frustration as part of the aesthetic experience

mvuent

mvuent

Void Dweller
do you ever get frustrated by art/music/writing? as in, not intellectually frustrated by the creator's politics or whatever, but frustrated by the art itself in a very visceral, experiential sense? frustrated that you can't "resolve" it, make its details cohere into a satisfying—or at least vivid—experience? or do you always just go "gee, that wasn't very good" and move on to something else before that feeling can set in? is there any art that you both find frustrating to try and grasp and deeply love? do you ever feel conflicted about this, and wonder if the art's virtues are worth the frustration? do you blame the creator for your tribulations, or yourself?
 
WashYourHands

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Free bj’s?

SND perhaps. I’ve enjoyed plenty of Mark Fell’s production pieces, his writing is usually focused and expansive too supported by a hell of a back catalogue. Def been times where I’ve wondered “who is this for? maybe you’re too thick to grasp the mathematical depths creating such obtuse minimal click tracks!”. You give a piece time to settle like a household foundation settles, except it never really does, compounded by works you truly dig. It’s one reason a lot of dub techno seems redundant - what’s the aim if not re-enactment of an aesthetic that’s been done to oblivion

Ton of vocal psychedelia’s utterly impenetrable lyrical content, at times, can be like trying to tease out the nuances in Napalm Death vocals - very different worlds but at least early thrash had a lyric sheet to gleam its meaningless allusions from. You hear monotone mumble-droning, with the occasional inflection up/down… and? Is this it?

Overall, yes. Some of my favourite art interactions are where the work does finally penetrate a part of your soul to the extent a wee ping of enlightenment zings off, after a few years circling the cunt, hands on hips, frustrated, wondering what is even there to parse fully
 
version

version

Well-known member
mvuent said:
do you ever get frustrated by art/music/writing? as in, not intellectually frustrated by the creator's politics or whatever, but frustrated by the art itself in a very visceral, experiential sense? frustrated that you can't "resolve" it, make its details cohere into a satisfying—or at least vivid—experience?
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I felt this way about the Iain Sinclair book I read and I blame it entirely on him.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
prynne is often hugely frustrating. i dont get it with music i dont think. i can imagine having it with film.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
but prynne is pretty much the only person ive allowed to have that relationship with me i guess. i think its useful but you have to have quite a lot of trust in someone to take that on
 
D

DannyL

Wild Horses
luka said:
prynne is often hugely frustrating. i dont get it with music i dont think. i can imagine having it with film.
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I've had it a lot with film. The last Zulawski Cosmos was like that, Hard to be A God as well. I got the sense that something magnificent was lurking just behind the veil but I couldn't access it. At least with the latter there was a sea of absolute lurid spectacle to ogle at while you trying to work out if it actually means anything.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
In poetry terms, I tried reading Geoffrey Hill once and gave up after finding him near incomprehensible.
 
version

version

Well-known member
Other than the Sinclair mentioned earlier, I've had this with Prynne, Debord, D&G, Baudrillard, Copenhagen Cowboy, The Conformist, Antonioni's stuff and probably some other things which escape me.

The Debord memoir I read the other day really fits the 'frustrated that you can't "resolve" it, make its details cohere into a satisfying—or at least vivid—experience' description. I felt I'd spent my time clutching at smoke. He seemed to spend most of the book describing what he was going to do with it without ever doing it. I can pick out individual bits of information he provided, but the overall shape and picture eludes me. This is complicated by the stuff he piles on about disguising his intentions, misdirection and the like which only adds to the strange effect and suggests it's somewhat by design.

Prynne reads like someone dusted the words off a science paper then stuck them back on in the wrong order.

D&G and Baudrillard toss all this jargon at you without ever really making it clear what they mean by it.

Copenhagen Cowboy, The Conformist and Antonioni operate according to their own particularly alienating pacing and logic. There's a combination of slowness and incongruity that can be absolutely maddening. A plodding through lurching narrative.

I don't love any of this stuff and I do blame the creators for the most part. I've encountered things by almost all of them which I've enjoyed and which demonstrated they were capable of coming up with something decent and interesting without the frustration or obscurantism. It's not an integral part of their style. It's something they've chosen to dial up.

I think there's something in most of them, depending on who's looking, but they don't make it easy and I'm not convinced any of them are essential. You read something like Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control or Debord's Comments on the Society of the Spectacle and think "You can write like this yet you choose to write stuff like Anti-Oedipus and Panegyric... ".

Prynne, Sinclair and Copenhagen Cowboy are three I currently can't be arsed with at all. I like Sinclair's nonfiction, but that Jack the Ripper book felt like immense frustration for absolutely nothing. I'd say the same of Copenhagen Cowboy.
 
version

version

Well-known member
I think something can be difficult and unclear without being frustrating. There are stretches of Beckett and Pynchon and Burroughs I don't understand, but which don't provoke the same feelings of anger and frustration that the Sinclair did.
 
D

DannyL

Wild Horses
version said:
I think something can be difficult and unclear without being frustrating. There are stretches of Beckett and Pynchon and Burroughs I don't understand, but which don't provoke the same feelings of anger and frustration that the Sinclair did.
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I had that with Sinclair and his book about Hackney. Shouldn't be that fucking obscure, a book about a London Borough. Yet it is, somehow
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
how did it frustrate you? i remember thinking the opening was brilliant.
none of his novels are successful but thats the best one i think.
 
version

version

Well-known member
luka said:
how did it frustrate you? i remember thinking the opening was brilliant.
none of his novels are successful but thats the best one i think.
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It felt like a bunch of phrases and images stuck together across the length of a book. I had no sense of what was going on and I didn't get the impression the author did either.
 
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