A Matter of Taste

Nobody knows this, nobody at all, but when I was in fourth grade, I wrote a play. I don’t really remember what it was about, but it was a real play, and my class performed it. Somehow, I convinced the teacher that we should do this. It probably wasn’t very good, but still. 9-year-old kid writes a play. Nobody told me to. It wasn’t an assignment. I just did it on a goof.

I have been creating my entire life. In fifth grade, I created a comic strip about cats, that was mostly a ripoff of Garfield. Pages and pages of comic strips about cats. In sixth grade, I created a planetarium show. In high school, I had an underground newspaper. And as an adult, I still have an underground newspaper. I’ve written books, short stories, flash fiction, and poems. I had a radio show, and I currently have a podcast. I’m a DJ and producer, and I have recorded over 100 hours of mixes that I’ve posted online for people to enjoy. I have created mountains of content over the years, and it just keeps coming. If I’m not creating, I feel incomplete. Depressed, actually.

Some people don’t create anything at all. The vast majority of people, in fact. They go to work and put part A into slot B (or the white-collar equivalent) and go home and watch some shows. They consume other people’s content. That is how our society is built—99% of people consume the content that is produced by a tiny minority of creatives. But the question is: are all people capable of being creative?

I think so. I truly believe that all of us have something to contribute to this world. Maybe it’s making YouTube videos. Maybe it’s flower arrangements. Maybe it’s sound engineering. Maybe it’s interior decorating. Even having a food Instagram with 35 followers is a creative outlet. I think the number of people who have absolutely zero sense of art or aesthetics at all is actually pretty small. And they all listen to Jimmy Buffett.

Taste is a different question. You might recall that New York Magazine used to have their approval matrix, with brilliant/despicable on the x axis and highbrow/lowbrow on the y axis. That used to be my favorite part of that magazine—I used to read it in my therapist’s waiting room in the 2000s. I think the vast majority of people live in the lowbrow/despicable quadrant. And that’s ok. It’s still art. I’m not saying Jimmy Buffett isn’t art, I’m just saying that it’s in poor taste. It’s kitsch. I listen to dance music, which has its own highbrow/lowbrow axis, with Digweed on one end and Afrojack on the other. I disapprove of some art forms. But it doesn’t mean they’re not art forms. Even Skrillex, who in 2014 sounded like a spoon in a garbage disposal, was also art. People ask me all the time of my opinion of David Solomon’s DJ skills. I think he’s a terrific DJ, but his taste is much more mainstream than mine.

You will notice that I have a mix of avant-garde and kitsch in my music recommendations. If I just gave you links to my signature brand of highbrow progressive house all the time, it would be pretty boring. I occasionally like kitsch. It’s good to mix it up. I like all forms of art and culture, high and low. You know who takes themselves more seriously than any other people in the world? People in the fine art world. No sense of humor whatsoever. They would rather eat rat poison than listen to Nicki Minaj. I suspect a lot of people fall into that category, but guess what: it’s still art.

My criticisms about some forms of music (Phish, Dead, Allman Brothers) are less about the actual music, which is not bad, especially Phish—I could see myself listening to Phish. It’s about the types of people it attracts. Those bands tend to draw people who are ignorant of and oblivious to any other forms of art. People who listen to Phish, don’t listen to much else. It’s also an art form that can truly only be appreciated live. They aren’t recording artists in the traditional sense. Nobody pops in a Phish CD and grooves out for an hour in the car. But they will go to all thirteen shows in the Baker’s Dozen at Madison Square Garden. It’s a lot closer to Space Mountain than music. I don’t think too many people go to Dead shows for the music. They go for the experience. Again, it’s art, and if you’re an art critic, you can look at it through a number of different lenses. These bands have succeeded by creating an immersive experience for fans. They have also been financially successful, because this is the only way to make money in music these days.

One of the things I am struggling with at the moment is taste as it pertains to writing. The highest of highbrow writing is published in literary journals. Unless you’re in that scene, you probably don’t even know what I’m talking about. The world’s best fiction is not published in books—it is published in journals. Journals that have a circulation of about 800 copies. They are supported primarily through grants and university endowments. I have been trying to break into this scene for a decade. The problem is, my writing isn’t literary enough, which is another way of saying that it isn’t highbrow enough. If I wanted to my writing to be literary, I could read a huge pile of these journals and imitate the style. Sooner or later, I would get a story accepted. But that feels inauthentic. In fact, most of the books that you will find in Barnes and Noble have terrible writing. Nobody reads the best writers, which is an existential crisis that the literary world has been struggling with for some time. Barry Hannah, indisputable fucking genius, and perhaps the greatest writer in history, never had a book sell more than 7,000 copies. But many of the world’s best writers consider him to be their favorite writer.

So the question is: what kind of artist do you want to be? Do you want to be adored by the masses, or do you want to be revered by the intelligentsia, the people who count? I go back and forth on this all the time. I want it both ways—I want a book to sell a million copies, but I also want to be respected by my peers. The last thing you want to be is a sellout, but then again, sellouts get rich. I think the one artist who stayed true to his style and crossed the highbrow/lowbrow divide was Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Trust me, Trent Reznor never thought that music about torture and mutilation would be topping the charts one day. He produced the art that he loved, and it resonated with people. That’s the best of all worlds.

I went to grade school with a kid who had absolutely no musical ability. None. But he played saxophone. And he was terrible. After eighth grade, we went our separate ways, but I can see what he’s up to on Facebook. He’s the frontman of a local cover band, and plays guitar. Grew his hair out into a fancy-looking mullet and plays local gigs. He is quite well-known in the area. He is also a painter. Does Bob Ross-type stuff, but instead of happy little trees, he does beaches and sunsets. Sells his art at those little art fairs you see with the white tents, for maybe $150 a pop. The type of stuff you hang in your house next to the Live, Laugh, Love sign.

I have a lot of feelings about this. On one hand, good for him! He’s an artist, he’s producing art, the guy seems happy, he gets a ton of Facebook engagement for this stuff, terrific. On the other hand…you mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, my friend. I didn’t get into music to play in my bedroom. I wanted to be huge. And I’ve been pretty successful, believe it or not. Haven’t played Lollapalooza like David Solomon yet, but I’ve had some amazing gigs. I don’t do something unless I really believe I can be the best at it. I’ll let you in on a little secret: once I finish grad school, and we move into the new house, I am going to take up painting. And I am not going to do it half-ass. You won’t see me sitting on a folding chair in a white tent with a shoebox full of cash. Of course, the chances of success are basically nil. But that’s true of everything, isn’t it?

We all must have artistic pursuits. People who have none tend to be assholes.

Go fuck yourself,

Jared

Music recommendation: Speaking of kitsch, I’m a sucker for really good pop music. I’m not above listening to cheesy shit from time to time. The best pop song in this history of history is I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys. You can’t help but sing along. The Backstreet Boys went to a Miss USA pageant a few years back and performed this live, and brought the house down. The most perfect song ever written. A billion views on YouTube.

P.S. We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards will always be free. Please forward to whoever you like.