Zappa the man

Oh boy. I’ve been very preoccupied with this one. I feel like I always talk about this. It’s only because it have adopted the firm belief at this point in my life that in fact the art and the artist cannot be separated. Some may cite, for example, the Nazi affiliations of great thinkers like Ezra Pound or Heidegger. I don’t believe this is cause for isolation of factors: it is cause for deeper, more critical, and more complex examination. Art isn’t complicated, beautiful or meaningful intrinsically. It is so because the people who create it are also that way.
So I’ll put aside the interaction of character and creation. How did Zappa’s personality affect his work and legacy? His workaholic nature was both a blessing and a burden. There is no doubt that we would not have had nearly the same sheer bulk of material to amount to a legacy. The fact that he constantly drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, loved work and music and despised rest and leisure meant he produced dozens upon dozens of unique albums for fans to enjoy. The unavoidable bigotry inherent to the times and his heritage, both patriarchal, meant the messages in his work were convoluted head-scratchers, trying to get at something, an opinion or a solution. His treatment of women in songs like The Illinois Enema Bandit may be unconscionable but at least he’s trying to work through some inner problem with that phenomenon. Songs like that sabotaged the songs where his message was better executed, and his personality itself would be further sabotage. Rather than admit that he wasn’t sure about some things, he preferred to say it was all a joke, something to be laughed at, or that it was stupid, or wasn’t supposed to mean anything.
If I’ve learned anything from studying men like Zappa, it’s that if you don’t have something nice to say, say something anyway. Negative aspects of personality or reality should not be hidden, because they are a part of you. Personal expression in all forms is of ultimate importance.

Zappa the social critic

I just finished writing a research paper this morning that included Tupac Shakur, another musical artist famous for his societal views. As my penchant for literature demands, I included a little quote from Emerson, about how the misunderstanding of what is brute and dark connotes a lack of recognition of that aspect of one’s own personality. General audiences tend to be scared off by people who rap about violence or musicians who sing about incest because they can’t or don’t want to recognize those acts in their own communities. For Tupac it was more about exposing the public to the atrocities being committed in their own backyards, but I think Zappa zeroed in on things to a greater extent: he wanted to get at the reason why middle-class America was so blind to all that was wrong with their society. He occupies a unique social niche which allows him to do this perhaps more accurately than Tupac. He was impoverished, but white; his parents were immigrants, but he was born in America; he was a major rock star, but only to a certain type of fan, and even then he was not always taken seriously as a cultural influence. I believe it was this standpoint which allowed him to offer such searing social commentary.
He doesn’t differ as much from Tupac in his methods, however. It’s the same sort of shock tactics. The only problem is that people act stupidly when they are scared, and so they jump to conclusions. In the same way that many people felt threatened by the images in Tupac’s videos, such as children pointing handguns, they also felt threatened by Zappa’s incorporation of incest or homosexuality into his lyrics. I think when a regular-looking white guy mentions these things, though, it’s more of a fear of infection than an oppositional fear: you mean this could happen to me, or someone like me? Is it possible that someone like me would be ok with this?
Everything that Zappa has created has a sort of echo of cynical laughter. A girl in one of my classes last term said that someone once said laughter is the best way to get people to understand something because your head is tipped back and your mouth is open, allowing everything in. Zappa’s exaggerations might make it more difficult for some to accept certain realities, but I think in these discussions we have to keep in mind that it is not just the Republican bigot we are talking about when we talk about the target audience for Zappa’s music. If someone is already part of the way there, or even just a tiny bit of the way there, seeing or hearing exaggerations of a present problem make it more obvious that their views or actions are wrong. At the time that Zappa was writing tunes there still wasn’t much information out there about homosexuality, sadomasochism, feminism and the like—the amount of information, when you think about it, is even today still somewhat pathetic, lacking. Someone who had watched Amos N’ Andy and seen nothing at fault in it might reconsider that on seeing the grotesque mutations representative of blackface in Thing-fish. A young woman who had been comfortable in her confusion about sex and subservient in relation to men might see herself in the Annie character in Thing-fish screaming “Harry, yer a worm!” She might be encourage to develop her sexual personality when she sees the behavior of women like the GTOs or hears about women performing sexual acts she might have thought were reserved for men. An older woman might see herself in the intonation: “Time to go home, Marge is on the phone, time to meet the Gurneys and a dozen grey attorneys.”
With these kinds of artists, it’s all about walking the walk. These things exist and it’s time to talk about them. It’s time to become the cultural minister of something, time to get into politics or call on politicians to take action. In another book I was reading for my research paper, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan, he recounts an episode of his youth where he was arrested during a riot and from then on felt he no longer had any need of teenage rebellion, because he had actually done something. I view this the same way. These artists are not trying to rebel and don’t need to. It is only when these issues finally manage to speak for themselves that musicians like Zappa will be obsolete.

more literary criticism

Samuel Coleridge said this about Wordsworth, and I think it applies to Zappa:

"Had Mr. Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the childish things, which they were for a long time described as being: had they been really distinguished from the compositions of other poets merely by meanness of language and inanity of thought; had they indeed contained nothing more than what is found in the parodies and pretended imitations of them; they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion, and dragged the preface along with them."
- The Great Critics: An Anthology of Literary Criticism, pg. 528 (ed. Smith & Parks)

Zappa the entrepeneur

I'm annoyed because I was saying something the other day about art and commerce, music specifically, I think something to do with Brian Eno, and now I can't remember what it was.

The first thing that comes to mind at the moment is Lewis Black. The other day on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart he was saying how Trump would be an ideal president for America because he can make you want to buy anything, even if you know it's just a turd with a bow on it. The thing about art is that it's not commerce, and it's not politics. It's supposed to be a realm where truth reigns, and selling things implies a definite bending of the truth. But wouldn't the parallel be that art bends reality in order to, in a way, sell itself? Is there not a sort of immaterial transaction taking place? The worlds of art and commerce might appear more closely linked if we look at them this way.

For this entry I choose to view Zappa as using his commercial skill to sell not an item but a worldview. Of course a major part of his career was packing this worldview into items: his albums. But he also used techniques which begin to seem strangely resonant with business and advertising. His registration booths at concerts are not unlike kiosks or free samples at malls. Putting up a banner at the back of the stage reading "WARNER BROS SUCKS" is similar to putting up a billboard. His movies sometimes seem like extended music videos, a major promotional tool for mainstream music.

I think I mentioned in another entry the sensitivity of the artist, and how he puts up defences to guard that sensitivity which I will postulate is his delicate artistic conscience. This form of commerce contains that conscience. Even if Zappa did try to sell you a turd with a bow on it, he wouldn't want you to buy it because you thought it was anything else. He'd want you to know not just in the back but in the very forefront of your mind that it is a turd with a bow on it, and to love it and want it precisely as is.

Zappa the musician-performer

Beginning perhaps in the same anecdotal element as my last entry, though not quite so skewed in that direction, I'll say I was listening to that Peter Bjorn and John song last night, Young Folks:

I caught myself wondering this morning whether anybody actually understands what that song means, or if it means anything. Does it matter? The song is catchy enough to have been popular when it was created, and I found myself thinking that the lyrics could be ketchup has the hair of bigfoot and my spaghetti's drying out, dear, and I'd probably still be humming it despite myself.

I could go into the relationship between music and lyrics, but for this topic I'd rather focus on that "meaningless" quality of music; its transportative, transcendent abilities. Because that's what I feel Zappa contributed to the stage.

Most people involved in any way with creative production know the temptation, whether it is theirs or not, to play endless solos, write novels the rough dimension of phonebooks, coax out and perfect the tiniest details. These same people would also know, however, that this does not make good art, or really even art at all. It's obvious to any audience that a practice such as this is purely masturbatory. As with the literal activity, the end result might be pretty smashing but no one else is allowed to enjoy it. Frank Zappa, in his usual way of tweaking convention, kind of poked his head into the music world and said, But doesn't it feel good? And don't you kind of want to watch?

Zappa was no doubt experienced in both literal and musical masturbation. Actually, not experienced, master. Zappa was always interested in the scientific result: if you rub this nerve something wild is gonna happen, and if you play this riff they'll all go wild. If Zappa's mission was to teach American youth the value of self-indulgence and self-expression, he did it with acrobatic guitar solos, defiantly goofy stage acts and straight zeal. I think it's something about Zappa every fan loves at their core, but doesn't really talk about.

Maybe we don't want to admit that watching him whack off is actually the best part. Maybe it does get us hot. There is no doubt that the canonical artist has need of many qualities, but every once in a while someone comes along who hasn't been systematically engineered by the entertainment business or education who takes such unabashed joy in their craft that some of that joy is transferred to the audience. It's called fun.

also, thing-fish!

An enlightening web page on Thing-Fish; includes all photos, transcribed libretto, and even the section of Annie Ample's autobiography pertaining to Zappa and the making of Thing-Fish.

Zappa the composer

I'm trying for a mix of personal and professional in this blog, so in an effort to cover my bases I'll do some entries this way, addressing each of the five questions individually and directly.

I think Zappa's music sounds like an elaborate joke to a lot of people when they first hear it. Before taking this class, what did I know of Zappa's music? I knew "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" and "Muffin Man" and Charlotte Cornfield has a Killy Ugly Radio poster in her living room. That was about it and I think most people without a previous interest might say the same. In an episode of the Simpsons entitled "A Midsummer's Nice Dream," Cheech and Chong come to town inspiring one of several psychedelia/sixties-influenced episodes. One of the jokes exploiting the seventies involves holding up several comedy albums with funny names that bear a distinct resemblance to, say, Zappa's "We're Only In It For The Money" and "Ruben and the Jets."

The interesting thing is that in Googling that episode combined with the phrase "comedy albums," the first few comments from blogs and reviews say that this particular joke had them in stitches. I feel I've learned a whole lot this year not just about Frank Zappa's work but artwork in general: in almost every case, what seems difficult, obscure or absurd has another more serious side to it. I remember when I was a kid, that whole scene reeked of a kind of dangerous symbolism. Around that time in my life kids were walking around my middle school wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the anarchy symbol, the Nirvana smiley face, The Ramones, Guns N' Roses, London Calling, and of course you had to have your cons. They started dying their hair with Kool-Aid. I of course was completely baffled by it all (as I had been by reggae and Macy Gray). At that age I was already disgruntled by the sexual implications of "Guns N' Roses" (I actually remember very clearly one boy making gestures with his hands and saying, "Get it? GUNS and ROSES?") and though I was ok with the other shirts, I was disturbed by the ones that said HEY HO LET'S GO thinking it was possibly yet another derogatory statement towards women, as that was the majority of what I saw in that music.

But there was an almost religious hermeticism to it all, and I wanted in. The only problem is that when you don't know enough about something, especially something you have previously disdained, you tend to lump all the things you know about that subject into one generalized category. So for me rock music became smoking weed-guitar solos-funny clothes-weird hair-lots of sex-drinking-more and crazier drugs. As you can see very few of those things have to do with actually making music. I'd thank a couple bands primarily for introducing me to that aspect of rock music, but Led Zeppelin in particular. I had developed an interest in jazz around grade seven and that led me to blues, which I knew I liked, and I already knew I liked poetry. Zeppelin had good lyrics and a bluesy undertone that eased me in.

The thing about Zappa was that he just wasn't into that. For works of art in general, the ones that are going to become successful do present something original, but usually accompanied by something familiar. A poet might write a poem about the Tower of Power that Zappa found so amusing, but write it in a classical form like a sonnet to give it a framework. A visual artist might paint a still life of a cat's skull, old bubblegum, torn slippers and a TV guide, but it's still in the form of a still life so it's a little easier to grasp, even though it's surprising. Zappa was just completely off the wall and he knew it. He said a lot that he was making music for the fans, and maybe he really meant it, but he was clearly so laden with artistic preoccupations that he couldn't even produce a decent hit single (with the exception perhaps of songs such as "Valley Girl" which were usually accidental hits anyway).

These preoccupations were: being a superb technician and the importance of progress. However cantankerous the artists who are consumed by the need to realize these two ideals, ultimately I feel they are optimists. They are actually too sensitive to reveal that they believe the world in which they see so much pain, ugliness and violence could be made perfect. Most artists accept that the world is imperfect and a few die trying to perfect it.

Quantifiably, Zappa changed much about rock music with his compositions and recordings. Improvisation was brought to a new level, not just improvising lyrics or riffs over chord changes like scat and jazz, but everything in the world, even material objects as hinted at in Uncle Meat. He didn't stick just to instruments when he was composing, writing in directions for funny things to be done with the instruments or the members of the orchestra themselves. He spliced tape obsessively leading to new overdubbing and sampling techniques, as well as placing the recording process in the same venerable bracket as performing. A rock musician didn't have to be someone who just knew about all the flanges and tweeters and wah-wahs and six ways to use a whammy bar to make yourself look like an idiot. He could be someone who understood, technically, the building blocks of classical music and all the technical equipment onstage, not just theirs. Zappa in his blowhard manner actually ends up accepting all types: even nerds. Kids didn't have anything to turn to in those days other than "Peggy Sue Got Married" and other loner Buddy Holly tunes, and there was no way those could possibly communicate the angst and rage they probably felt when all they heard were songs about the football quarterback dancing with the high school cheerleader, or worse, songs about being ultra-sexy and having it in for an ultra-sexy unattainable foxy lady. Numbers, arrangements, compositions, chemicals, harmonies, theory: these things are more calming for people like Zappa and true music geeks than swaying one's hips to a sexy backbeat could ever be.

The truth is, the people who don't exactly fit the mold are able to progress an art form because they have a different way of looking at things and the courage to realize it. I always think about Zappa's interest in the graphic aspect of musical notes on score paper. That may not be the dimension of music that is meant to be appreciated, but why not? Not many would disagree that all those tiny little notes are actually quite pretty sitting quietly on the page without anyone messing with them. It takes time. Because I associated Zappa with rock music, I thought he did a lot of drugs and just had a talent for saying funny stuff to his friends into a microphone, and they would laugh because they were drunk or high, or because they were weird and weird stuff made sense to them. Frank Zappa wasn't really like that--he just had an expansive imagination, and if I work to extract meaning and beauty from his music like Zappa extracted the beauty of those written notes on the page, my imagination will expand too.

I really am getting to the five questions

All I'm saying is that it's true, if Tipper Gore swirled one out every once in a while she probably never would have formed the PMRC.

A nice Robot Chicken episode that I hope doesn't get taken off the internet--the sketch about sex ed specifically hits the nail on the head when it comes to the repressed older generation imposing their frustrations on youth:

entry nine

Firstly, I was pleased by the mention of artist Carolee Schneemann compared to Zappa on page 275 of the text. I just finished writing a short paper that focused heavily on her and the Guerilla Girls, specifically in the context of gender and sexuality in art. Schneemann was mentioned as an illustration of how Zappa might have been better suited to the performance art community and might have actually been warmly accepted--Schneemann especially was doing a lot more with Meat Joy and Fuses than firing whipped cream out of a stuffed giraffe's ass. Was this not the raw representation, the authenticity and seriousness that Zappa always tried to convey? I suppose the rift appears with his supposedly juvenile humour...and his need to be popular. Tickets for a naked cellist don't exactly sell out at the box office (though I've no idea why). Whatever reasons exist for Zappa's not joining the performance art community of the '60s and '70s, I thought the comparison between Zappa and Schneemann compelling. I could be putting more thought into this since just yesterday I made up my mind on Zappa's sexism, a topic that's also focused on around that section of the text. I was struck by how well they served as representations of the gender binary in postmodern artists and what an intriguing essay topic that would make. I love to think of the arty men I know as enlightened, sexually adventurous and fair-minded. Perhaps they will usurp the art world throne, but it's possible they will inherit stats the Guerilla Girls are all too happy to provide on the grumbling coming from men when women start to infringe on their creative territory. It's understandable, and not their fault every single time: it is difficult for men and women to grow up, especially creatively, seeing more naked women in paintings than actually painting. Were this an essay, however, I wouldn't want it to have a feminist bent. I'd rather assume the cool eye of the art critic and try to look at both genders with curiosity and a mind to be champion of both. For example I am beginning to feel that women are starting to have it easier when it comes to a discussion of sexuality in their work. Because of all these associations with the patriarchy that develop when we look at men's art from a feminist point of view, a piece like Meat Joy (which involves nudity, sausages, raw fish and rope) could come off as just another juvenile repressed fantasy if created by a man. But especially in 1964, such a performance piece done by a woman is lauded as celebratory, wild, uninhibited, curious and my favourite, sensual. Schneemann's use of flesh as material is not all that different from Zappa's reference to the Tower of Power, except in execution--and if I continue in this way, I'll just end up writing the whole imaginary paper.

entry eight (hypocrisy)

You had mentioned in one class that some students were finding issues with Barry Miles' maybe too aggressively unbiased account of Zappa. I'm actually enjoying it a lot. For example, his account of Zappa's initial dealings with producer Tom Wilson on pages 103 - 104. Miles responds to Zappa's claim that Tom Wilson was unfamiliar with the music of the Mothers: "This scenario is both extremely unlikely and an insult to Wilson's intelligence." This example might have less of the aggressiveness that I was talking about than some other episodes in the book, but it struck me because I felt it really exposed between the image Zappa carried of himself in his head and how his actions appeared to others. I think Miles can be credited for his exploitation of that throughout the book.

The interesting thing about it is though Zappa was something of a hypocritical character and that's not what we like to see in our artists and social critics, in a way he was just mirroring the hypocrisy he saw putting a stranglehold on America. His mission of blowing apart conformity had become so associated with a certain "look" that people began to associate Zappa with activities (namely drug-taking) that he was not only not involved with, but to which he was vehemently opposed. We see it all the time: something truly groundbreaking gets developed and slowly gets all these meaningful connections attributed to it, has all these reasons behind its invention--and then we see all these disparate, meaningful attributes homogenized into a lumped-together, two-dimensional copy. I reminded of the "Flaming Moe's" episode of The Simpsons: Homer invents a new drink, Moe pretends he invented it, all the cool New Yorkers come and flip out over it, and then at the end everyone learns Moe's secret and before you know it Springfield is overrun with bars advertising "Flaming Meaux" and the like. I wanted to find a clip of it or a link to the episode, but the Simpsons people must be taking some action at the moment because all the links are currently dead.

I just wanted to bring up the notion of hypocrisy, have been considering the personal implications of Zappa's mission/personality, mostly in relation to Tank C. John Milton was similarly questionable in his artistic motives - he was also a man with politically volatile opinions and it could be argued that much of his writing and indeed his sympathetic take on Satan in Paradise Lost was a reaction to having to go into hiding (simply for speaking his mind). So when Zappa gave the finger to that stewardess on page 132, I wonder whether he truly wanted to personify the ugliness all around him, or whether it was nothing more than a moment in time when he was unable to control his pent-up rage.

entry seven

Food, sex, drugs, it's all related...or is it?

As I continue to take in Zappa's opinions, I am struck by his individualistic and separate takes on aspects of society which I am beginning to feel are just constructed to appear related. SEX & DRUGS: the two things you are taught not to do in high school, the two things bad role models are involved with, the two things which have become the ultimate representation of excess in the West. The fact is these things need be neither excessive nor related. I feel angry when I look back at my education on these topics, since the emotional response that I usually felt towards sex and drugs after receiving that education was fear and discomfort. I understand that there is no way to simulate the experience of sex or drug-taking safely in a classroom in the way that we might be able to simulate other experiences, but the negativity was overbearing. It is necessary to inform kids of the risks involved with sex and drugs, but the negativity accompanying this information seems to have the opposite of the intended effect, kind of like Zappa said with legalizing drugs--it simply romanticizes and "spices up" those activities. Now that I am attending university the curriculum I was introduced to regarding substances and sexual intercourse is clearly unhelpful - it was taught like a science class, with very little discussion that I can remember of emotional or political aspects of these topics and little encouragement to develop one's own opinions.

So why are sex & drugs related? I used to think, like a lot of people probably, that the link was mainly indulgence and pleasure. Now I am beginning to see that the discourses that arise from certain places (political figures, institutions) are aimed mainly at controlling people; subduing the masses, as Zappa might say. Getting better at sex will likely result in overall wellbeing, a healthy prostate, and a happy family if you so choose. Getting better at taking drugs will probably get you killed. Consult any sex expert, heck, even walk into one of those wildly uninformative classrooms and the first thing you will hear is never to have sex drunk or stoned. Sex is a heightening of bodily experiences and drugs is more of a way of tweaking them which, if persistent, will result in an eventual dulling of those bodily sensations.

This dulling concept that Zappa introduced was really something to me - I had always known that certain outside forces were trying to control the masses. But it was actually a pretty interesting idea to me that the government (or whoever) was creating a machine that would trick the public into thinking it was their idea, that they want to be stupider, lazier. And that this machine could operate in a fashion that was not totally and blatantly duplicitous. I mean sure, we see an ad with a sexy young woman driving a car, and the sexual implications of that make us want to buy that car. But what about after school when your gut is screaming for fries and you know, you KNOW they are bad for you, but that badness is almost like a little covenant with yourself. Something that makes you feel special. What I'm realizing now is that that may be exactly how some people want me to think.

I think Zappa's rejection of the Catholic church was beneficial to his career in that it taught him from a young age to be skeptical, but I don't think his entire vision was a response to that. I think Zappa was a genius, but that his particular combination of circumstances gave him tools for expression.

a note on the type (o's)

Sometimes I think I'm in English just because I can't stand typos. There are a lot of texts I've been required to read throughout my education which were based on the merit and depth of the information contained over the quality of writing. As someone who's shooting for a Writing degree, this is pure offense. I understand that Miles is the expert on Zappa, so it's solely a comment on my own reading style that I feel I have to write a silly ten-line blog entry about the fact that by Ontario, CA I already feel exasperated with the number of errors I've found.

sleepy

Better to understand a world of chaos than to be complicit with a world which merely appears orderly.

entry four

I thought it interesting after my last entry that you named Absolutely Free a "pageant," since those are typically associated with children and dress-up. This concept dovetails with Zappa's perceived immaturity and a conversation I was having in my poetry class about appropriation. Where does one draw the line between wilful appropriation and a kind of mockery, of the subject and oneself, an uneducated playing at the real thing?

This is a tough question to answer and I'm sure I'll continue to wrestle with it for the rest of my artistic life, and it's a question that can be really sensitive. Those who lack education or the means to obtain it, or even those who are fans of supposed autodidacts like Zappa, radibly oppose the need for education in the formation of a star or a genius. But then education seems to be the biggest factor in making the difference between that sense of authenticity and the sense of play-acting. My answer is that it's the hunger for knowledge that makes the difference between real geniuses and posers--even if Zappa did really have no formal education, I'm sure his devouring of composers like Varese and Stravinsky helped to develop his skill.

Some things that threw me off last class: the lines in Brown Shoes Don't Make It, "go to work, be a jerk." I think this delves a little into my discussion before of respect for the working class that isn't really seen in Zappa's work at all, rather something of a contempt. I understand the criticism, but sometimes the bluntness of Zappa's treatment of things tends towards the blindly inconsiderate. This also delves into a little discussion of ego. I've been having a lot of problems with unity and perfection lately. Discuss art all you want, but nobody's perfect. It becomes a problem of divorcing the work from its creator: I put down a book by Heidegger yesterday because I was advised of his Nazi leanings (and because I was $7 short). You brought up last class how it's possible that a large part of Zappa's creativity may have been inspired by revenge on the people who threw him in jail for making porn. I choose to attempt to reconcile the different parts of a person. I would rather have a complete, imperfect image than an untruthful, incomplete one. You have to attempt to find the beauty in that ugliness, that imperfection. You said in class that the willingness to personify ugliness is the sign of a good artist.

You also have to reconcile his role in society with his role as a father. I watched two movies recently which star eccentric fathers, David Lynch's documentary of R. Crumb and Get Him to the Greek. It's difficult to imagine people who seem so representative of everything wrong, lewd and perverted raising children properly. Sophie Crumb said of her dad in an interview with the New York Times Magazine, "We didn’t have orgies. He’s different toward me than he is with other people. Gentler. He’s the one who played Barbies with me. We had a name and a personality for each Barbie, and he gave each one a tone of voice."

You can read the whole interview here if you want.

Maybe all this stuff about children and immaturity is just coming up because I listened to Zappa when I was younger, though. When we were listening to Brown Shoes Don't Make It I was instantly reminded of City Hall by Tenacious D:



I used to love those guys.

this one's a little off-topic

I am consistently maddened by academia talking down to the puerilent audience. No one ever remembers what it's like to be a kid. Don't they know we all want to be treated as equals?

Firstly, they somehow place themselves in this category and simultaneously hover outside of it. I am but a lowly scholar, how could I attain the wisdom of Plato or Longinus or Milton? But as scholars, they at least cling to a higher rung than the common working class. All they enjoy is car chases and chicken wings, let them stuff themselves silly.

But in these searches for defects, obstacles, limits to art and what it can be, we forget that the true moment of creation happens not when the pen touches down on the page or the brush strokes the canvas, but rather when the final product of all that creative effort is enjoyed by another person. No matter their scholarly aspirations. I'm reading Longinus' On The Sublime for History of Criticism, and though in beginning to tackle his problem he says "It is necessary now to seek and to suggest means by which we may avoid the defects which attend the steps of the sublime," it was just a little further down the page that he inspired this idea by saying, "as if instinctively, our soul is uplifted by the true sublime; it takes a proud flight, and is filled with joy and vaunting, as though it had itself produced what it had heard"... (70)

Food for thought. This is certainly going to be a place of digression.

Also interesting: I just learned the word puerilent today, and doesn't that bring up all sorts of fun things? We might consider what one considers juvenile sounds and subject matter when it comes to Frank Zappa, with his kazoos and profane lyrics. Also brings up some interesting things to do with academia's relation to Zappa's type of music, and causes me to think about the true relationship between maturity and music and education.

idolization of stars

As I was writing my discussion essay on the groupie phenomenon, it became difficult to escape the question of why we need celebrity status anyway. It's been said for years and I still think it as I pluck wet laundry from the machine, why do we push the most necessary components of our society to the bottom of the social strata and lift up those whose contribution to society is little or none? Why do we ostracize those who are making the truest, hardest working art and the most basic, necessary everyday items? Little kids are making our shoes and getting paid nothing and middle-aged actresses are raking in a fortune designing perfumes. We need shoes. We don't need perfume and Dockers and reality TV and tee-shirts and imitation hair and crab meat. So how come we give the people that make those things not only all our money but also all of our respect and most of our dignity too? And how come these same middle-aged actresses are also making a bundle off of "novels" about self-discovery and nose jobs while writers trying to make statements about humanity or sex or something that matters to them are rotting in cold-water apartments eating two-dollar cans of pasta?

I guess you could argue that it doesn't matter. Society, though it must suffer art, is completely divorced from it in terms of economy and sometimes common sense. And those people aren't really doing it for the money anyway. That would be selling out. So the people who want to make money make it, and the people who want to make art make that. Everyone's happy, right?

Except I guess what I'm trying to get at is the relationship between the population and celebrities. It goes deeper than just making money. It's about taking a step back and being truly baffled. Why do we idolize stars, or anybody for that matter? Because we, perhaps, would like to be more like them, we want to improve ourselves so we use others as role models. What I'm curious about is that true divide between common sense and art-making, something I've been trying to attack from various different angles for a long time. Treated delicately that tenuous divide/relationship can be pleasant beyond compare, but when exploited without thought it leads to terrible things. We rip young women with beautiful voices from their showers and throw them in front of an audience. We no longer value her talent. We have forgotten the girl who made us shiver with her vibrato by the time she's been cast in her first play.

We no longer want her talent or even her body. I talked in my discussion essay about how sex has become an entity outside of itself with no real definition but a kind of hovering sense of evil. Fame has become like that especially so. We don't want to look good in a floor-length evening gown, we don't want to look good in a bikini, we don't even want to look good naked, we just want to look good: but we would look horrible in rhinestone t-shirts, g-strings and extensions. We would be less happy getting drunk on a couch and getting fake tans in front of a TV camera than we are just being who we are.

entry one

I guess I'd like to start out with a little something about how this might work, like a mission statement. I'm planning on using this blog as a kind of repository for all that which might not make sense but which is hopefully relevant. I'll pin down stray Zappa thoughts here when I get the chance, with little regard for entry length or cohesiveness of subjects and opinions. I'll write this blog kind of like I write notes - sort of just using snippets of information and ideas from various sources to make connections and reach conclusions. Important words, phrases, pictures. I'll use this blog to contribute to my search for meaning in art the qualities that make good art. What makes people react. What makes me react, and what my version of good art is. Welcome to my Zappa (FFAR 389C) diary.