They probably resent that statement, but too bad, this is my blog and I get to say what I want on it.
Our styles are quite different, but there seem to be some pretty serious underlying similarities. Something like this:
A tendency to get existential on your ass.
A little bit of wisecracking.
Some criticism of culture.
Some cultural ADD. An unwillingness to pick one thing – or one hundred things – to devote interest to.
But I think Colin and Mark might be more similar to one another than they are to me because the thing that seems to characterize them the most… I think it might be an insult to call someone an “aesthete,” so instead I am going to call them people who take their aesthetics seriously, but do so in a decidedly non-snobbish way. Mark posted this quote from Daniel Mendelsohn that I think summarizes it beautifully:
Strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions: envy, disdain, contempt even… Critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken.
I know some people who seem to have good taste in music or in clothing or in writing or some other specific domain, but the really impressive thing about Mark and Colin is that they seem to have good taste in everything. I trust their judgments on everything from foreign films to tweets. And I trust their judgments more than anyone.
They make me feel somewhat brutish, but that’s okay, because following their blogs as closely as I have for as long as I have, I feel that I have been able to view, to some extent, the universe through their eyes. I’ve gotten a peek at what it’s like to know beauty as if on a first-name basis.
On the other hand, I am still reading trashy Pop Psych books and listening to Spiral Staircase, exactly the type of stuff that someone who knows beauty on a first-name basis would not consume. Especially lately I’ve been on somewhat of a trash-consuming kick. Rather than listening to public radio like a good upper middle class whitie, I’ve been spending most of my radio listening time on a local station called G105 that seems to have a playlist consisting of various selections by Katy Perry. Every once in a while they’ll throw a curveball with Rihanna. And you know what? I’m enjoying it. More than I am comfortable admitting.
I think the reason why I felt compelled to write about this is because I feel the need to resolve – intellectually, at least – this conflicting tug I feel between this envy for Mark and Colin’s sensibilities and this pull I have to consume things that are, uh, less than “high culture.”
Here is where I invent a theory in order to rationalize my behavior: Maybe the reward I get from consuming G105-like material is that the humanity is pouring out of the opposite end. I’ll explain.
I think “high culture” can be fairly defined as stuff that we imagine was painstakingly and skillfully put together by some craftsman whose goal was to touch our nerve endings or say something profound about the human experience by injecting his stuff with many layers of depth or meaning.
On the other hand, the opposite kind of culture can probably be fairly defined as stuff that we imagine was put together by some business- or popularity-minded person by playing with combinations of sounds until he found one that made him say, “Ooo, hot beat.” This may be completely unfair, but I am going to name LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem as the perfect example.
This is going to sound terribly pretentious and bullshit-y, but the lack of intention that I perceive in G105-like stuff makes it in some ways even more beautiful. They are not being philosophers or artists. They are just being humans. They just want me to dance. And I appreciate that.
***
Somewhat related: There is one kind of “culture” that I absolutely cannot stand, and that is the kind that I perceive to be full of intention but failing to deliver on depth. I’m looking at you, American Family Radio. I’m tempted to say more, but the world already has plenty of Christian Rock bashers.
So instead let me bash Dave Barry. I picked up a book of his for the first time, and while it made me laugh heartily for the first few chapters, now I am struggling to finish it. I can feel the effort that went into crafting the sentences to maximize funniness. These chapters probably took a ridiculously long time to write, especially with how he always tries to wrap everything up at the end. But what bothers me is that despite all the effort that probably went into it, there is nothing behind the humor. He’s not saying anything.
This has actually been a very sad realization for me because I thought humor/mockery had some sort of inherently built-in lessons if you just pay enough attention to it. I believed that if you search for why something is funny you are likely to learn something about this absurd life we are living. Instead, reading Dave Barry has now de-elevated my perception of humor to just another thing that may or may not have any calories.
