Are happy people boring?

[Leo]

there is a tipping point where intoxication goes from potential artistic enhancer to detriment, clouded judgment about what's actually good (ie, early-80s Iggy), or eventually just too fucked up to be productive.

 

[version]

I once tried to make music on ket and just ended up sat in a chair.

 

[entertainment]

I don't know about the tortured artist, but I'm often suspicious of nihilist attitudes in art. I think if you're really staring at the abyss, you cling on to what sustains and nutures your soul, what makes live worth living.

Which doesn't mean making happy, blissful art of course, but art that affirms the existence of goodness and beauty and human kindness, without achieving it.

Is the bleak nothingness a stylistic ideal in western culture rather than a law of human expression?

 

[entertainment]

Of course there's also the reality that really really depressed people simply don't have the energy to create anything. At the very bottom, people are not even able to summon the strength to take their own life, which is why suicides often occur after improving slightly.

 

[luka]

there is a tipping point where intoxication goes from potential artistic enhancer to detriment, clouded judgment about what's actually good (ie, early-80s Iggy), or eventually just too fucked up to be productive.

Absolutely. And it usually comes sooner than anticipated. But it varies from case to case.

 

[luka]

I don't know about the tortured artist, but I'm often suspicious of nihilist attitudes in art. I think if you're really staring at the abyss, you cling on to what sustains and nutures your soul, what makes live worth living.

Which doesn't mean making happy, blissful art of course, but art that affirms the existence of goodness and beauty and human kindness, without achieving it.

Is the bleak nothingness a stylistic ideal in western culture rather than a law of human expression?

Is there a lot of nihilism in art? What do you have in mind? Death metal or something?

 

[Leo]

I don't know about the tortured artist, but I'm often suspicious of nihilist attitudes in art. I think if you're really staring at the abyss, you cling on to what sustains and nutures your soul, what makes live worth living.

Which doesn't mean making happy, blissful art of course, but art that affirms the existence of goodness and beauty and human kindness, without achieving it.

Is the bleak nothingness a stylistic ideal in western culture rather than a law of human expression?

good point. I'd imagine most tortured artists don't want to be in that state, strive to be happier. Nihilism could sometimes be more like a choice, something you want to be. sometimes a behavioral fashion accessory.

 

[entertainment]

Is there a lot of nihilism in art? What do you have in mind? Death metal or something?

I think a lot of conceptual art is nihilist. hyperrealities, simulacrum, false consciousness, ironic embrace of inauthenticity, self-reference, this 'art is whatever art discourse says it is' attitude, fragmentation, disbelieve in essense

 

[luka]

Oh right. I suppose I think of that as more a kind of advanced practical joke (who's the joke on? Hard to say. Not on the market as such as the market colludes in it. Is in on it.) than art in the normal sense. Third will totally lose his rag if he's sees us discussing 'art' by the way. Hopefully he doesn't click on his thread.

 

[luka]

We will be called bourgeois reactionaries and enemies of the revolution

 

[version]

I think we're gonna get called that whatever we do.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I once tried to make music on ket and just ended up sat in a chair.

Is this the backstory to Cage's 4'33"?

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think we're gonna get called that whatever we do.

"You're all bourgeois reactionaries and enemies of the revolution", said thirdform, before adding: "Sorry, what was the question?"

 

[shiels]

Let’s say there’s some truth to the myth then. What’s the torture about? Is it guilt? Bad conscience. Repaying a debt. Proving yourself worthy. This would make sense with devotional art too

 

[luka]

Let’s say there’s some truth to the myth then. What’s the torture about? Is it guilt? Bad conscience. Repaying a debt. Proving yourself worthy. This would make sense with devotional art too

Sometimes you get the sense guilt might be part of it. Eg with Burroughs. Or a secret which cannot be spoken (Gerard manly Hopkins?)

 

[version]

Is this the backstory to Cage's 4'33"?

Nicolas Cage's.

 

[luka]

THe one thing that can't be said generating all these stuff that isn't it in a kind of displacement activity.

Probably too reductive to explain away everything like that but with some people in particular you get the strong sense that that is a large component

 

[version]

Sometimes you get the sense guilt might be part of it. Eg with Burroughs. Or a secret which cannot be spoken (Gerard manly Hopkins?)

This came up a while back. I'll see if I can find the thread.

 

[luka]

Yeah who was it working the guilt angle? I remember that conversation.

 

[version]

catalog.

Post war french theory is all to do with war guilt

Perhaps this is somewhat reductive this game.

Burroughs-guilt

All of French theory-guilt

Beckett-guilt

The known universe-guilt

https://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=15067&page=2&p=405342#post405342