Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Art and Action

I've been listening to Linkin Park's new cd incessantly since I got it. Yes, I'm a huge Linkin Park fan; yes, you can point and laugh if you REALLY must.

They have several songs about recent events, from a particularly poignant one about Hurricane Katrina (all you've ever wanted / was someone to truly look up to you / and six feet underwater / i do) to several which seem to talk about responsibility, war, and people who send other people to die (i had hope / i believed / but i'm beginning to think that i've been decieved / you will pay for what you've done).

My favorite is still the radio played one, which is unusual for me, with a close second angry-depression song (i bleed it out / digging deeper just to throw it away). I like all of the songs, though, which is fairly standard for me and Linkin Park. The different lyricists speak to me, and their songs often become quite meaningful to me as time passes (while i've cleaned this slate / with the hands / of uncertainty).

I know nothing about the band members personally outside of their music. I tend to not approach musicians out of that context (this is true for me and most artists); art is a crystallization of a single moment and point of view that can't be matched by any individual human (nor should it). So I don't know if these songs are met by any private work, either to help survivors of the Katrina disaster or in protest of the military altercation (Congress never declared war, my friends; only they can) in Iraq that is meeting ever greater protest or in continued work to support the people in Afganistan who we have left in dire straights because we suck (we meaning the USA, which includes me because I am a member of the USA).

So in this contexts of ignorance - is art a political/social action?

Is a song enough?

In the context of Belle's recent post about creaitng new myths, is music a method?

Are words, reminders, notes sufficient?

If not, what then?

6 comments:

Dw3t-Hthr said...

Been trying to articulate this thought for a while, and I'm still not sure I have it, but here goes nothing:

Art can be both a form of myth-expression and of myth-making. (It doesn't even have to be "good art"; while Star Wars is not the best example of this as it is solidly grounded in mythological threads recast into a new form, one could consider the Gorean subculture to be an example of a modern-created myth.) It doesn't have to be, but, again, if someone finds that something there illuminates a profound corner of their selves, it may wind up being some without authorial intent that way.

It's one of the human basic ways of engaging with the world. As such, I think it has to be political -- in the sense of "engaging with the rest of the human sphere", at minimum -- and sometimes it is explicitly so, grappling with and turning over these concepts in an attempt to render them accessible or shift the angle on them.

Anonymous said...

Hi Deoridhe,

I have this dream where you're a man, a king in fact, and you're married to a blind woman and you have this whiny son by the name of Martin that just happens to be my best friend. Do you think I'm living too much in the past? =)

Hope things are well with you after all this time. Are you still in contact with Vialle's player?

Deoridhe said...

Oh....

My...

God...

Martin's player? Holy SHIT. Talk about blast from the past!!! Gods, were those scenes fun! I still have all my texts.

Yes, kind of. She and I contact each other every now and then, but we're both flakes. Why?

Anonymous said...

I'm still in contact with Martin's player but I actually played Antonio, Caine's son. I came across Martin's logs (http://mallupine.tripod.com/Martlogs.html) which somehow have survived being untouched for nearly a decade and thought I'd see who I could find and say hi...So, hi =)

We did some great stuff. It was fun reading them again.

Daisy Deadhead said...

Last year's PBS documentary about Bob Dylan made it clear that he was often dumb as dirt about the particulars, but a song like MASTERS OF WAR is just so amazing and intense. Making the situation a little more complicated: he's always refused to comment specifically on his songs. This leads some right wing talking heads (i.e. Fox News' John Gibson), to interpret him as "not political"--I mean, what???

The fact that people's lives got changed by that song, makes it political, regardless of what even the song's author says at this point; it's become a whole lot bigger than he is. (True of many his songs, for that matter.)

The thing I loved about the Grateful Dead was the attempt at myth-making that dw3t refers to, an alternative tribal culture (not entirely based in reality; a hippie utopian dream-world), expressed within the songs. Some of the art-bands like Yes tried this, too.

Lucy Dee said...

Hey, Deoridhe!

My name is Lucy Dee and I'm a black female standup comedienne in NYC.

I caught wind of your comment on the The Angry Black Woman (TABW) blog.

Based on your worldly response on TABW, I figured you might be interested in my most recent post on Metabigotry in comedy.

I'm trying to "get the word out," and I decided to drop you a line.

Perhaps, you would be interested in stopping by my spot and giving your opinion?

Thank you again, and thanks for being such an open-minded citizen.

My blog:
The Quest For Comedic Stardom
http://standup101.blogspot.com


best,
Lucy