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.