Category: Music

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The sound of your blood: The Batman Meme Project hits the international art world

Thanks to Caterina Gualco, owner of the contemporary art gallery UniMediaModern in Genoa, Italy, the Batman Meme Project has now hit the international art world. Caterina invited me to submit something to an exhibition she is mounting called 20×20 eventi 2020 (pronounced in Italian “venti per venti eventi venti venti”). It  is a ‘magic box’ containing many different art works, all 20x20cm. After the exhibition of the box’s contents, the whole will end up in the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genoa’s contemporary art museum.

20x20-Eventi-2020

My piece is in the fifth column from the right, second row down. Here it is by itself:

 

Robin: I can’t stand this noise. If only we had an anechoic chamber, its six walls…
Batman: Fool! You’d be deafened by the sound of your blood in circulation and your nervous system in operation.

In honor of the momentous event of my being displayed in an art gallery, I am here publishing the full text of my commentary on the meme from my book-in-progress, A Certain Gesture: Evnine’s Batman Meme Project and Its Parerga!.

M.42 The Sound of Your Blood…

M.42 The Sound of Your Blood… Composed: March 13th. Posted: March 17th. Orientation: Reverse. Font: Comic Sans. TB1: “I can’t stand this noise. If only we had an anechoic chamber, its six walls…”, white. TB2: “Fool! You’d be deafened by the sound of your blood in circulation and your nervous system in operation.”, white.

When the meme was posted on Facebook, on March 17th, a friend of the artist, Edmund Fawcett, commented:

In the prehistoric late 1950s, MoMa in NYC had for a time an anechoic chamber in the garden. I visited as a kid. Batman’s right or half-right. I recall hearing the sound of blood circulating. The leaflet said I’d also hear the electrics in the brain. I tried hard to hear them but didn’t. Maybe thoughts about thoughts were inaudible?

The language used in the meme clearly echoes a story the composer John Cage told in a number of places of a visit he made to an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. For Cage, the moral of the story seems to have been that where there is life, there is music (“until I die there will be sounds”) – something he took to be a joyous state of affairs. The artist, apparently, was fascinated, perhaps even obsessed, by this story, or by the thought of an anechoic chamber, but seems to have made of the whole thing just about the opposite of what Cage took it to mean. As a young man, he wrote what he called a ‘book,’ entitled The Incoherence of the Incoherence (after the work by the Islamic philosopher Averroës). This piece of near-juvenilia is a strange jumble and we shall defer until the commentary on M.96 (“The Origins of Neo-Platonist Metaphysics”) a closer look at it. But the book contains a passage we will quote here in which the artist gives us his own perspective on Cage’s anecdote:

‘Darkness there was, but no silence.’[1] Such might be an apt description of being in an anechoic chamber with the lights off.

“For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible. Such a room is called an anechoic chamber, its six walls made of special material, a room without echoes. I entered one    at Harvard University  several years ago and  heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he  informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, and the low one my blood in circulation. Until I die there will be sounds.”[2]

Think what this means. One day, here in the city, listen to the noises around you.      Music blares, the traffic roars, people shout. What     a din! What a hubbub! In order to escape this inconvenience, remove yourself to the countryside. Enjoy the bird song and the murmuring of the brook (never mind the hurdy-gurdy and the loutish accents). Enjoy them. Sing them to yourself, once, twice, then again, and again and on and on until they grow into a clamorous uproar, until the cricket booms in your ear at night and the whippoorwill screams to you of death.

Then take up thy substance and get thee hence; take thyself and go.[3] Go to the wastelands or the deserts where not even the beasts and insects live. Ah desolate solitude. Let us live together in silent ceremony. But what is this? Can it be that I hear something? Yes, it is coming from over there. No, now it’s here. And there, and there, and there. It’s everywhere. “Yes, everywhere,” howls the wind, in hollow mockery. “As long as this planet moves about the sun there will always be alternate patches of hot and cold air. And the hot air will always displace the cold air and I, yes I, the wind will live forever. And for me, living is screaming. From now on, for you who have seen the barren places of the earth, will my slightest stirring, unheeded by all else, be as the trumpeting of a thousand elephants and when I raise my voice you shall stop your ears and cower, lest you are overcome.”

Fly, fly from here quickly! But where can I go? Where shall the wind not find me? Shall I take refuge from mankind with the wind, or from the wind with mankind? But wait! Has not the ingenuity of man provided me with that with which I can avoid both man and the wind? Is there not the anechoic chamber, its six walls made of special material, a room as silent as technologically possible? But imperiously, the voice of Being laughs: “Get thee to an anechoic chamber, and hear there thy nervous system in operation and hear there thy blood in circulation.”[4]

The piece is strange and somewhat overwrought (and involves a jarring switch from second to first person in the course of the penultimate paragraph) but it strikingly illustrates the artist’s constant, almost existential, struggle against noise, something that also makes itself felt in M.71 (“Shhhh”).

There is more to the story of the artist’s interest in the anechoic chamber and John Cage. We are in possession of a letter he wrote, almost certainly at the end of May or in early June, 1982. Here is the relevant part:

You’ll never guess what happened. It was brill-to-the-max ciudad.[5] I went with Miranda to some of the 70th birthday bash for John Cage at the Almeida.[6] Between two of the events we went to the caff across the road for a cup of tea. We sat down at a large table and then noticed that right next to us, was Cage himself, being interviewed by a couple of wankers.[7] As you know, I’m obsessed by the story he keeps telling about that time he was in an anechoic chamber. So I asked him if he’d been in one in London. He said he’d been photographed in one but it wasn’t operational! What a pity. If only it was working I could go myself. Then we got talking about philosophy. He was absolutely sold on Norman Malcolm’s memoir of Witters.[8],[9] Only he pronounced it as “meeeeemoir,” the first vowel long, in both the phonetic and temporal sense. It sounded so strange. Then, cos me and Miranda are trying to eat a macrobiotic diet, and he wants to write a macrobiotic cookbook(!), he gave us this recipe.[10] (I quote, almost verbatim.) “Take a carrot, a turnip, and a parsnip. Put them in the oven and roast them. It’s delicious.” Ha ha ha. We tried it and do you want to know what it was like? A carrot, a turnip, and a parsnip that had been roasted. Not too thrilling. I hope his cookbook has some recipes in it that are more exciting and tastier than that![11] Anyway, he was really nice and it was so amazing to chat with him. I feel like a scrofulous peasant that’s been touched by royalty! It’ll be a story to put in a meeeeemoir of my own.[12]

[1] [Editor’s note:] This quotes the beginning of the artist’s ‘book.’

[2] [Editor’s note:] Cage (1961, 8). The passage continues: “And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.”

[3] [Editor’s note:] Possibly a reference to Genesis 12,1.

[4] [Editor’s note:] Cage (1961, 51).

[5] [Editor’s note:] Brilliant to the max city. On the model of “weird city,” a construction the artist learned from the American conductor John Morris Russell when they were students together at Kings College London some time between 1978 and 1981.

[6] [Editor’s note:] “Cage at 70,” the opening event of the Almeida Festival of 1982, was a series of performances at St James’ Church, London N7 (not at the Almeida Theatre itself, as Evnine suggests in his letter) from Friday May 28th to Sunday May 30th.

[7] [Editor’s note:] A strangely (or perhaps not) uncharitable reaction to two perfectly innocent people who, no doubt, had banked on this time with Cage and felt it was the artist and his companion who were the ‘wankers.’

[8] [Editor’s note:] Norman Malcolm’s Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. For the style of abbreviation manifested in “Witters,” see the commentary on “Distinguo.” The philosopher Grice recalls J.L. Austin’s having said “Some like Witters… but Moore is my man” (Grice 1991, 381). Given that Grice’s book was not published until 1991, the artist’s use of this slang is almost certainly coincidental.

[9] [Editor’s note:] Cage’s enthusiasm for this work around that time is borne out by a passage from a letter he wrote to Ornella Volta, the author of two works on Satie, on May 25th 1983, a year after the conversation reported here: “I have finished reading your book (in French; no English has arrived); I love it. I can say that for few others. Like yours they are profoundly touching: Norman Malcolm’s Memoir of Ludwig Wittgenstein [sic] and Templier’s Erik Satie (not in the English translation, which I find impossible to read). This making reading matter touching must be what death does to biography” (Cage 2016, 529).

[10] [Editor’s note:] Again from a letter not long after the reported conversation (Feb 28th, 1983, to Lindsey Maxwell) : “Through John [Lennon] and Yoko [Ono] I changed my diet and that of Merce Cunningham to the macrobiotic diet” (Cage 2016, 528). This makes the artist a kind of culinary grandchild to John and Yoko.

[11] [Editor’s note:] Cage says this, of his projected cookbook: “instead of just being about cooking, it will be about everything that interests me. But I will arrange the use of chance operations so that cooking comes up more than anything else” (Montague 1985, 206). (How can one do anything other than love that second sentence.) The book was never written but on the website of the John Cage Trust there is a page with Cage’s notes on macrobiotic cooking and a selection of recipes. Amazingly, one can find on the page, under the heading “Root Vegetables,” the following: “Carrots, Turnips, Jerusalem Artichokes, etc. Place in a Rohmertopf (clay baking dish) in a hot oven for an hour or more with a little, very little, sesame oil. They may be covered with leeks and topped with a mixture such as one of those suggested for roast chicken” (http://johncage.org/blog/cagerecipes.html, quoted here with the permission of the John Cage Trust).  It is possible that Cage did not recommend to Evnine the use of sesame oil, or that he did, but that the artist ignored the advice.

[12] [Editor’s note:] Though the present work is hardly a memoir of Evnine, it is, perhaps, a meme-oir, as Cage would have called it, so the artist’s prediction is, literally in a manner of speaking, here being fulfilled.

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A problem of notation

Several times, now, I have alluded to a song I made up using the many names I bestowed upon my much-loved cat Celestino (c.1992-c.2002). (He was named after Pope Celestine V, the patron saint of bookbinders. Celestine was followed by Boniface VIII when the latter placed a speaking tube in the wall of Celestine’s room and, impersonating the Holy Ghost, urged him to abdicate.) The issue is relevant to my project for two reasons. First, it forms the basis of an objection to a philosophical thesis, defended by the philosopher Robin Jeshion, that our practice of naming is regulated by an ideal that one should not give a name to something if one knows it already has a name. Secondly, I noted that I have a kind of psychological block about saying nonsense words and the revelation of the text of my song is part of an attempt, through the psychoanalysis that my book is largely about, to overcome this inhibition.

Well, here goes nothing:

I have a little grey cat
I have a little calico cat
And his name is Zemeckis
And his name is Tenbrooks
And his name is Boon Boy
And his name is Farabiano Butel
And his name is Macky Bee
And his name is Farabutles
And his name is Boxim
And his name is Bocca
And his name is Boyottles
And his name is Bunols.

The song is, like Echad Mi Yodea and Green Grow the Rushes, O, a cumulative song. The first iteration consists of the first two lines and the last. The second inserts the penultimate line, and so on, till the last iteration goes through the whole litany.

I will also, in the book, provide the melody but, as you can imagine, this presents a problem of how to notate a cumulative song. Should one just write out the final iteration, as I did with the text, and add an explanation like the one in the previous paragraph? Should one just write the first iteration and then separately provide the melody for the inserted lines? In the end, I decided to write the first and second iterations, setting off the inserted line in the second with repeat marks on either side and a comment above that one should repeat the phrase as many times as one has names to sing.

And-his-name-is-Bunols-score

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… and his name was Boyottles…

Some yeggs ago (I remember reading an article on Oulipo some decemvirs ago that gave as an example of their techniques N+7, in which an author would take a literary text and replace, say, all the nouns with the seventh noun following in a dictionary – “Call me Islander. Some yeggs ago” was quoted as the beginning of an Oulipian Moby-Dick...)…. some yeggs ago, as I was saying (“yegg,” by the way, is US slang for a safecracker), I wrote a post in which I explained that, having just read Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, I realized that if I wanted my book-in-progress A Certain Gesture: Evnine’s Batman Meme Project and Its Parerga! to be taken seriously as auto-theory, I was, like Nelson, going to have to put some “skin in the game,” which is to say, to say some embarrassing things.

Anticipating anxiety on the part of my readers that I was planning to launch myself, in my book, into lurid confessions of a sexual nature (like Nelson), I hastily re-assured them that what I was going to do instead was to include the text of a song I once made up consisting of all the silly names by which I interpellated my then cat Celestino, a magnificent Russian Blue.

If you think this hardly counts as putting “skin in the game,” let me explain. Something that I have known about myself for a long time is how hard it is for me to say out loud many nonsense words. By “nonsense words,” I mean made up family slang, spontaneously made up words (as in philosophical examples or in silly shouting), the kind of patter you get in children’s songs (or in “Bad Romance”) that intermingles nonsense and random non-nonsense words, and so on. Yet despite my difficulty in saying these things out loud to others, they take up an enormous amount of space in my mind. They force themselves out of my mouth when I am alone, minding my business, especially walking the dog. Indeed, my subjective experience of this phenomenon links it to my (possibly quite inaccurate) conception of Tourette Syndrome and I often refer to my “tourettic brain.”

I have no idea whether there is any underlying neurological condition, but there are clearly psychological roots. I strongly associate these kinds of taboo words with my mother and the songs she sang to me as a child. One particular such song is like my heart of darkness! Even alone, my mouth rebels against being made to sing it. I can hardly stand even to think it! As I talk about this issue in analysis, my analyst and I sometimes joke that we’ll know I’m cured when I’m able to say the words of this song.

Writing such words is somewhat easier than saying them, but it’s not nothing. So, you see, putting all those silly, tourettic names of my cat into my book really is difficult for me. I had initially intended to refer to the song but not quote it. The decision to include its text was momentous. I feel that, however timidly, I am putting “skin in the game” of auto-theory.

Another momentous step I have taken in the direction of resolving this conflict between the need both to express and to inhibit my childish babbling is this meme movie I made, using the Galaxy Brain template. The movie puts together a representation of some of my mental processes with a melody that I often find myself compulsively singing nonsensical words to. The movie reaches a climax with one such word.

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Immagine – scrittura – parola – silenzio

On Wednesday October 23rd, I will be giving a lecture entitled “Image – Writing – Speech – Silence” at the Museo Villa Croce (a contemporary art museum) in Genoa, Italy. I am going to talk about the ways in which some of my memes play with the representation of speech through writing and of writing through images.

I wanted to include in the presentation an extract from the book. The event was co-organized by Caterina Gualco, of Unimediamodern. Since she works with artists associated with the Fluxus movement, I thought it would be appropriate to read a commentary that deals with John Cage and silence. Here it is, in an Italian translation by Giovanna Pompele (transcribed by me, so little errors may have crept in). This marks the first appearance of any part of the book in a language other than its original English. (And I have nowhere made public the English original, so this is the only way to access it.) If you do read it, let me say that the footnotes, especially to the letter quoted at the end, are vitally important. *Le note a piè di pagina sono importanti!*

anechoic

Robin: Questo rumore non lo posso sopportare. Se solo avessimo una camera anecoica, con sei pareti…

Batman: Cretino! Il suono del sangue nelle vene e il fruscio del sistema nervoso in funzione sarebbero assordanti.

Le parole usate nel meme sono una chiara allusione a una storia raccontata varie volte dal compositore John Cage riguardo una sua visita della camera anecoica di Harvard. La morale della storia per Cage sembra essere che dove c’è vita c’è musica (“sino alla fine dei miei giorni ci saranno suoni”) —  un pensiero che per Cage è motivo di gioia. Sembra che l’artista fosse affascinato da questa storia o dall’idea della camera anecoica, forse addirittura ossessionato, ma che le conclusioni che ne trabbe siano il contrario delle conclusioni di Cage. Quando era giovane l’artista scrisse un “libro” che chiamò L’incoerenza dell’incoerenza (il titolo ispirato da un’opera del filosofo islamico Averroè). Questo scritto, composto dall’artista quasi ragazzo, è un miscuglio strano. Per il momento mi limito a dire che il libro contiene un passaggio in cui l’artista ci dà la sua prospettiva dell’aneddoto di Cage:

“L’oscurità c’era, ma il silenzio no.”[1] Questa sembra una descrizione accurata dello stare in una camera aneoica con le luci spente.

“In certe circonstanze tecniche potrebbe essere auspicabile ottenere una situazione la più silenziosa possibile, ossia quell’ambiente chiamato camera anecoica, sei pareti di materiale insonorizzante allestito in modo da ottenere una camera priva di eco. Parecchi anni fa a Harvard sono stato in uno spazio del genere e ho sentito due suoni, uno acuto e uno grave, e quando li ho descritti al tecnico incaricato questi mi ha spiegato che quello acuto era il mio sistema nervoso in funzione, quello grave era la circolazione del sangue. Sino alla fine dei miei giorni ci saranno suoni.”[2]

Lettore, pensa al significato di tutto ciò. Un giorno, anche qui in città, prova ad ascolatre i suoni che ti circondano. La musica ad alto volume, il fragore del traffico, le urla della gente. Che frastuono! Che inferno! Ecco, scappa in campagna. Godi il frullio degli uccellini e il gorgoglio di un ruscello (lasciamo stare le zampogne e gli accenti volgari). Godili. Lasciali risuonare dentro una volta, due volte e poi ancora e ancora e nuovamante finché non diventano un clamore insopportabile, finché i grilli non ti chiassano nelle orecchie durante la notte e il gufo ti urla di morte.

Poi vattene dal tuo paese e dalla tua terra; alzati e vai.[3] Va’ nelle terre desolate o negli scabri deserti dove non ci sono ne’ bestie ne’ insetti. Ah, infinita solitudine: stiamocene insieme io e te in solenne silenzio. Ma, aspetta, cos’è? Cos’è che sto sentendo? Viene da là. No, adesso è qui. È lì, è là, è lì. È dappertutto. “Si, dappertutto,” grida il vento con vuota derisione: “fintantoché il pianetta girerà intorno al sole ci saranno sempre bolle di aria calda e di aria fredda. E l’aria calda rimpiazzerà sempre l’aria fredda ed io, sì, io, il vento, soffierò per sempre. E per me soffiare è urlare. D’ora in poi, per voi che avete visto i luoghi spogli della terra, ogni mio sibilo, anche se nessun altro lo sentirà, sarà come le trombe di mille elefanti, e quando alzerò il tono vi coprirete le orecchie e vi acquatterete nel terrore d’essere soprafatti.”

Via, via da qui, andiamocene! Ma dove andare? Dov’è che il vento non mi troverà? Dovrei fuggire dall’umanità dove c’è il vento, o dal vento dove c’è l’umanità? Ma un attimo! L’ingenuità umana non mi ha già fornito qualcosa con cui possa evitare sia l’uomo che il vento? Non c’è forse la camera anecoica, non ci sono le sue sei pareti di materiale unico, una stanza che più silenziosa la tecnologia non ne puo creare? La voce dell’Essere scoppia in risatte implacabili: “O uomo, porta le tue ossa mortali in una camera anecoica e sentivi il suono del sangue che circola, e sentivi il suono del sistema nervoso in funzione.”[4]

Questo scritto è strano e piuttosto convoluto (nel penultimo paragrafo c’è anche un cambiamento stridente dalla seconda alla prima persona), ma illustra con gran forza la lotta costante, quasi esistenziale, dell’artista contro il rumore.

Ma la storia dell’artista e del suo interesse in John Cage e nella camera anecoica non si ferma qui. Siamo in possesso di una lettera scritta da lui alla fine di maggio o all’inizio di giugno 1982. Qui è la parte che ci riguarda:

Mi è successa una cosa incredibile, strafighissima! Sono andato con Miranda ad alcuni degli eventi organizzati per il settantesimo di John Cage all’Almeida.[5] Nel intervallo tra due eventi siamo andati al bar di fronte per un tè. Ci siamo seduti a un tavolo grande e dopo un po’ abbiamo notato che proprio vicino a noi c’era Cage con due pirla che lo intervistavano.[6] Come sai, sono ossessionato dalla storia che Cage continua a raccontare di quando è andato nella camera anecoica. Così gli ho chiesto se era andato a quella di Londra. Mi ha detto che c’era stato fotografato ma che non era in operazione! Che peccato. Se funzionasse, c’andrei volontieri anch’io. Ci siamo messi a parlare di filosofia. Era assurdamente inamorato del memoir di Norman Malcolm su Witters.[7],[8] Solo che invece di pronunciare “memoir” alla francese, lo pronunciava “Miiimoir”, allungando la seconda lettera sia foneticamente che temporalmente. Era cosi strano. Poi, dato che Miranda e io stiamo cercando di mangiare macrobiotico e lui vuole scrivere un ricettario macrobiotico(!) ci ha dato questa ricetta[9] (la ricordo praticamente parola per parola): “Prendete una carota, una rapa, e una pastinaca. Mettetele nel forno e arrostitele. Saranno deliziose.” Ahahahah. Abbiamo provato a farla e vuoi sapere il risultato? Una carota, una rapa, e una pastinaca arrostite in forno. Niente di più, niente di meno. Spero che il suo ricettario abbia ricette più interessanti e più buone di questa.[10] Comunque era veramente simpatico ed è stato incredibile parlargli così. Mi sento come un servo della gleba scrofuloso che è stato guarito dal tocco di un re! Sarà una storia da mettere nella mia miiimoir.[11]

 

[1] [N.d.C] Questa citazione è l’inizio del “libro” dell’artista.

[2] [N.d.C] Cage, Silenzio, 2019, 41. Il passaggio continua così: “… e seguiteranno anche dopo la morte. Non c’è nulla da temere riguardo il futuro della musica.”

[3] [N.d.C] Possibilmente un riferimento a Genesi 12,1.

[4] [N.d.C] Cage, Silence, 1961, 51.

[5] [N.d.C.] “Cage a settanta” fu l’evento d’apertura dell’Almeida Festival del 1982. Consisté in una serie di concerti nella chiesa di Saint James a Londra da venerdì 28 a sabato 30 maggio (nella sua lettera Evnine dice che i concerti ebbero luogo al teatro Almeida, ma questo è incorretto).

[6] [N.d.C.] Questa reazione da parte di Evnine è, stranamente (o forse no), poco caritatevole verso due persone perfettamente innocenti che avevano senza dubbio contato di parlare con Cage e pensarono che fossero l’artista e la sua compagna ad essere “pirla”.

[7] [N.d.C.] Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. Per lo stile di abbreviazione dimostrato da “Witters,” vedi il commentario su il meme Distinguo. Il filosofo Paul Grice racconta che J. L. Austin disse “A qualcuno piace Witters… ma io sono con Moore.” Dato che il libro di Grice fu pubblicato solo nel 1991 l’utilizzazione di questo termine colloquiale da parte dell’artista è quasi certamente una coincidenza.

[8] [N.d.C.] L’entusiasmo di Cage a quel tempo per quest’opera è comprovato da un passaggio da lui scritto a Ornella Volta, l’autrice di due opere su Satie, un anno dopo la conversazione qui riportata. “Ho finito di leggere il tuo libro (in francese; l’inglese non è arrivato); lo amo, ed è una cosa che posso dire di pochi altri libri. Questi, come il tuo, sono profondamente commoventi: il Memoir di Ludwig Wittgenstein di Normal Malcolm ed Erik Satie di Templier (non nella traduzione inglese, che trovo impossibile da leggere). Rendere materiale scritto commovente dev’essere ciò che la morte fa alla biografia.”

[9] [N.d.C.] Da un’altra lettera scritta non molto dopo la conversazione riportata: “Grazie a John e Yoko ho cambiato sia la mia dieta che quella di Merce Cunningham e abbiamo adottato una dieta macrobiotica.” Questo rende l’artista una specie di nipotino culinario di John e Yoko.

[10] [N.d.C.] Del suo futuro ricettario, Cage disse: “Invece di riguardare solo la cucina, sarà di tutto ciò che mi interessa. Però modificherò l’uso di processi aleatorici in modo che la cucina venga fuori più del resto.” (Come è possibile non amare questa seconda frase?) Il libro non fu mai scritto ma sul sito del John Cage Trust c’è una pagina con annotazioni di Cage sulla cucina macrobiotica, con alcune ricette. È sbalorditivo che in questa pagina, sotto il titolo Tuberi, ci sia il seguente: “Carote, rape, topinambur, ecc. Mettetele nel piatto di terracotta da forno e poi in forno caldo per un’ora o più con un po’, molto poco, di olio di sesamo. I tuberi possono essere coperti con porri e una mistura come quella suggerita per il pollo arrostito.” È possibile che Cage non abbia raccomandato ad Evnine l’uso del olio di sesamo; e anche possibile che gliel’abbia raccomandato, ma che l’artista abbia ignorato la raccomandazione.

[11] [N.d.C.] Malgrado il fatto che questo volume non sia esattamente un memoir di Evnine, è possibile che sia una “meme-oir,” pronunciata proprio come l’aveva pronunciata Cage. La profezia dell’artista, dunque, letteralmente per modo di dire, si è realizzata.

 

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The Village Green Preservation Society

As I began work on my book A Certain Gesture: Evnine’s Batman Meme Project and Its Parerga!, I was uncertain whether to write about the memes as their creator or whether to adopt a separate persona for the editorializing, thus fracturing my voice between the memes and commentaries. My decision to write about the memes in the third person came from my gut. Despite occasional moments of frustration, engendered by the difficulty this fracture creates for saying some of the things I want to say, I have more and more felt thankful for that early decision and I have come to be able to endorse it not just with my gut but with some explicit awareness of why it is significant.

One reason it is significant has begun to emerge in my recent thought and writing about the project and was first articulated in this post. (And how appropriate it should have become conscious in the course of a different exercise in splitting, a self-interview!) The book is a protest against the totalization involved in academic work and perhaps the most basic form of totalization, so basic we would never even think to identify it at all as noteworthy most of the time, is the unity of the author’s voice. The form of my book disrupts this unity. There is no single authorial voice but… well, at least two (I won’t give away more now), the voice of the meme-maker and the voice of the editor.

Half an hour or so ago, I was listening to “The Village Green Preservation Society” by The Kinks and it made me realize another aspect of this splitting of my authorial voice. The splitting emphasizes, or accentuates, a tendency I have in general to move so smoothly between speaking in my own voice, and so meaning what I say, to various forms of parody, and so not meaning what I say, that I often cannot myself tell whether and when I am being serious. Even before I adopted a formal device for explicitly splitting my voice in my book, I have always already been splitting it implicitly.

This is why I have loved The Kinks for so long: such fluid movement between seriousness and parody is the usual modus operandi of Ray Davies. In the song in question, the singer does little more than come up with absurd names of groups that the Kinks are – the Village Green Preservation Society, the Office Block Persecution Affinity – and lists things that God should save. But while many of the expressed values are no doubt sincere, several are absurd and some are very unlikely. Who is speaking and what is going on? Do the things that we might suspect are not really valued mean that we should understand the others as parody? I think the answer is that the voice keeps changing and that, often, Ray Davies himself would not know whether he was serious or not.

I have always been intrigued by this feature of Ray Davies’s songs. (I remember I wrote something about them along these lines for a fanzine a school chum of mine produced back in 1976 or so.) It’s hard to know if I have been influenced by Ray Davies on this or whether I have just always liked him because it resonates with me. But listening to the song just now, I felt my book’s affinity with it!

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Excisions: 6 (The girl is mine)

I mentioned in a couple of previous posts that I decided to excise a number of the memes that were going to be part of my book. It was sufficient for a meme to be excluded that I did not envisage being able to write anything of interest (to me) in the commentary on it. I have now set myself the goal of posting the excised memes here, in an occasional series, and trying to write something of interest (to me) about them, thus proving my decision to exclude them mistaken! Also, in this parergonal space around the book, I will write about the memes without the pretense that their maker is someone other than myself. I am curious to see how this affects the nature of my writing about the memes.

she's-mine

This was originally posted on Facebook on March 15th, 2016. The text is from the song by Michael Jackson (with the participation of Paul McCartney) “The Girl is Mine.” There are, I think, three interesting features of this meme.

First, it superimposes two contexts of conflict each of which can function independently of the other, but which together generate a pattern of  “interference waves” because their conflicts oscillate at different wavelengths. The first, of course, is the conflict in the image, an older man perpetrating physical violence on an adolescent whose guardian he is. The second is the conflict between the two rivals in the song, arguing over whose the doggone girl is. This second conflict itself is played simultaneously in two registers. Explicitly, it is presented as good-natured, friendly rivalry. (The music is cool and laid back; the two sing their rivalry in sweet harmony…) But implicitly, as we all know, such rivalries can be deadly – for both the protagonists and the objects of their possessive love. (This duality, it seems to me, is brilliantly emphasized by the use of the word “doggone,” a humorous and mild euphemism, apt for the friendly rivals, but a barely concealed transformation of the violent and explosive expression “God damn” (or “goddam”).) But neither of these two registers coincides with the conflict in the image. The friendly rivalry of the lovers is less serious than the conflict of the image; the potentially deadly rivalry more serious. There are thus three levels of conflicts reverberating, across two media (the visual and the aural) and the result is a highly-charged meme, bursting with tension. Continue reading “Excisions: 6 (The girl is mine)”