Exploring The Traditional In The Conceptual

What's the idea about new ideas?  Why do we feel the urgency to pursue them simply for the sake of progress, innovation, or to continue to be postmodernist?  This has been the case (at least in my view) beginning in the early to mid-aughts, and surely before then in the 90s. I recall in a David Bowie interview, probably in 1999, he said something to the effect that time was running out on postmodernism, perhaps because he thought the new millennium would bring about a paradigm shift away from postmodernism. But what if we're not done with the old modernist ideas and they still had power in them? Traditional ways of working always have creative potential without necessarily having to be innovative. If you do invent something new, you're probably going to use existing ideas in some way. It's "site-specific", as one would build structures using local materials, not materials from other parts of the globe. You're using "local" ideas and there could be a lot of possibilities there. When you impose limitations on what you're doing, or they are imposed by default, potentially there are a lot of interesting things that could come out of that. And if there isn't, then new ideas would be necessary. But a forced innovation makes postmodernist approaches less effective because modernist, or even pre-modernist approaches could be more satisfying and effective.

Everything I've ever done in visual art has been postmodernist precisely because it was driven by ideas. Not that my music isn't. In fact, I believe that rock'n'roll--even early rock'n'roll--was essentially postmodernist, even though most of what came after it was modernist. It's always been the shock of the new that prevails in pop culture. Certainly, conceptual music is postmodernist, although it can use common myths and archetypes which is a way to incorporate modernism and pre-modernism. But the conceptual album can't even be possible in the current climate where the new ideas must be under 60 seconds. This is why I think a 15-minute conceptual album is an interesting idea, with a nod to the avant-garde, and a way to revive it, essentially revisiting old forms while on the vanguard.

In a recent Steven Wilson interview he was talking about never wanting to repeat himself, even if that's what the fans prefer. He cited the Beatles as the paradigm shift in creativity allowing them to quickly evolve from She Loves You to psychedelia within 3 years. 

[The late art historian Kirk Varnedoe also touched on this in regard to the rapid pace of change in the art world during that same period] 

 

But at the core were songs, not conceptual albums. If you're always simply writing songs that's essentially traditional and modernist--over which you can apply a postmodern treatment. Coltrane circa 1966 was a postmodern approach but it still had a foundation of all previous forms of jazz, and perhaps classical in which it might be pre-modern in some respects.