On Creativity, Credit, and the Popular Idol

My wife is watching American Idol. As you can tell, I am not. I don’t strictly loathe the program; I just really, really don’t like it.

I’m aware it’s a very popular little show. Not just my wife watches it, apparently; there’s a guy at work who mentioned in passing as well. And, as long I’m being honest with you all, I don’t actually mind the talent on display, even if it does seem like a grossly overblown, shameless televised debutante ball for people with a little more lung than the rest of us.

The key thing for me is, what talent exactly is on display? There is something indeed unique and special about the contestants on American Idol (at least, those that make it through the first few rounds). Whether they’ve got a Dave Grohl grin or don’t care two whits about their audience, most of the people up on that stage share a common talent: their voice. They are, for the most part, good singers. Some are great, and would be at home on Broadway, or at the opera.

And I am a huge fan of musical talent. Alfred Brendel, Yo-Yo Ma and Isaac Stern are unparalleled to this day (and I am quite fortunate to have a recording of Brahms’ chamber music with most of these fellows playing). Joe Satriani and Eddie Van Halen can shred like none other. Mike Portnoy is an astonishing drummer, and hey – love him or hate him Axel Rose can sing. These are all exceptionally talented musicians, performers who rank in the top 1% of their art. But – and here is the argument’s focus – how far does their credit and fame extend?

As much as I enjoy consuming media (books, music, movies, etc.), I also create it as well. I am by training a musician and a composer. I am by my own hand a writer. And I have made a couple of terrible home movies. And whether it is in poring over the score of Beethoven’s sixth symphony, or marveling at the poetry of Dickens’ words, or admiring the artistry of Coppola’s Dracula, it is always driven home to me the intense passion, the sweat and tears, the frustration and the determination, that these artists have invested in their work.

Think, for a moment, about the song you’re listening to. Is it three, four, five minutes long? How long did it take to write, rehearse, perform and record that music? Chances are, several months. Production began last year on The Hobbit, which is due for release this Christmas. And the script was in the works ten years ago. Stephen King began work on his Dark Tower series in 1975 and is still working on it today. These are creations of human imagination, and while many of us have wild fantasies, stories and songs that run through our hears, these few are the ones with the bravery, the foolishness, and the love of self-immolation to commit those fantasies to permanence.

Yet in all of this, music – and specifically popular music – stands alone in several ways from all others. I won’t comment on the idea that pop songs are created for money; all art is, in one form or another. Nor will I say anything about the formulaic characteristic that defines most pop music; how many Agatha Christie clones are out there in the literary world?

No, the one thing that I can’t help but notice – the one thing that frustrates me to no end, and drives to to tears to think of it – is the credit given to the creators of these works. What springs to mind when I say The Hobbit, Vertigo, Titanic, Alien, Dune, or The Pit and the Pendulum? More likely than not, J.R.R. Tolkien, Alfred Hitchcock, James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Frank Herbert and Edgar Allen Poe. Yet if I ask you who wrote any one of Britney Spears’ eleven Top 10 songs, how many of you would be able to answer, Max Martin?

Turns out, Max Martin wrote chart-topping songs for The Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Katy Perry, and even Usher. Now I don’t typically listen boy bands, pop rock or hip hop. Not out of any sense of pride – it just doesn’t speak to me. My tastes do vary – anything from The Cure and The Sisters of Mercy to Iron Maiden and Napalm Death, along with more or less the entire canon of western classical music from the 1600s on. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I started to wonder why I was attracted to these styles of music in particular. The answer that came to me, ultimately, was art. These musical styles represent art in its highest form. Like looking at a Picasso or reading Jules Verne, through the art you are in touch with the artist, and you have the chance, if you slow down, to marvel at every brush stroke, or wonder how the writer chose their words, and why they hold such magic.

When I listen to Porcupine Tree (one of my favorite bands), I don’t just hear the music. I hear Steven Wilson, writer, producer, singer, performer, making sure every single sound I hear is there on purpose, for me to recognize and revel in. I imagine him sitting in a studio, expensive headphones on, changing the reverb from 5 milliseconds to 6 milliseconds, smiling, and thinking – that’s perfect.

I wonder if Britney Spears ever does that.

In classical music, the composer is prized above all else, even the performer. “Simon Rattle conducts Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony” – the work of art belongs to the composer.

In film, it is the director, though the producer, screenwriter, and composer are all credited as well; “Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

In literature – surprise – the author.

And even in contemporary popular music – rock, rap, jazz, punk, metal, house and hip-hop – it is rarely questioned that the artist and songwriter are not the same. We assume that Kurt Cobain had some hand in writing the music and lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit. Even Flo Rida wrote “Good Feeling” (under his real name of Tramar Dillard). So what happened to generic-brand pop? When did the performers begin to overshadow the creators?

So I won’t cry shame on American Idol; after all, showcasing talent is (ostensibly) what the show is all about. I have no problem with a nobody from Arkansas being given a shot at fame. But spare a thought for the songwriters who gave their lives to make this happen. Continue to give them credit as you sing.

And who knows? Maybe one day we’ll have a talent show for songwriters and composers. Admittedly, it would be a lot less fun to watch. But it would certainly be more interesting.

On the Nature of the Gothic

First of all, my appreciation goes out to tablite for the inspiration tonight; your recent post sharing an old poem of yours prompted me to delve (deep) into the writings of my own past. I have long been out of touch with the nature of the darkness from which my love of the bleak and macabre stems, and it was quite a trip back in time! If you’re lucky (or maybe not), I’ll share one when I’m done.

In my youth, I was a goth. It’s curious to me to find myself speaking in the past tense, because, of course, the sensibilities and mindset of this term is something I carry to this day. There was much debate, even then, about exactly what a ‘goth’ was; we were the true goths, of course, reveling in depression and despair, while the fake goths got off on dressing in black and listening to Madonna. Or something. They weren’t sad, so of course they couldn’t be goth. It was a mindset, a statement, and way of life, heralded by the oh-so-familiar aphorism, “goth isn’t just a fashion statement.” I realize now, of course, that I was actually just severely depressed, but the very word “gothic” was an outlet, a culture of other people who were in one way or another just as messed up as I was, and were, of course, the only ones who could truly understand. Much of what I wrote at the time was steeped in this mentality, and reading over some of my old stuff reminded me of that old word, and I started wondering what it meant – what it really meant.

So tonight, I – astonishingly – did a little research, and I actually discovered some things that I did not know, and make a huge amount of sense. The word ‘gothic’ does not, of course, mean what it did originally, and yet, somehow it does. The history of this little word is kind of neat.

First, we had the Goths. They were kind of cool; they were tough and violent, came from Scandinavia, and helped bring about the fall of the Roman Empire. They were brutal and devious; one sect (the Ostrogoths) joined the Huns and later revolted against them, while another (the Visigoths) became subjects of the Roman empire before revolting against them and sacking Rome. Eventually, though, even they fell – the Ostrogoths to another clan from Scandinavia, and the Visigoths to the Moors.

Then came the medieval times, and everything was pretty dismal and depressing for a very long time. Though in many ways the middle ages are responsible for much of the culture we take for granted today, most people during this period spent their time thinking about god, or painting god, or killing other people in the name of god. In fact, god was pretty important to these people, and the stuff they built – like cathedrals – started to become pretty impressive, with lots and lots of arches and spires and things that sort of pointed up at god.

But then, something happened. This thing called the Renaissance (re-birth) happened, and all of a sudden people realized that they could actually write books and paint pictures and build buildings that weren’t about god, and when no one got struck down by lightning, they realized this was a good thing. In fact, they got a little bit embarrassed of how silly they had been for the last thousand years, and started calling all those tall, pointy cathedrals gothic, because it seems they remembered the goths as being pretty rude, and these structures – which fortunately they couldn’t get rid of – seemed pretty rude as well.

So by the 1600’s, gothic was a bad thing, being associated with all those nasty medieval cathedrals people had built before they realized god didn’t really care how big their steeple was. Instead, baroque was the latest craze, and art started being created to evoke tension, and drama, and great big emotional responses. Eventually, though, all the little frilly bits on buildings started to tick people off, and they thought, hang on a minute – the romans never had this problem; let’s build stuff like they used to. So we got the neoclassical (new classical), and all these roman columns started cropping up. Now here’s where it gets kind of funny, because eventually this style started to get annoying, and people said, hey, I know – let’s build stuff like they did in the middle ages! You know, that style we thought was barbaric and crude and nasty.

Guess what they called it? Yep – neogothic. Of course, it reminded people that these big, huge spires and arches were pretty awe-inspiring, but since god didn’t really matter that much anymore (it is 1750, after all), and this thing called romanticism was on the rise, it became a natural fit for the drama, tragedy and heaving bosoms of the romantic era. People who had been always so prim and proper up until that point began to get a bit of a thrill out of hearing – and reading – about men that cried and women that cried even more, and literature became the horror movies of the 19th century. It seems it all started when a guy called Walpole wrote a story that was all love and death and drama, set in a gothic castle (it kind of helped that he called it A Gothic Story).

You started to get these tales like Faust and The Pit and the Pendulum, as well as Varney the Vampire, and the gothic/horror novel was born. Frankenstein was pretty cool, too. Fast-forward to the early twentieth century and, while the term ‘gothic’ fell out of usage, the spirit of it was alive and well in horror and romance.

Then, it all came back again in the 80’s when some guy at the BBC called Joy Division ‘gothic’. Funny, really – he meant it as dramatic and theatrical, which is exactly how it all started out way back in the 16th century. Anyway, it kind of caught on, and all these cool bands like Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim started getting labelled as ‘gothic’. It sort of started to just mean dark, miserable and depressed, and hey – no one was arguing. Novelists got in the act too, and Ann Rice put out a whole bunch of stuff about sad vampires, and the whole thing just kind of got out of hand.

And that’s pretty much where I came in. I was a teenager, I hated my life, I was depressed and I wanted to die, and suddenly there were all these other people who hated their lives and wanted to die and they were the goths. It was all pretty cool, because we could all say together how much we hated life, and how neat it would be to be a vampire and be sad for ever and ever, and how no one understood tragedy like we did, and so on and so forth.

So what’s the point of all this? To me, gothic simply had connotations of darkness, despair, sadness, loneliness, and all the imagery and art that conjured up. I had never, until now, bothered to look deeper into it, and what I found was a bit of an epiphany; without ever realizing it, I was living the very definition of gothic: I was romantic, dramatic, tragic, and completely full of myself. This, in turn, seemed crude and and nasty to everyone around me who saw my black eyeliner and inverted crosses, and I was of course proud to piss them all off. In effect, if Giorgio Vasari, inventor of the word ‘gothic’ back in 1530, could see me, I’d fit the bill perfectly.

As it happens, I may possibly have some Scandinavian blood, so that helps too.

So to all you goths out there, enjoy the misery and the despair and the tragedy, and feel safe knowing you are legitimate in calling yourself a goth! Unless you just do it for the fashion, in which case you can  drop dead.

And finally, here is one of my favorite poems I wrote back when I was a goth:

 

Elegy

I am sitting by your side

Around us, sickening branches claw the sky

The tower is shrouded

In her thick, grey shawl

Light is fading slowly

And I perceive new shadows amidst the fog

Our silence is broken

By nothing at all

The path leads beckoningly

Onward toward the gate

The bell tolls for you or me

Time has come to leave here

Rest a hand against the cool stone for just a moment longer

Before looking to myself—

I am sitting by your side

And you are not moving

Happy Birthday to my Wife

Happy birthday, you.

We’ve been through a lot, you and I. Ten years, four homes, two countries and one son (I’m still not entirely clear on what happened there…) later, and, to my astonishment, you’re still here. Um…how come?

Not that I’m complaining. See, you make life a lot easier for me. To start with, you earn more than I do, so I never really have to worry about feeling superior, financially speaking. You’re also much smarter than I am, so I don’t have to worry about feeling superior there, either. Personally, I also think you’re a lot better looking than me too, though I am rather dashing.

You also cook. And that’s nice, because I can’t. Yes, I make the pancakes on the weekend and the odd stir-fry with way too much soy sauce, but you know what your fudge does to me…

And you clean. Which is also nice, because I don’t.

In short, you make things happen. You’re an incessant doer, and while I know it stresses you out – me too – I want you to know that I notice. There are a hundred little things you do that, whether I say it or not, I notice. And there are a million other little things you do that, of course, I don’t. And you know what? You don’t really berate me all that much for it. Not really…

Oh, and your ability to make me feel wrong about everything is a blessing, because I’m right way too much of the time.

So what does all this mean? Perhaps on my birthday, you can tell me what I mean to you, but right now, at the risk of making this all about myself (I know you’ll forgive me – I never do that), I want you to know what you mean to me. This isn’t something I say enough.

The simplest way I can put it is this: you saved me. Think of it as tough love, but I would not be who I am today without you. I probably wouldn’t even be, today. How did you do that?

By being an incessant nag, and not ever accepting it when I didn’t want to go to therapy, or take the pills, or admit to my anger problems. By repeating yourself until you’re blue in the face, until finally something you said makes it into my thick skull. By making it impossible for me to harm myself, because you wouldn’t ignore it. By raging at me when I spent an entire day moping at home and not getting anything done. By raging at me whenever I don’t get something done, period. By making me realize that being numb and depressed just isn’t the way to live with other people.

In a nutshell, you’ve stood by me long after any other sane person would have walked away in disgust. You never gave up on me.

And you gave me a son (I suppose I gave you one as well – a kind of mutual birthday present). It wasn’t what I expected, but that’s okay, because I’ve come to quite like the little guy. Every time I’ve thought it was all pointless, that I couldn’t carry on, that life wasn’t worth living, I’ve seen his beautiful face, and realized that there was something I simply couldn’t leave behind; something I couldn’t live without.

You have given me something most people don’t get in a lifetime, and you’ve given it to me twice: unconditional love. I have it from our son, and I have it from you. You might disagree (I hope not), but I don’t have any other explanation for why you’re still here after ten years, four homes, two countries and a son. I haven’t exactly made it worth your while.

So I’m going to give you the best day I can tomorrow. You’re in control, even if we don’t go to see the movie at the only theater in town that’s showing it that I already bought the tickets for. Because that doesn’t matter, if it makes you happy, and helps you to forget your stress for just one day. And one day is probably all it’ll be, because I’m sure I’ll be pissing you off again right away.

So happy birthday, sweetie. I love you more than you know, and I can’t wait to get really, really old, and know that you’ll be there with me.

Yours forever,

 

Your husband