Classicism – The Fractal Journal

Saturdays often find me gathering strength for the coming week. They are often as productive as any other day but their charm lies in that they don’t have to be.

So I sit here giving my eyes a rest, nearly blind without my contacts, perusing Vanity Fair. I come across an article discussing a zeitgeist shift of ‘serious writers’ ceasing to shun Television writing. Opting instead to embrace it and taking TV shows they watch ‘very seriously.’

Image result for vanity fair novel ambitions — (Novel Ambitions by Joy Press | Vanity Fair – August 2018)

I did not put ‘serious writers’ in snark quotes for any elitist reason. I am huge Michael Crichton fan and have always (when it’s done right) understood both the big and small screen as rich and valid mediums.

I put serious writers in quotes because the term confuses me. I feel that anyone who takes the trouble to write is a serious writer. Perhaps the piece was using the language to highlight the fact that accomplished writers (whose work is expressive of the sort of nuance that one associates with those who appreciate literary art) were no longer shunning an industry pariah.

Which is fine but I can’t help but fiddle the hilt of my sword. I am on guard for the king called disinterest and his prince ‘l’art pour l’art.’ A position that I feel is increasingly rare. When I hear ‘serious this or that pursuit’ these days I am wont to think that ‘serious’ means commercially viable.

I am decidedly steeped in Classicism as I’ve come to understand it. I do not mean by this any restrictive form but rather a mindset. A mindset tracing its roots back to the ancient city states of Greece where merchants were shunned.

The commercialization of science and art is a decades old story. It is a story too broad and important for this uncharacteristically cool Carolina morning. Books will be written about it for decades. The purpose of this wee essay is to serve as reminder that every fertile thing that elevated civilization is now being processed into quick, unnaturally tasty, canned goods.

Classicism is important because even if you choose Spam over a ribeye the makers of Spam should still try to make it taste like a ribeye. (Folks privy to the differences between the pop music of the 60’s and 70’s and the pop music of today will more readily understand this analogy.)

The Vanity Fair article is an excellent springboard for thrusting the Classic outlook back into the collective conscience. It’s a rich little morsel that raises all sorts of questions.

Questions like the namesake of this article: “Is ‘pitch culture’ gonna improve novels?”

If ‘serious writers’ are being funneled from the world of the novel into the world of the sitcom as the authoress suggests then what does this mean for novels?

I do not necessarily think it means anything foul. The pithier more economic approach of television writing is certainly good to have and maintain in one’s literary tool belt. And I do enjoy a good show so the presence of ‘serious writers’ means that I will have a richer life.

But, even if these pros I’ve highlighted existed without their shadow cons then one must still remember the ground bass of classicism. That little voice that says, “Is the greatest number, the greatest good?”

Paradoxically, I think that history attests to the fact that the greatest good, for the greatest number is meted out by that little voice. A voice that is often too modest and too much of a minority.

avoiding the cons of ‘Pitch Culture’ means giving ear to that voice.

What do I mean by pitch culture? To those unfamiliar with marketing a pitch is a proposal. It’s putting forward an idea that’s likely to get people hooked to a guy in the business of making money getting people hooked. And getting the guy to think that the idea will get people hooked. With so many hooks you can see how quickly the process gets crooked.

The obvious problem here is the difficulty of making something as inherently subjective as art as objective as a studios bottom line. This is an art in itself that I don’t necessarily disdain, I just think it like any market requires ethics and oversight.

You don’t want metrics, things that in themselves are fraught with the chaotic problem domain of social statistics, to become the cookie cutter for your artistic treats.

The article argues that today due to the presence of serious writers this cookie cutter approach is rarer. I do see some evidence for this but that evidence is of course shows that I happen to find engaging and is thus suspect.

That being said I feel that many shows are not so much abdicating the cookie cutter but simply using a cookie cutter that tries really hard to not seem like a cookie cutter.

Bill Hick’s classic bit on marketing where he mimics a sales panels thoughts ‘o you see what he did there, he’s going for the anti-marketing dollar, that’s really smart – the anti-marketing dollar is huge.’ (Not an exact quote) This impression is exactly what I’m talking about with the ‘anti cookie cutter cookie cutter’.

Everytime I hear words like ‘groundbreaking, raw, gritty, etc’ I immediately encounter a funny sensation. It’s a dull sort of malaise that settles over my mind as I picture a litany of industry standards like ‘Dr. House accepting his lesbian daughter while taking potshots at corporations and Jesus as he fights off zombies that put him face to face with the surprisingly violent nature of average people in a shitty situation.’ This is the cookie cutter that I call ‘shit just got real.‘

South Park did a really great bit that highlights the overindulgence of shocking realities when the character Butters tires of ‘all the gay weiners’ in Game of Thrones.

A pretty standard line of advice for any profession is that ‘you have to know the rules before you can break them.’

I think that the lack of a strong reading culture makes audiences particularly susceptible to cheap tricks. And if serious writers are going to revolutionize an industry known for cheap tricks they’d better be careful when catering to the whims of that audience and the farmers at Madison Avenue.

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It was either Goethe’s Werther or Wilhelm, that provided me with a certain sense of balance. I’d never really read the books except as exercises in seeing how much I could glean with my sparse knowledge of German.

It was a secondhand account, either in a book or in some online posting that I gained some familiarity with the plot and style.

I’d taken an interest in Goethe after stumbling across Blixa Bargeld while listening to internet radio a number of years ago. I’d already been steeped in Nietzsche, as every edgy teenager should be, and thought it would be fitting to add another dead German to my Trane of pretensions.

Blixa’s rendition of Wanderers Nachtlied (Ein Gleiches) is very good but the poem is even better. It’s sparse and stuffed with ponderous depth. Something I’ve come to expect from all things German.

Bach’s genius I think lies in taking something very simple and making vast frescoes and stuccoes out of it in the uncanniest of ways. I’d already been pretending to be fond of Bach for years. So all the pieces of how I thought an antiquarian revivalist should behave had fallen into place.

When I say pretension I do not mean it a negative way. Although there was some ulterior motive in that I was struggling to set myself apart. This instinct for differentiation common when crossing the bridge from boy to man was well served by my choice of subject.

Classicism is life. Classicism is the lodestar that guides one to the True Course. So when I say pretension is not negative I mean that there is absolutely a necessity for everyone to assume an affectation. Today’s ‘authenticity’ with its blue jeans and four chord ballads is itself an affectation. One can choose to don it, or cast it aside in favor of another, but either way, the choice must be made, and it had better be a good one.

Certainly, those who prefer the bold-mans affectation will feel a bit stifled by the tried and true sure bet of classicism but I think this would be a misreading. Just like one can’t really play jazz without being well versed in the rules that need to be broken one can’t really be an adventurous man of action without knowing from what it is he is departing.

Alan Watts described classical music as being the purest expression of music for music’s sake.* I don’t think that it would be a mistake to say that he found classical music to be tres Zen. I happily agree with his assessment.

Wu Wei is the True Way and Classicism is the best of affectations because it is the ultimate falling into place. The sense of solidity that one gains from something obviously good, from something that is Der Ding An Sich, is not just an accident of custom. It is not something that we relish and cherish simply because it is old.

No. It is old and remembered because it retained the most salient features of the human experience in the most efficient way possible. This is the reason why I call it the lodestar to the true course because those who don the affectation of Classicism will be able to forge new paths. Paths that last. And even if one does not forge any new path one will be fortified by an acquaintance with transcendent beauty that will make even the dreariest of circumstance bearable.

Today’s obsession with novelty and authenticity seems to produce nothing but remakes. Those who most proudly proclaim progress and define themselves as acolytes of the future are stuck in the past feeding on bread that’s decades stale.

Why is it that the seventies, eighties, and nineties produced so much that was so new and so full of depth? Because those generations were still steeped in classicism. They had good models from which to diverge. Today we merely have the echoes, of the ghosts, of what they built to rely on.

There is much that I like about today and there are still amazing artists, philosophers, and scientists and I don’t think it needful for everyone to mutter over Virgil to make valid and beautiful contributions. However, a bit of Virgil would certainly help.

Just the hint of what Goethe was getting across has helped me to gain a surer footing and be productive as a writer and amateur musician. Not only has it helped me in these regards but it has helped to cement my purpose and sense of what it is to not only be a man but a human being.

Some web searching being in order I found the thing that had been transmitted to me through the hint of Goethe: Entsagung. A word which roughly translates to renunciation. Renunciation of what exactly. I think a renunciation of swaying to and fro. I think that perhaps a more fitting term would be resignation. Resignation to what? To Wu Wei, to something like the Tao, or what have you, if you will.

So the thing in itself, Der Ding an Sich, Art pour le art, etc. is simply the purest expression of what is to be human and is grasped when you have the balance you get, from Entsagung, a balance that allows you to see loading trucks as fuel for writing poetry.

The classics in whatever form, whatever genre, will never be forgotten. For it is through their cardinal points that we find Wu Wei that truest paths…

A path lined with columns, arches, and flowering gardens of the most sublime craftsmanship hinting and singing of the most profound depths that lie in even the commonest of things.

* Alan Watts wrote several books and delivered many lectures so the specifics of the attribution may be a tad off. I’ll attempt to either rectify or supplement this information when I get the time.

The Fractal Journal

Tag: Classicism

Classics and the True Way