Challenge
I committed the great faux pas last week of posting, yet again, about the fact that I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan.
Oh, the nattering nabobs of absolute musical homogeneity chimed in, as expected. For a moment there I felt like I was in high school, listening to kids in gym class; "The Sex Pistols? That's disgusting!".
Chief among them, of course, is my old pal J.B. Doubtless. When presented with the notion that a piece of music, a genre or an artist's oeuvre might have not only been important in someone's life but even done so by shaking up one's preconceptions, Mr. Doubtless' favorite response is usually "Who cares about being challenged? Music should entertain".
Enh.
First, the background.
One of many unusual elements in my pedigree is that I, perhaps alone among people walking the earth today, was converted to conservatism by an English professor. Dr. James Blake, the best professor in my entire college career, was a self-described monarchist - and he introduced me to the likes of Dostoeyvskii, Paul Johnson, Tolstoii, Orwell - all of them critical in my evolution from a snot-nosed liberal muttonhead to the comprehensively-knowledgeable, preternaturally-intelligent conservative you're reading today.
I - and Dr. Blake - could have taken a sideways reading of Laura Inghraham, and told the authors "Shut up and entertain me". I could have reared back, Doubltess on my haunches, and demanded that my books quit the proselyzing, and just entertain me. But they didn't. They challenged me. They started me thinking. They pushed the rock over the edge of the hill that led to me becoming not just a conservative - but a conservative with a vengeance. Four years after Dr. Blake made the connection between Raskolnikov's sense of the end justifying the means, the crimes of Stalin and the damage that statism had done to our own society, I was the Twin Cities' first conservative talk show host.
No challenge, no evolution.
So yeah. I go to exhibitions of frou-frou minimalist art at the Walker. I go to indy films. I go to the Fringe Festival. I help write pretentious art reviews. I gobble up music by Steve Earle and Gang of Four and the Screaming Blue Messiahs and the Clash and Stiff Little Fingers and Green Day and a lot of people who spit when they say "conservative".
I do it partly because it makes me a better conservative. Yep, JB, I mean it. Remember the movie "Patton"? (You have seen Patton, right? You didn't boycott it because it had that pinko George C. Scott in it, did you? Because George C. Scott hated Republicans. Right?) How did Patton beat Rommel? He read Rommel's book. He knew Rommel as well as Rommel knew himself. "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!".
So to does reading John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck, and listening to the Clash and Jonathan Borovsky and Garrison Freaking Keillor and every other variety of lefty wanker, and sampling from the cultural stew in which they wallow, make me a better conservative than those who don't. Because I know their cultural backdrop better than they do.
And it goes way beyond politics, of course. Challenging oneself is the key to just plain being a better person. Dr. Blake used to say, there are two kinds of people; the kind that go through life from "beer to beer", wanting only to be entertained and kept fat 'n happy as they waltz through life with their blinkers pointed straight ahead ("entertain me!"), and the people who are out there kicking the tires and taking everything - all the assumptions, all the prejudices, all the ideas - apart and putting them back together again.
So send me your lesbian slam poetry, your-wrapped skyscrapers and shrill street theatre and cubist cooking. Show me your Argentinian indy films and jazz trip-hop and gay choirs and xtreem scrimshaw...
...because in and among all the crap that passes for "art" out there are things that ennoble the human spirit, that give you a way of looking at your life that you hadn't thought about before, that give you a laugh you desperately need, or even piss you off to the point where you go and do better yourself.
And of course, it ties back into politics; art in all its forms is an avenue into the human heart, whether through the written word, the moving picture or the sung note - and conservatives are getting our asses handed to us on that whole front. The whole "Shut Up And Sing" motif is a fun, satisfying rejoiner to the puffery of the likes of Barbra Streisand - but it's a self-limiting idea, ceding an entire battlefield in the culture war to the enemy without a fight.
So don't bleat "Shut up and sing" to ther guys. Pick up a paintbrush or a guitar or a copy of "the Playwrite's Market" or "Mime for Dummies", and start beating the visigoths back from the gates on this, the last battlefield where conservatives are still forfeiting the match.
And quit being so farging afraid of a challenge. It's good for you.
Posted by Mitch at
September 26, 2005 07:38 PM
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''I was the Twin Cities' first conservative talk show host.''
Wow! I didn't know that Mitch was Paul Helm back around 1970. Pretending to be a middle aged white man on talk radio in Minneapolis while living in the middle of North Dakota and not yet ten years old - what a prodigy.
Posted by: Freddie Beamer at September 26, 2005 11:07 PM''I was the Twin Cities' first conservative talk show host.''
Wow! I didn't know that Mitch was Paul Helm back around 1970. Pretending to be a middle aged white man on talk radio in Minneapolis while living in the middle of North Dakota and not yet ten years old - what a prodigy.
Posted by: Freddie Beamer at September 26, 2005 11:09 PMAs a life long Springsteen fan (addict is probably a better word) and knee-jerk liberal turned center right conservative, I think both Doubtless and Ingraham miss the point. Yes, the sight of Bruce on stage with John Kerry was puke inducing. But while I don't turn to Springsteen for political enlightenment, I do regard him as a brilliant storyteller. In any society storytellers play an important role in examining and critiquing the culture. They play the role of conscience. I liked Springsteen better when, after Reagan's people tried to co-opt Born in the USA, Bruce told Mondale's people to stop using it as well. It was a story, not propaganda. Eventually, however, most pop stars feel compelled to get more explicit in their politics. That's usually about the time their music starts to suffer.
Posted by: chriss at September 26, 2005 11:20 PMThat's OK; Bruce's body of work is unparalleled, and he also happens to be one of the greatest live performers ever to have lived.
Just wanted to say thanks for being at least willing to "know the enemy", so to speak. I think too many people view the other side this way, which is sad. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, but have known many conservatives and have shared many very lively discussions. Nothing more fun! I think we all have so many things in common that it is our responsibility, our duty, to hear the other sides approach as to how to get to where we all want to be. The right suffers just as much from blowhards on FOX "news" as the left does from ranters like Randi Rhodes (although I tend to agree with her sentiments more often).
Posted by: Eddie D. at September 27, 2005 12:38 PMEzra Pound was an American who became a fascist anti-semite & made propaganda broadcasts for Mussolini. Doesn't mean he wasn't a damn fine poet; here's the first stanza of his Canto I, a translation of part of the Odyssey:
And then went down to the ship,
Posted by: Terry at September 27, 2005 12:48 PMSet keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Crice's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
I just happened to read this in Stephen King's book "On Writing", during my lunch reading...
"Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers.
Posted by: Jeff at September 27, 2005 12:53 PM...
Others hold forth at open-mike poetry slams, wearing black turtlenecks and wrinkled khaki pants; they spout doggerel about "my angry lesbian breasts" and "the tilted alley where I cried my mother's name".
...
[Competent writers] may also be found [at] poetry readings on Open Mike Night. These are folks who somehow understand that although a lesbian may be angry, her breasts will still remain breasts."
Mitch--
Seen "Birkie" Keillor's latest puke-inducer?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/09/21/keillor_bush/index_np.html
I especially like the way he likens our citizenry (and, by implication, military) to "lackeys, minions, henchmen and stooges."
Posted by: Pete (Alois) at September 27, 2005 01:01 PMTaking it one step further...
If immersing yourself in scummy leftist culture somehow makes you a better conservative, wouldn't blowing a few dudes down on Lake Street make you a better heterosexual?
Same logic.
Posted by: JB Doubtless at September 27, 2005 01:50 PM"If immersing yourself in scummy leftist culture..."
Scummy?
Beethoven was probably a leftist (goodness knows he was an entitlement pimp). Does that impugn his work?
"... somehow makes you a better conservative,"
...it's clear to see by any rational person, JB; being engaged in culture as an active critical person DOES make me a better conservative.
" wouldn't blowing a few dudes down on Lake Street make you a better heterosexual?"
Something you wanna get off your chest, JB?
Anyway, that's not remotely analogous; the act you mention is a *technique*, not a philosophy or an orientation. Would knowing how to design a lighting rig for a stage show (which I've done) make me a better theatre critic? No, it'd make me an employable lighting designer. Knowing the difference between good and bad lighting? That'd make me a better theatre critic.
Challenging my conservatism makes me a better, more literate, less complacent conservative.
Posted by: mitch at September 27, 2005 02:24 PMIt's the same way of thinking Mitch: if I eat apples (which are mealy and worm-ridden) when I eat oranges I will be able to appreciate them so much more.
If you think this makes you a better conservative, I have to ask at what price.
If you swam in a pond of feces twice a week, it may make you appreciate the community pool more, but would it be worth it?
Having to listen to Springsteen's socialist, secular humanist drivel (btw, the guy has at least 5 songs with a character named "Johnny"--enough!) is just too high a price so you can look open-minded...in my never-to-be-humble opinion.
Posted by: JB Doubtless at September 27, 2005 03:06 PMGood post. I just don't understand how you can listen to Springsteen without mood-altering drugs.
But Gang of Four and Stiff Little Fingers? Mitch — you headbanger you!
Let me know when you're ready for your broken beats tutorial...
Posted by: Norwegianity at September 27, 2005 04:58 PMNor: I've broken many a beat in my day. But laissez les bontemps roullez...
JB:
"It's the same way of thinking Mitch: if I eat apples (which are mealy and worm-ridden) when I eat oranges I will be able to appreciate them so much more."
Wow - you don't get much work with analogies, do you?
You seem to continually miss the big point: just because one disagrees with an *artist's* politics doesn't perforce make this *art* less valid, interesting, or challenging (although I know how you hate challenge).
"If you think this makes you a better conservative, I have to ask at what price."
Better yet, JB, since you keep talking about this supposed price, you tell me; what IS the "price" I pay for approaching art, regardless of the artists' politics, with a keenly critical mind?
You think that the art is going to sap my conservative will? Ha! Buncombe and baked wind, I say! Show me!
"If you swam in a pond of feces twice a week, it may make you appreciate the community pool more, but would it be worth it?"
Sigh. Again with the false analogies.
A MUCH better analogy; sometimes to get a better crop of wheat, you need to plant beans for a year, to replace nutrients the wheat needs in the soil.
"Having to listen to Springsteen's socialist, secular humanist drivel (btw, the guy has at least 5 songs with a character named "Johnny"--enough!)"
Dostoevskii had about a dozen "Vasilii" and "Ivan" characters. Is that somehow a problem?
" is just too high a price so you can look open-minded..."
Again, JB - and please answer this, immediately and without waffling or prevarication - WHAT IS THE PRICE?
What is the "toll" that my intellectual and spirital well-being gets charged for not observing political kosher laws on my intellectual, spiritual and artistic stimulation?
And, as usual, you miss the motivation. It has nothing - *Ze. Ro.* - to do with "looking" open minded or cool or anything. *I do it because I enjoy art for its own sake*. And it obviously means nothing to my politics, because - again - I AM the most conservative person either of us knows.
There really is no way around it, JB.
Now - there's a question or two on the table for you. Have at it.
Posted by: mitch at September 27, 2005 07:36 PMIs this fucking Candid Camera? Is there some hidden cameraman taping me as I sit before my computer, frozen horror carved into my face? Did I just read someone suggest we listen to PAT FUCKING BOONE records? Did somebody just compare engaging in most of Western culture to having a Lake street cock shoved down our throats? Well, goddam it all to hell, I guess if you swim in a pool full of oranges packed with feces, that's not gonna make you appreciate eating Lake street dick with an wormy apple up your ass just so you can appear open-minded.
Same logic.
Posted by: Tim at September 27, 2005 08:06 PMJB - you are, like, the conservative Eva.
Posted by: Geoff at September 28, 2005 06:04 AMThe ironic thing is that Pat Boone used to take a world of shit from people like JB because he did covers (sanitized, whitebread covers, but covers none the less) of the R and B music of the day. He "Challenged" his audience. Sorry, JB.
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