Having, being, enflaming

[imomus]

Today I have a mixed bag of things I want to signal:

1. My latest column for Frieze gazes at the art world through the prism of Erich Fromm's book To Have Or To Be, which influenced me in a post-materialist direction when I read it, aged 20, in 1980 (the year Fromm died). It's possible to experience the art world in having mode (objects, collectors, acquisitions, profit, auctions, investments) or being mode (experiences, relationships, sensations), but my article wonders just how symbiotic these modes are; does the being-mode of some depend on the having-mode of others? It's a chance, also, to re-examine Fromm's fusion of Marx and Freud: "The person exclusively concerned with having and possession is a neurotic, mentally sick person; hence it would follow that the society in which most of the members are anal characters is a sick society."

2. The next thing I want to draw your attention to is a couple of rather good cover versions of my songs. I don't know who Amanda Palmer and Steven Wilson are, but they seem to command sizeable and passionate audiences. And they've both covered songs of mine rather well. Here's Steven Wilson doing The Guitar Lesson:

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And here's Amanda Palmer, on tour this month, singing I Want You, But I Don't Need You to a gratifyingly appreciative crowd (but also, I think, stretching them a little with the song's casual brutality):

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3. Finally, I want to flag some free downloads of three records by my favourite early 80s synthpop band, The Passage. I should really write a big long entry about The Passage one day; how their music is a complex triangulation of the concepts of fear, love and hope, a structure echoed in recurrent musical motifs which tinkle and thunder like themes in some great didactic synth-rock opera, how the political vision of this band was the most intelligently left-wing of any of the British 1980s bands, how the transition from night to day, from PM to AM, symbolizes their belief in revolutionary change, how they courted The Fall (unrequited) and slated Anderton, Manchester's evangelical chief of police (even more unrequited, despite a shared love of biblical references), how Witts recruited pretty, big-lipped, floppy-haired Andy Wilson and -- judging by the sound of his voice on some of these songs -- drugged him too, possibly with the Hoffmann Laroche products he loved to sing about, how The Passage is what Hanns Eisler might have sounded like if he'd started a synth band and signed to Cherry Red, how Witts now teaches in the music department at the University of Edinburgh.

I love The Passage, and now -- thanks to this cache of illegal downloads on Castles in Space -- you can too:

The Passage: For All And None 1981 (description here).

The Passage: Degenerates 1982 (description here).

The Passage: Enflame 1983 (description here).

When Cherry Red asked me to list my 15 favourite tracks for a feature on their website called My Favourite Flavours, my list began and ended with The Passage. More Top 15 lists here, including Cornelius's, which includes an album of mine called, apparently, Circus Maximamus ("I’d like Momus to make another record like this"), and poet Simon Armitage's ("Nick Currie is one the all time narrative songwriters and wordsmiths").

For full listening pleasure, though, you should get LTM's CD re-editions of The Passage albums, which include extra tracks, singles and radio sessions. Last week I sent LTM a cassette of The Passage live at the Manchester Ritz for a Passage live release they're preparing. Rarely has Retro Necro sounded so good.

Comments

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Having just read your article, and a large chunk of the google books preview, I've ordered a copy of Fromm's book.

The first thing that struck me was the buddhist undertones of his thoughts, but I wasn't sure whether I was projecting that understanding onto his writings. Then I read a review on amazon.co.uk in which someone wrote: " Anybody who has been influenced by books written by Buddhist authors will particularly benefit from reading this, although it is probably a more difficult read than these." and it confirmed what I suspected.

I could be wrong, and I'm reserving proper judgment until I've read the book, but I think the reason you see the symbioticism of having and being within the art world is because you perhaps misunderstand fromms "being". You've all too readily cast yourself as the "goodie", the "being" aspect, in contrast the "baddies", the coveters, the "having" aspect. You see yourself as a shining post-materialist. In doing this, you've failed to recognise the "having" of the ego.

A few pages down from the preview you post, Fromm states that desire for status prompts consumption (of new cars). This is "having". The artist is just as capable of desiring the acquisition of social status (ego) as the art dealer is capable of desiring art for monetary reasons (material). That's exactly why "doing and making nothing might be the most effective way to be active and productive."

But then what of this?: ‘In the very attempt to suppress having and consuming, the person may be equally preoccupied with having and consuming’. The way I see it, it's of the same line of thought as this Zen story --

"Two traveling monks reached a river where they met a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across. One of the monks hesitated, but the other quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other bank. She thanked him and departed.

As the monks continued on their way, the one was brooding and preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. "Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!"

"Brother," the second monk replied, "I set her down on the other side, while you are still carrying her."

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's funny, that Fromm perception actually made me think of exactly the same Buddhist story! I know it from a telling by John Cage, on his record Indeteminacy.