The Artist and the Art, or Meathead McBeef
Here comes a poem. Stop me if you've heard it:
Meat Head
Awaking on the first day of school
Pain of a morning hang over
Attending a weight lifting class for college credit
Attempting to exercise since freshman year of high school
Crawling out of bed and walking to the shower
Warm water hitting my back
Eureka
Thoughts of being promiscuous with a female again
[more]
"Meat Head" (that's about the first third) was written by Jared Lee Loughner, who needed an entire country (China, parts 1 and 2) to knock him out of the American news cycle. Following his murder spree, the 22-year-old had his poetry published on CNN; HTMLGIANT and Bookslut picked it up.
I'd feel bad posting "Meat Head" except I think it's a good poem. It's specific, evocative and full of real-life moments. If you told me it were written by a 22-year-old poet whom HTMLGIANT was wild about, I'd say, "Good for him."
Likewise, I recently watched "Richard McBeef: The Motion Picture" on YouTube, an interpretation of the one-act play by Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter of 2007. Here it is, NSFW and not for everybody (it looks a bit like a Whitest Kids U' Know sketch):
(I'm partial to the opening:
JOHN: What's up, Dick!
RICHARD: Try 'Dad.'
JOHN: You ain't my dad, and you know it, you Dick.)
Once again, if you sent this to me telling me it was the celebrated work of a new playwright who subverted contemporary paternity through the lens of South Park, I wouldn't question it.
These are the most extreme examples I can find of the problem of separating the artist from the art, a concern for everyone who experiences art. This issue arises because many artists are bad people:
Sordid, bad stuff. I can't defend the artists -- but my life is richer and fuller because of their art. If I were to disavow one of them, how could I continue to appreciate the others? Where would I draw the line? Is it okay to kick your girlfriend but not stab your wife? And what about Jacko?
Just as defending free speech means defending objectionable speech, defending art means defending drug addicts, abusers and murderers.
It becomes a little more complicated with Jared Lee Loughner and Cho Seung-Hui because there is evidence, in their manifesto videos, that they killed in part to make a name for themselves. (This was also clear in the Columbine killings.) That means that by reading or viewing their work, I'm supporting an artistic persona that they killed to produce, and you could argue that I'm an accomplice to murder.
But Loughner and Seung-Hui also live, through no choice of their own, in a world where "fame" and "greatness" are conflated. When I speak at schools, students don't ask me if I know any "great" authors; they ask if I know any "famous" ones (and they always ask this). Celebrity culture equates fame with greatness to such a degree that the artist cannot be separated from the art -- fame is the only thing that makes his or her art credible. Since mass murder is a guaranteed way to get notoriety, there's a risk of culture moving toward violence the way David Foster Wallace wrote in Consider the Lobster about pornography inexorably approaching the snuff film.
But I went to an exhibit recently at the Huntington Library in Pasadena:
"Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge" exhibited Bukowski's letters, broadsheets, wine glass and typewriter. Sabra took pictures, including this one of Bukowski making fun of my double chin:
The exhibit reminded me that the process of sordid artistic myth-making has been around since Lord Byron and we haven't all become snuff-film makers yet. Bukowski carefully managed his image as a virile drunk, taking advantage of his place in an "antifragile" industry.
Ken Baumann explained antifragility to me: it's a concept being explored by aphorist Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Bed of Procrustes) in his next book. The idea is -- if hot is the opposite of cold and strong is the opposite of weak -- what is the opposite of fragile? There's no true word for it in English. The opposite of something fragile, which breaks under stress, would be a substance that gains strength under stress, something like the hydra, who grows more heads the more you cut off:
Very few physical things are "antifragile", but one thing that is antifragile, Taleb argues, is the reputation of the artist. No matter how many bad deeds the artist commits, from drug abuse to murder, his or her reputation gains strength. I tried to find some counter-examples -- look what happened to Kathy Acker after she went from pedophilia to plagiarism -- but I had to admit that as a general rule it's true.
The easiest way for an artist to fall out of the public eye is by being a good person.
So is it all hopeless? Are we entering a world where you have to kill people to get famous if you want anyone to read your poems? Not quite. The advantage of separating the artist completely from the art is that you can judge the art fully on its own terms -- and "Meat Head" and "Richard McBeef" aren't that good. I don't think I'll be reading them in 20 years, nor will anyone else, no matter how many more horrific acts the artists commit -- and they they won't be committing any more, considering that Cho's dead and Loughner is trapped in the desert castle of Super Mario Brothers 3:
Whoops, sorry, no. That's the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Phoenix, AZ. Rot, Jared. But keep writing.
Meat Head
Awaking on the first day of school
Pain of a morning hang over
Attending a weight lifting class for college credit
Attempting to exercise since freshman year of high school
Crawling out of bed and walking to the shower
Warm water hitting my back
Eureka
Thoughts of being promiscuous with a female again
[more]
"Meat Head" (that's about the first third) was written by Jared Lee Loughner, who needed an entire country (China, parts 1 and 2) to knock him out of the American news cycle. Following his murder spree, the 22-year-old had his poetry published on CNN; HTMLGIANT and Bookslut picked it up.
I'd feel bad posting "Meat Head" except I think it's a good poem. It's specific, evocative and full of real-life moments. If you told me it were written by a 22-year-old poet whom HTMLGIANT was wild about, I'd say, "Good for him."
Likewise, I recently watched "Richard McBeef: The Motion Picture" on YouTube, an interpretation of the one-act play by Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter of 2007. Here it is, NSFW and not for everybody (it looks a bit like a Whitest Kids U' Know sketch):
(I'm partial to the opening:
JOHN: What's up, Dick!
RICHARD: Try 'Dad.'
JOHN: You ain't my dad, and you know it, you Dick.)
Once again, if you sent this to me telling me it was the celebrated work of a new playwright who subverted contemporary paternity through the lens of South Park, I wouldn't question it.
These are the most extreme examples I can find of the problem of separating the artist from the art, a concern for everyone who experiences art. This issue arises because many artists are bad people:
- Writer Charles Bukowski kicks his girlfriend on camera in the documentary Bukowski: Born Into This, looking oddly fetal while doing so.
- Musician Kurt Cobain kept heroin needles in the toothbrush holders in the house he lived in with his infant daughter, according to Heavier Than Heaven.
- Writer Norman Mailer stabbed his wife with a penknife, unprovoked and without a word, according to Time.
- Writer Jim Goad went to jail for beating his 21-year-old stripper girlfriend (detailed in Goad's book S___ Magnet).
- Musician Vince Neil killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley after sliding into oncoming traffic while driving drunk on an alcohol run, doing 65mph in a 25mph zone in a ‘72 Ford Pantera, about four blocks from his house (source: Paul Miles).
Sordid, bad stuff. I can't defend the artists -- but my life is richer and fuller because of their art. If I were to disavow one of them, how could I continue to appreciate the others? Where would I draw the line? Is it okay to kick your girlfriend but not stab your wife? And what about Jacko?
Just as defending free speech means defending objectionable speech, defending art means defending drug addicts, abusers and murderers.
It becomes a little more complicated with Jared Lee Loughner and Cho Seung-Hui because there is evidence, in their manifesto videos, that they killed in part to make a name for themselves. (This was also clear in the Columbine killings.) That means that by reading or viewing their work, I'm supporting an artistic persona that they killed to produce, and you could argue that I'm an accomplice to murder.
But Loughner and Seung-Hui also live, through no choice of their own, in a world where "fame" and "greatness" are conflated. When I speak at schools, students don't ask me if I know any "great" authors; they ask if I know any "famous" ones (and they always ask this). Celebrity culture equates fame with greatness to such a degree that the artist cannot be separated from the art -- fame is the only thing that makes his or her art credible. Since mass murder is a guaranteed way to get notoriety, there's a risk of culture moving toward violence the way David Foster Wallace wrote in Consider the Lobster about pornography inexorably approaching the snuff film.
But I went to an exhibit recently at the Huntington Library in Pasadena:
"Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge" exhibited Bukowski's letters, broadsheets, wine glass and typewriter. Sabra took pictures, including this one of Bukowski making fun of my double chin:
The exhibit reminded me that the process of sordid artistic myth-making has been around since Lord Byron and we haven't all become snuff-film makers yet. Bukowski carefully managed his image as a virile drunk, taking advantage of his place in an "antifragile" industry.
Ken Baumann explained antifragility to me: it's a concept being explored by aphorist Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Bed of Procrustes) in his next book. The idea is -- if hot is the opposite of cold and strong is the opposite of weak -- what is the opposite of fragile? There's no true word for it in English. The opposite of something fragile, which breaks under stress, would be a substance that gains strength under stress, something like the hydra, who grows more heads the more you cut off:
Very few physical things are "antifragile", but one thing that is antifragile, Taleb argues, is the reputation of the artist. No matter how many bad deeds the artist commits, from drug abuse to murder, his or her reputation gains strength. I tried to find some counter-examples -- look what happened to Kathy Acker after she went from pedophilia to plagiarism -- but I had to admit that as a general rule it's true.
The easiest way for an artist to fall out of the public eye is by being a good person.
So is it all hopeless? Are we entering a world where you have to kill people to get famous if you want anyone to read your poems? Not quite. The advantage of separating the artist completely from the art is that you can judge the art fully on its own terms -- and "Meat Head" and "Richard McBeef" aren't that good. I don't think I'll be reading them in 20 years, nor will anyone else, no matter how many more horrific acts the artists commit -- and they they won't be committing any more, considering that Cho's dead and Loughner is trapped in the desert castle of Super Mario Brothers 3:
Whoops, sorry, no. That's the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Phoenix, AZ. Rot, Jared. But keep writing.