Mind the Gaps

 

Imagine being 41 on the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor. By its 25th anniversary in 1966, you'd have been 61. Someone will be 61 on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 this year. Who were you then, and who are you now?

It's interesting to go back through an old wardrobe--some things that still fit and are in style. If you're an actor, your costumes allow you to inhabit the mind of your character, sometimes off-set. [Apparently, Daniel Day-Lewis learned how to walk for The Age of Innocence by arriving at dinners wearing his character’s top hat and carrying his cane]. 

Were you a conservative in 1941 and a liberal in 1966 or vice versa? What changed your mind? For Norman Rockwell, who painted the Nixon presidential portrait, Watergate changed his mind. By 1966, he was for civil rights and voting rights. What artist wouldn't be?--which says a lot about authenticity.

People who aren't creative perhaps can't experience the mind of an artist, and perhaps couldn't even accurately play them as an actor--although Clint Eastwood is a conservative and also a legendary director--and a jazz fan. But I can't seem to put those things together, for obvious reasons.  Is it possible that George Harrison would be a far-right conservative? Paul McCartney surely isn't, but perhaps Ringo could become center-right. Peter Gabriel? (No) Sting? (No) Is it possible to be a Buddhist and be on the far right? It's plausible that they could be far-left.

Personally, I think politics is inimical to creativity because it poisons the process (or rather your process); it drives the whole emotional experience--or makes it emotional in ways that you don't like, or can't effectively express. I had thought about creating a piece of music based on the poetry of Renee Good, but it's far too politicized, and not enough time has passed. You may need several generations to even go near it. Recently, I've had the same feeling about creating lyrics from Anne Frank's diary entries and using AI to generate the music. It raises questions, as you can imagine. It is interesting because the span of four generations has now been closed. In the '80s, you could have gotten away with a synth pop song about Anne Frank and the holocaust, but it's more triggering now in ways you can't accurately assess. Using AI might also seem irrelevant or inappropriate, but it makes my point: If my creative process is simply to use new ways of generating lyrics, like using preexisting prose, the political implications poison the process--whereas it might not have in the 1980s. This indicates that freedom of speech has been compromised and creates roadblocks for artists who just want to go about their business.

How does an artist understand their intentions, now and before? I'm sure there are jazz musicians who are conservatives or libertarians. Their doppelgangers in 1941 might have been those who didn't vote for Roosevelt and disliked the New Deal.  Why wouldn't they? Perhaps it's more important to look in the negative spaces for answers, i.e., the space in which someone became politicized, then find an "effect" to apply, such as "blurring" it in some way as Gerhard Richter did in the Baader-Meinhof series, in which "the blur and smear obfuscates rather than makes things graphically clear. The emotional range of one's fears, repugnance, esteem, or empathy vis-a-vis the Baader-Meinhof Gang is forever left in suspension by the cool, deadpan, noncommittal nature of the engagement with the subject and the distance from the subject."  [Kirk Varnedoe, Lecture 5] 

Excerpt Library (Art History and Criticism): "Discuss how artists throughout history have approached politics"