The reason the sight of comfortable, wealthy, over-privileged people so often makes us sick, I believe, must ultimately be because we know that inequality still exists. Would wealth and ease be sickening if it were shared equally? It seems to me unlikely.
Similarly, the reason that obscurity has its appeal for some, and the mainstream seems like the enemy, is because of power inequalities in public discourse. One of my least favourite things in the world is inverse snobbery – a bullying majority for some reason feeling threatened by a minority who are barely maintaining a fingerhold on existence, as if it's the majority that is being bullied. In some cases, I suppose it even might be… everything seems to become twisted, given time and space to do so. Or perhaps not given time and space to grow untwisted.
In any case, I was walking along the street the other day, and looking at a poster for Carling Black Label, full of a kind of blokish ambiance of bonhomie, and I thought, "I have a dream. I don't care about being obscure, or exclusivity. I wish I lived in a world where one could walk into a pub and compare the merits of Andre Gide and Nagai Kafu as easily as one can now discuss football, without anyone defensively thinking that you're being elitist." If the obscure/mainstream pitch was made even, I don't think it would hinder cultural diversity. On the contrary, I expect diversity would be better able to flourish.
There must be pubs like that somewhere and you should be able to do it in any pub,the trouble is the neanderthal culture that takes the piss out of anything that isn’t Footy or Reality TV
:-)u should try this one. http://www.pubs.com/main_site/pub_details.php?pub_id=109I strongly reccomend.The nicest way is to spend an afternoon on walking in hampstead heath and then go to holy bush:-)I always managed to randomly meet very interesting people. I also feel scared of intelectualism sometimes. maybe it’s a fear of being seen as stupid? orpeople, i feel, often give up, thinking life is tough, and one doesn’t have time to think of poetry and art, and then if someone actually does, they think – u have no right to do it – we all had to abandon our dreams.Also – happens – it is a mutual lack of acceptance…
You can, depending on the company, but I suppose I’d like a world where it’s more than simply a possibility under the right circumstances – where it’s quite normal.
i share this complaint. there were times for instance in greenwich village coffee houses or “cedars tavern” “the lion’s head” etc. where people actually carried on intelligent conversations.i’ve searched los angeles and there is no such thing. everything is geared to the masses. individualism and intellectual comeraderie has fallen through the cracks.even tv has no one like dick cavet or steve allen… slightly interesting is bill maher. charlie rose is not bad if he has a smart guest. oh woe is us. :faint:i dream of the nineteenth century… the painters downing absinthe or wine and arguing about art and philosophy every night. maybe it never happened. maybe they were just as isolated as we are. đĄ
I’ve never held any animosity for the aristocracy, strangely. I actually find the anti-intellectualism of England quite comforting; it’s the old Orwellian thing about Nazism not catching on here because people were too busy laughing at the goose-step.It doesn’t help that most of the “high culture” people are exposed to is so tiresome. I think I’d probably rather watch a football match than read, say, Thomas Hardy, or listen to yet another Rachmaninoff piece, or look at nineteenth century paintings of yet more scenes from Greek mythology, and so on.
Originally posted by chrysantemum:-)u should try this one. http://www.pubs.com/main_site/pub_details.php?pub_id=109I strongly reccomend.The nicest way is to spend an afternoon on walking in hampstead heath and then go to holy bush:-)I always managed to randomly meet very interesting people. I’ve been there! I’m sure I have. I went with friends. When we emerged there was one of the best skies I’ve ever seen – a ploughed carpet of inky, unraining clouds.Originally posted by chrysantemum:I also feel scared of intelectualism sometimes. maybe it’s a fear of being seen as stupid? orpeople, i feel, often give up, thinking life is tough, and one doesn’t have time to think of poetry and art, and then if someone actually does, they think – u have no right to do it – we all had to abandon our dreams.Also – happens – it is a mutual lack of acceptance…I don’t, myself, care in the least about intellectualism. I suppose we all have our little foibles concerning what we identify with, but to identify as an intellectual seems to me one of the more laughable of such foibles. To me, it just seems like a question of being open-minded and actually curious about the world in which we live, and the possibilites of life and the human mind. I’d say life is hard without these things. I’ve been forced to abandon my own dreams as much as anyone I can immediately think of… to me, that’s an argument that doesn’t really make sense, not to take an interest, at least to the extent of opening one’s mind in one’s leisure hours at the pub, etc.Originally posted by I_ArtMan:i dream of the nineteenth century… the painters downing absinthe or wine and arguing about art and philosophy every night. maybe it never happened. maybe they were just as isolated as we are.I like to think that the Anglo-Saxon world is particularly bad for this (the isolation of anyone with any actual interests whatsoever apart from TV and money), as then at least I can hope to escape (to the continent) at some point in my life. But I’m not sure how much better things are elsewhere. Japan was not much better than Britain, though thankfully less aggressive. I do rather suspect that things are better in some places than others, though.Originally posted by lesoldatperdu:It doesn’t help that most of the “high culture” people are exposed to is so tiresome. I think I’d probably rather watch a football match than read, say, Thomas Hardy, or listen to yet another Rachmaninoff piece, or look at nineteenth century paintings of yet more scenes from Greek mythology, and so on.The tiresome people – for me at least – are only in magazines and on telly. I don’t personally know any tiresome culture vultures that I can think of. There is a kind of safe and self-satisified ‘cultural stratum’ or something that I’m tempted to characterise as ‘middle-class’, but which I think I mustn’t, because it’s too vague, and it panders to polarities I don’t, in the end, like very much. But I think the answer for me – half-baked, perhaps – is what I implied above, that if there was equality of ‘mainstream-ness’ then no one would find anyone else either a tiresome philistine or a tiresome snob. Until that day, I’d actually rather do almost anything than watch a football match. Even read Thomas Hardy.
I suppose what I’m saying is that if the school curriculum included William Burroughs, Modest Mussorgsky and Zdzislaw Beksinski, children might take more of an interest in the arts. The frozen sea inside me was not being shattered by The Mayor of Casterbridge. If people think that’s all literature is, I can’t fault them for abandoning it. I’m not a fan of football, but I can appreciate that it appeals to a sort of völkisch desire for national pride, hero-worship and so forth. I’m not sure where else people could get that, short of shelling France. The Argonautica?
Originally posted by lesoldatperdu:I suppose what I’m saying is that if the school curriculum included William Burroughs, Modest Mussorgsky and Zdzislaw Beksinski, children might take more of an interest in the arts. The frozen sea inside me was not being shattered by The Mayor of Casterbridge. If people think that’s all literature is, I can’t fault them for abandoning it. I’m not a fan of football, but I can appreciate that it appeals to a sort of völkisch desire for national pride, hero-worship and so forth. I’m not sure where else people could get that, short of shelling France. The Argonautica?Yeah… I don’t know why, but the British have been peculiarly good at producing stodgy (or, alternatively, stiff) literature that is only really good to excerpt in school text books in order to produce that atmosphere of studied tedium that is so important to our school days. Or else to adapt into mediocre costume dramas starring Colin Firth, etc. Having said that, I’ve had a bit of an urge recently to pick up some Penguin Classics and sniff the pages a bit, and start reading… I’ve never even read George Eliot. I do remember feeling oddly cheated by ‘the classics’, though, back when I was discovering ‘serious literature’. It seemed very clear, after reading Hardy and the Brontes, and then reading Dostoevsky, that Russian literature was getting a bit more like it, anyway. Although I enjoy reading almost as a mechanical act in itself, as long as a piece of writing is not really badly written (which, actually, just about EVERYTHING is these days), it is true that there is really very little that I read that, to paraphrase Morrissey, says anything much to me about my life. Mostly people don’t have a clue what to write about or why they’re writing, I think. It’s mainly all just tap-dancing. But not as good as tap-dancing.
I have to agree with mind oppenness argument. I guess what I meant by abbandoning dreams – it is a bit different than losing them. I mean. Everyone makes the decission, often though one doesn’t realize that there are possibilities of different decissions. And maybe this is mainstream. I don’t often meet hostility for my artness. But lets say. If u are free in ur choice of culture u may question freedom of others – as ur freedom goes further than comercial culture. And so, the dream might be the one of being yourself and choosing ur life – and taking consequences. I do think also that some places are better than other. And Britain seems really peculiar to me. I cannot really bite into it. And cannot comprehend it. There seems to be certain rigour, have-to-ness… Also – great about holy bush! I love it, though i’m not there very often. I too had a nice surprize when i left it once – snow:-)
I heartily agree, but don’t have much to add. However, for me it is the horrors of American football and writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne…. Dear god.
Sorry for lack of response. Been a bit busy. Just found this in an interview with Julio Cortazar:INTERVIEWERWhen you translated Poeâs complete works many years later, did you discover new things for yourself from so close a reading?CORTĂZARMany, many things. I explored his language, which is criticized by both the English and the Americans because they find it too baroque. Since Iâm neither English nor American, I see it with another perspective. I know there are aspects which have aged a lot, that are exaggerated, but that doesnât mean anything compared to his genius. To write, in those times, âThe Fall of the House of Usher,â or âLigeia,â or âBerenice,â or âThe Black Cat,â any of them, shows a true genius for the fantastic and for the supernatural. Yesterday, I visited a friend on the rue Edgar Allan Poe. There is a plaque on the street which reads, âEdgar Poe, English Writer.â He wasnât English at all! We should have it changedâweâll both protest! http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2955/the-art-of-fiction-no-83-julio-cortazar
If only they taught Poe in school over here! They always marginalize the special ones out of being ‘classics’.