God. It just goes to show you the bankruptcy of the whole idea of the artist interview. It’s like interviewing an athlete following the big game.
“Tell us about that homer, Biff.”
“Well, you know, it was a hanging curve ball, and I saw it real good, and just took it the other way.”
Thanks, Biff. That cleared up a lot of questions about baseball, and life itself.
It’s easy enough to understand that athletes might not be able to articulate exactly what was involved in a spectacular performance; they may not be aware of it themselves. They might think it had to do with wearing their hats backwards, or eating only broccoli the night before. It’s the classic distinction between knowing how and knowing what. But you’d think it would be different with artists. You’d think artists would start out with something specific in mind, make decisions about how best to convey whatever it was to their audience, and proceed according to some rational plan. And they do. Sort of.
“Tell us about that painting, Jackson.”
“Well, you know, the paint was real wet, and I saw the fan, and just spilled it over the canvas.”
That may be what we want to hear from Biff, but it won’t do from Jackson. Why?
Because we think Jackson Pollock’s painting has some meaning, some value, beyond its physical self, even beyond its immediate context the way the homer does in the baseball game, even if that meaning is just a deeper realization that there is no deeper meaning (Oh, yeah, admit it, we do think like that). Or at least we hope it has. And so does the artist, and that’s the problem. Because everybody’s invested in this idea that something not superficially apparent is going on with the painting/poem/song, we feel it needs explaining, in case some of us may have missed something, and who better than the person who created it.
Except the person who created it is not necessarily the best source. The main reason for this is that great Freudian frontier, the subconscious mind. Because of the way our silly brains work, what we’re trying to say is often not exactly what we think we’re trying to say; it could even be the polar opposite. It’s the infamous Freudian slip, and art is its Baby Huey, the great bouncing 200 pound infant crashing through all the fine china we’ve so carefully laid out for the guests. Ringo’s God turns out to be his own damn self after all, but not the self he’s used to playing with in public.
Unfortunately, it’s not much help when the artist being interviewed is a bit more self-aware. Robbie Robertson , referring to writing The Weight, gives an excellent description of the subconscious process:
“I was just gathering images and names, and ideas and rhythms, and I was storing all of these things … in my mind somewhere. And when it was time to sit down and write songs, when I reached into the attic to see what I was gonna write about, that’s what was there.”
But what did the song actually mean? Well, ahem, symbolic… blahh… Buñuel… surrealism.. that is, ahem.. Not sure, exactly. It does mean something, but asking the artist isn’t much help, and in this case, at least, he’s up front about it. At least he doesn’t insist it’s about a bender in Buzzard’s Butt, Arkansas, when everyone else is insisting it’s about the ultimate futility of human existence or something, or vice versa. Not that it might not be both of those things, denials, affirmations, and ambiguities notwithstanding. It’s all complicated, you see, by the fact that, once a work of art is released into the wild, it means anything anyone wants it to mean. Ultimately, art is feral by nature, and there’s no getting around that. Ask Frank Stella about St. Louis, Mo, and the Grand Pissoir.
Of course, there could very well be a real meaning, in the sense of something that motivated the work, whether that something was understood by the artist or not. My own poetry is sometimes explained to me in ways I never imagined while making it, but which are entirely plausible to me on reflection. It’s this ambiguity which is at the same time so enticing and so frustrating. It’s not that there’s not a real meaning, it’s that there can be several real meanings, even contradictory ones.
If art were unambiguous, who would need it? We already have sport. Biff is never going to insist, “Homer? That was a sac fly! I hit the damn thing, and I don’t care how many idiots think it’s a homer!”
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