Throwing up my Naked Lunch

I read Naked Lunch based on it's reputation, on a long, drunken plane ride to San Francisco about ten years ago. At first it was slow going, as my mind groped for some feature of the story upon which to construct my understanding… like searching for a handhold in the dark, on a cliff. But any hold you find lasts only a paragraph or two. Even within the span of sentence your handhold crumbles, and you slide down… desperately flailing your arms about in the hopes that the next moment or sentence will provide something to grab hold of. But all grips are fleeting, and you are left pinwheeling through a series of false features that promise security, but never deliver.

After about the eighth beer, the inhibitive presumption of a rational universe melted away, and I could meet Naked Lunch where it truly existed… as a feverish, non-rational, evacuation of mental content from a mind gone haywire.  Naked Lunch is the topographical description, in literary terms, of a mind lost in drug addiction. It is a series of flash-backs, fragmented memories, and random associations dancing on the surface of the totality of one man's drug addled experiences. It is like an electroencephalogram… those electrical patterns that indicate brain function, but that don't describe what one is actually thinking about. We see the neurons firing… we see the lightning bolts of electricity shooting around the brain.. but what does it mean... what is the lab rat actually thinking about?

But even that neurological simile is inaccurate, since we presume that the electrical patterns could (if we learned how to interpret them) provide us with insight to some underlying idea of what the brain is thinking about. But when the underlying brain activity are insane flights of fantasy… an extreme products of volition… the trail of causality goes cold. The insane is always constructed from the ruble of the sane, collaging appropriated fragments into some representation. Presented with this representation, we do the only thing a human mind can do... we look for meaning. And that is the first mistake.

We cannot turn off our minds when we read Naked Lunch. All we can do is suspend that part of the brain that searches for answers. It's not really possible, but getting drunk is a useful approximation. Perhaps dropping acid would be better. But ultimately, it is an impossible task. At the very least, we must be conscious to read Naked Lunch… we must be lucid enough to comprehend the words. We could reduce our minds to such a low level that we view the letters of the words as simply graphical symbols... where they become opaque ends in themselves, not the transparent mechanism of ration thought. But we cannot go all the way there. We must still consider the words as having intended conceptual meaning. In the end, it is impossible both to write a work of total nonsense, and to read a book of total nonsense.

But you can get really close. Naked Lunch gets really close. In face, as a matter of epistemological clarity… you might assert that Naked Lunch is the standard by which nonsense texts could be judged. It is as nonsensical as humans can get in language. Since words are a product of reason, their use (like the appropriation of fragments from the real world) imbues writing with some content that can be interpreted… from which some conclusion can be drawn. 

But I never drew any conclusion from Naked Lunch, other than what I say here about it.  Perhaps that is the truest test of nonsense… that after it is all said and done, there is nothing to say other than that nothing was said. 

*****

A question always arises in reviews such as this, where we wonder if something isn't being given unearned legitimacy through the act of saying it has no legitimacy. This may be so, in which case the review ends up not being about the inherent relevance of the work, but of the social relevance that has grown up around it. This book has become celebrated for various reasons, and is therefore taken seriously, despite it's apparent lack of meaning. This is  completely maddening to the objectively minded, who presume a book (or any work) should derive it's meaning by how well it channels some aspect of reality, and not by having become cool or popular through some unspecified social mechanism.

Such social relevance (like celebrity status), once achieved, is long endured. Oddly enough, the less objective the social status, the brighter it glows, and the more maddening to consider by the objective minded... who in their protestations keep the spotlight on the very thing they wish to ignore.

I undertook to read Naked Lunch because I had heard so much about it. After a few pages I had the distinct impression that it was going nowhere. After a few more pages I knew it was going nowhere. But being trapped in a plane with a beer in my hand left me few options but to read on. I was determined to finish the book, despite the pain induced by plowing through page after page of incomprehensible writing. I just wanted to be able to say I read it. I wanted to know absolutely that I it made no sense. I didn't want to run into a future conversation where some jack-off tells me... "Oh, but it is the last 50 pages that are really great".

So I have the dubious status of being able to assert with conviction that an apparently incomprehensible book is in fact incomprehensible, or nearly so... and perhaps I could dissect it to reveal something about it... which leaves me wide open to the charge of taking it too seriously. Which is true from an objective point of view, but not from a social point of view. The need to understand nonsense doesn't stem from reality... it stems from society.

For example... might know that the emperor is naked, and choose to not participate a the public display of fawning over his new clothes... but if we live in such a society we are not immune from the effects of those social attitudes. To understand society, we have to at least focus our attention on the products of social attitudes, such as the high regard given Naked Lunch. The awareness that they are meaningless is the first thing that comes to mind, and on the basis of this you could turn away from it and announce that it is meaningless, and just continue on with one's personal agenda in life.

But if you can stomach to analyze it further... if you can choke back the bile in your throat... if you can handle thinking about something beyond the moment it is immediately relevant to your life or to objective reality... then you can enter the realm of the social. It's a creepy place for someone who is inherently individualistic and ego driven. And oddly enough, when you take "the social" seriously for what it is... you can hear in it the echo of yourself... or maybe more accurately... you can hear in yourself the echos of what society has wrought... because society has wrought each of us. No matter how closely guarded and and nurtured one is about themselves as a unique individual, we are all in large measure the product of society. To be ignorant of the social forces active in ourselves is to mistake those social influences for our own... to assume that the entire content of our soul has been constructed by us through a closely guarded screening of reality, when in fact the very screen we filter through is itself constructed for us by the society we grow up in.

Investigating the apparent nonsense of social product is not about celebrating nonsense, but of gaining some familiarity the socially sanctioned canon of nonsensical works. Kind of like the inverse of the "Great Books" of western civilization. Presumably we read the "Great Books" in order to familiarize ourselves with the history of great thoughts, and absorb them into our lives. Just so, perhaps we need to read the "Un-Great Books", not so much to absorb them, but to purge them from ourselves... because if they have been socially sanctioned, they have NO DOUBT helped shape social attitudes, and have thus found their way into our souls.

I'm sure this essay seems like yet another unwarranted rationalization of nonsense. It even reminds me of that. It reminds me of how art critics can write thousands of pages trying to understand a Jackson Pollock drip painting, yet have few words to describe the apparently sane and rational works of Michaelangelo. It seems like yet another affirmation of the idea that language, thought, analysis, art, and expression are continually poured into the broken and obscure parts of life. How many poems are written about being happy, or about a day where everything was reasonable? How many songs capture the spirit of a solid 8 hour work day where you were really productive?

If everything has to reduce to reason and logic and personal goals... then just become a scientist I suppose, or some equivalent. I pseudo-support Naked Lunch not in itself, but for what it stands for to me... and maybe this is part of it's social sanction... that it represents a rejection of the conformist insistence on things making sense. It is a form of passive resistance to the aggressive and pervasive power of reason to always demand that we draw conclusions 24 hours a day. It is very post modern... it is very Dada-esque in it's subversion of the sane.

In this respect I can see it representing certain popular attitudes that at least some people have. These being... the desire to subvert... the need to reject the cackling of conventional social attitudes despite their apparent rationality... the need to assert yourself against authority even at the cost of forgoing reasonable gains you might otherwise achieve. One trades off reason for something else in those situations. In so doing I think I see, from my external point of view... the presence of social attitudes toward reason and authority that have their genesis in such apparently inane movements such as Dada or Beat poetry, and which have been delivered into your consciousness by social processes that you had no control over.

What do butterflys have to do with poetry?

What do butterflies have to do with poetry? I don't think the word butterfly occurs even once in the entire Norton Anthology of Poetry. Poetry generally comes in one of two forms... either a lyrical record of struggle... or as a greeting card.

What does it mean to lead a poetic life. If the history of poetry is any indication, the poetic life (at least the life of the poet) is one of tragedy... of endless struggle against the forces of sorrow, loss, alienation, and death.... and the afterlife!!! Granted, there are some moments of unbridled joyfulness, but such moments are few and far between.

Joy doesn't seem to offer the intellectual heft that draws the poet into the life long search for expression. I have often wondered about this... why so few artists (in general) do not take "happy-happy-joy-joy" as their theme. I think it is because happiness is an end in itself... it doesn't need to be figured out or expressed... it only needs to be experienced. Expression serves as psychic therapy for the wounds inflicted on us by society, by life, and by ourselves... the pain of which torments us and begs to be understood... to be fixed... to lead us to some elusive happiness, where expression ends, and pure experience begins. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

"But not so, how arrives it joy lies slain, and why un-blooms the best hopes ever sown... crass causality obstructs the sun and moon, and dicing time for gladness casts a moan..."

And so on and so on.

So when one references the poetic life.. is it the Hallmark version, or the "To be or not to be" version. And even though I have put a pejorative spin on those choices... where the "Hallmark" version is seen as weak minded and banal... I should say I am totally fine with that choice. Why shouldn't someone live in a Hallmark world.. a world of looking deeply into each others eyes while saying (or thinking) thoughts such as "Your eyes are liquid pools of mystery"... or "Our bodies exploded with the joy of newfound love"... etc. Such experiences are exquisite, even if their expression seems silly... seems embarrassing… like watching ones parents make-out. I sometimes think that the truly beautiful experiences can only be understood in the act of experiencing them... that is... in our minds... such that expressing in words is to rob them of identity.. to turn it into a set of cliched physical acts that don't add up to how it felt. In such a case, the most intimate and spiritual sexual encounter becomes the equivalent of two dogs doing it in the side yard. Sad but perhaps true.

The life of the poet is not the same as the life of the reader of the poem, the painter is not the same as the viewer of the painting. The creator is not the spectator. The actor is not the audience.  Is this poetic life one of creative expression, or the life of consumption... and does this consumer cast about for verse that reaffirms their worldview... which is the all too frequent tendency in consumer driven, on demand world we live in. After all, why should anyone trouble themselves in the life... all too short a time we're here. And yet without such troubling, there would be no poetry. When art buckles and folds to the consumer demands of such pressure, when it conforms itself to the expectations of the audience, it ceases to be art... it becomes entertainment... and poetry is no different than television.

Poetry, poetry, poetry... why bother to suffer at it's hand at all.

"Tis true the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale
But take it if the smack is sour
The better for the embittered hour
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul's in my soul's stead
And I will friend you if I may
In that dark and cloudy day"

Polykleitos and bicycles

The ancient Greek sculptor Polykleitos constructed an ideal figure referred to as the Kanon, which was meant to exemplify his theories of the ideal human body. In so doing, Polykleitos did not simply create a particular sculpture... but created sculpture itself... as the Kanon became the basis for the art of sculpture moving forward.

I was thinking of this in relation to bicycles. Is there a Kanon of the bicycle? I'm not sure that there is a specific bike in existence that would be the ideal bike, but there certainly are theories of ideal bike proportions. You hear these things all the time... chain stay length, fork rake, seat tube angle, etc. etc.... and usually these things are discussed as if there is an ideal frame in the mind that everything refers to. Usually the 56cm frame is the basis for such things.

The 56cm frame is the frame size for a certain sized human being. Probably someone who is 5'8" to 5'10" tall, or there about. So if the ideal frame dimensions are based on 56cm, then this means the ideal rider is 5'8" to 5'10".  Bike frames are scaled up and down for smaller and larger riders, but the truth is, that very small and very large frames are simply not correct.

Like all rationalized, canonical ideals, they are based on presumptions about what is ideal. In the case of Polykleitos, the ideal would be defined in terms of numerical relations between different parts of the body, and their relation to the whole.  These numerical relations would have derived from (I assume) Pythagorean numerology, and the general love that the Greeks had for number and relations.  Of course, there are many different systems of numerical relation, so the use of one over the other has to be argued for somehow. In the end, the selection of something as the basis for idealization will be disputed and rejected by those who choose different standards.

This seems to be the case in bike frame design. For instance, I reject the canon of the ideal bike, because I am 12 inches taller than the ideal rider. I reject the notion that their is even such a thing as an ideal rider. There certainly is the "average rider" height, but that is not the same as the ideal. And although we might presume that "the average" is all that anyone is really talking about, I think that in practice the average has taken up the role of the ideal.

Rationalizing an ideal is a convenience. It allows one to not deal with any existent that does not fall within it's parameters. In this sense it excludes much of reality, in favor of a selective subset of reality that conforms to... well... conforms to the basis from which the subset was derived. It is self-referential. And again, the basis of that self-referential subset is always open to debate... particularly from those who are not within the parameters of the subset.

In the case of cycling, this is me... so tall that my bike is wrongly dimensioned in many ways. My cranks are too short... bottom bracket too low... stem too high... wheels too small... handlebars too narrow.... knee to pedal ratio all wrong, front end too far forward, and so on and so on. The canon of the 56cm bike gives rise to the entire cycling industry... to the production of bikes... to the sizing of all components and frame geometries...  and when the performance of a tall rider suffers, it is a self fulfilling prophecy. It's easy enough to say that the 5'8" rider is ideal, because they perform well on average. But part of their performance edge is the fact that they have bikes constructed to their bodies... whereas the very tall or very short do not.

So clearly, rationalized ideal canons can serve as self fulfilling prophecies of exclusion.

In the case of the human figure, one can argue for canons of proportion, because in the end one can refer to observable characteristics of human beings... and can arrive at an "average" body.  But at what point in the thought process does "average" become "ideal"?  The shift from observation to idealization occurs when we look for the average... because the average is a numerical abstraction. If the length of a body is "on average" equal to 7 heads, then we have an abstract head size. We are no longer dealing with specific reality.

Once we have an "average" head, it natural to presume that there must be something in the nature of humanity that produces such an average. Such an average proportion plays into the construction of human identity... of what it means to be human. This then becomes the ideal. Depending on how one constructs and uses such abstractions, one could be Aristotelean about it... or Platonic. But when one constructs a SPECIFIC instance of the ideal, one is definitely Platonic, because it is an attempt to show the form of the ideal.

The Aristotelean argument against Plato's forms is that for them to exist, they must be something particular, and thus they cannot be ideal. An Aristotielean would never construct a canonical object. Only a Platonist would do so... only a Platonist roots the ideal in an object, rather than having it simply exist as an abstraction.

In the case of the bike industry, they are Platonic. They have a Platonic ideal of the bike. If they were Aristotelean about it, they would understand the bike in terms of "any rider"... they would not exclude tall riders or short riders. They would formulate the nature of the bike in terms of it's fitness for the purpose to which any person puts it. But they don't do this.

The whole bike industry is Platonic.. and it doesn't exude understanding... what it produces is an endless stream of Platonic ideals derived from rationalized standards that are usually not explained. If you dig behind the assumptions... you will find the same presumptions about rider size and the canonical bike. And probably if you found the average height of all the people in the bike industry, in bike shops, and in the bike media... it would be 5'8" to 5'10".

Does classical art achieve the same level of emotional impact as expressionistic art?

If we recognize the distinction between expressionistic art (french, german, abstract expressionism, etc) and classical realism (french neo-classical realism or the classical realism of today), do you think that classical art can achieve the same level of emotional impact as expressionistic art?

I ask this question because I often read or hear from classical realist types who assert that the high degree of skill and finish and pictorial clarity (or whatever you want to call it) that goes into classical art is the vehicle by which the highest minded ideals of human existence can be most effectively communicated.

I'm not sure why this claim is made with such confidence, given the obvious examples in the history of art, of artworks of great emotive power that are not classical in nature. Do classicists simply ride on the coat-tails of the classical Greek & Roman cultural traditions of western culture? Do they rely on the general public's love of realism in art?

This claim seems similar to the claim that classical music buffs make about classical music, and the logic by which they discard any modern music. The obvious training and talent that get channeled into classical careers is indeed long and daunting. But is the effort to perfect a very evolved and complex art form (and craft form) enough to secure for that form the mantel of artistic high ground?

Sub-questions about classical art...

Does classical art rely on subject matter to tell the viewer what to feel?
Can one really be told what to feel?
Does this make classical art analytical?
Does the pictorial clarity of classical art hinder the conveyance of emotional content?
Is precision inherently incompatible with emotive intent. If so, then why do it. If not, then is there some limit to what can be conveyed unambiguously.

Sub-questions about expressionistic art...

Does expressionistic art rely on formal elements (deliberate distortion of line or color ) to affect the viewer at the emotional level?
Does this make expressionistic art less analytical and more emotional?
Does the pictorial ambiguity  of expressionistic art lend itself to emotive communication?

Is there a continuum of clarity, whereby on one extreme we have total clarity (a white canvas), and on the other end we have total ambiguity (visual chaos).

Drawing, craft vs. art

I had heard a Pafa instructor refer to printmaking as the "craft extension of drawing". Clearly, the inclusion of the world "craft" was meant to convey lesser status and significance.  Of course, we do notice that there is a lot of process involved in printmaking, and we notice that this process lends a certain look to printed material. Wood cuts often have the "wood cut" look... and etchings, with their fine lines and such are said to look like etchings. Furthermore, when we approach printmaking, it seems important to understand the medium, because the medium is part of our creative process, and adds much to the final affect.

But is it any different for drawing? Is there any artistic medium that does not impart some process, and therefore some "look" on the finished product. Mediums such as charcoal, conte, or pastel certainly have a look to them, and their use (in practice) seems to have matured to the point where one can say, "That's a typical charcoal drawing", or "That's a well done pastel drawing".... all of which are recognition NOT of the drawing, but of the medium itself. To that extent, how are they different from the the printmaker's reliance on process? There is plenty of process and technique involved in using charcoal, despite the fact that instructors seem to view it as a foregone conclusion that one can intuitively use charcoal to it's optimal effect.

So, where is the drawing medium that doesn't have process... or "craft extension" to it? Where is the medium that doesn't reveal itself in the finished image, such that the viewer could never know what it was made from, or what "type of drawing" it was?

A simple Number-Two pencil seems to be a likely candidate for simplicity, in as much as it simply creates a thin grey line. Because the medium gives so little, it would seem that the artist has to invent all the affects. Surely this is a "pure" drawing medium. The same might be said for an ink pen. But the rub here is that the artist, in being forced to invent so much with line, will reveal that he was working with a linear tool. Further, the image will reveal this linear tool, either by the scarcity of masses, or by masses composed of the dense accumulation of line, which is itself a technique.

There is NO drawing without a drawing medium, and all mediums have craft element... a drawing identity.

Is painting the highest art form?

Is there anything inherent in painting that causes it to be at the top of the food chain in art?

I had once made the following comment, which I recognize as being snide and snobbish, but one that seemed to make some sense.... "If one studies sculpture, then one studies how to render the human figure in three dimensions... and if one studies printmaking, then one learns the various techniques of making prints... but that if one studies painting, that one is learning how to make art".

I make this comment because it seems that most of the issues of pictorial representation have occurred in the history of art as a product of drawing and painting. When we talk about a visual vocabulary and visual concepts, we seem to be talking about issues that have come up and been answered through drawing and painting. Surely, these are the core issues of art.

Of course, this reasoning is somewhat circular... in that it is a given that drawing and painting will ask and answer the questions that arise in drawing and painting. The same could be said for any other art form. One could say that sculptural issues are asked and answered by the sculptor, or that architectural issues are resolved by architects as they consider architectural issues. So why be persuaded by the fact that an art form answers it's own questions, and to conclude from that that it is superior? Is it simply the dominance of painting (since the Renaissance) that leads us to conclude that the resolution of two-dimensional pictorial issues is the most important thing?

Can you really learn the rules in order to break them?

I have often heard people explain their interest in PAFA as being based on "learning the rules in order to break them", or somewhat differently, "if you learn the rules, then you can break them".  However, I think this is more often a pre-emptory comment meant to stave off the guilty conscious of someone who desires traditional training, while also wanting to appear poised to join the avant gard (whatever that is).  Furthermore... to think that one has to start with classical training in order to break rules, is to say that classical training is superior, in as much as it characterizes other artistic ideas (broken rules) as being the rebellious children of the classical mother.

I don't think that one learns rules in order to break them, or that rule breaking is an inevitable consequence of learning rules. I think that one learns rules in order to achieve some result. People come to PAFA in order to learn certain rules (ideas, techniques, or whatever you want to call them) in order to achieve some form of realist imagery. There's nothing wrong with that. But those rules do not contain within themselves the ability or rationale to be broken. Rules never do.

Rule breaking is the result of  learning to break rules. One doesn't learn to break rules all at once, nor as the result of classical training. Rule breaking is an attitude that evolves in some people but not others.... It requires the kind of rebellious and curious mindset that is usually forged in childhood.... it combines intelligence, motivation, temperament, and some goal to be achieved. Rule breaking is an attitude usually NOT held by the generally conservative artists that desire to learn classical rules of art at places such as PAFA.

It only makes sense. The rules of realism are hard won, and they can only be gained if one really desires to achieve the final result of a realist image. If one does indeed "learn the rules", then it seems unlikely that one would then break them. What would be the point? Why would one work so hard to paint academic figure, and desire to do so, and then turn around and reject it? But even if this did happen, how would the artist go about breaking them? After all, the learning of the rules does not teach you anything about breaking them.

It is common for Pafa students to look down their noses at art schools that they deem to be "conceptual"... because those schools don't teach any "skills". However, what they probably do teach are the more conceptual skills of being critical, questioning rules, and striving to be original. These are exactly the types of mindsets that will allow for rule breaking, but these are also the kinds of skills Pafa doesn't seem to engage in.

In the end, I could even ask what would "breaking rules" mean?

If I broke the rules of algebra, it wouldn't result in a new mathematical system with new answers... it would simply mean that my algebraic formulas no longer worked.  A broken rules is useless. What one needs isn't to break a rule, but to find a different "working" rule. I think it's better to not break a perfectly fine set of rules (such as the rules of realism), but instead to simply find the rules that suit you best.

I don't get the impression the PAFA is really about breaking rules, or that any such attitude is taught, fostered, or otherwise part of the general purpose of the place. One can bring a critical eye to what they learn, but I don't think the institution instills it.