Authoritarianism and creativity in the new edition of The Wire

[imomus]

The September issue of The Wire is out, with a rather gorgeous Donald Milne photo shoot of "the world's most beautiful man", David Sylvian, spashed all over it.

It's actually a pretty good issue, with features on Aki Onda, Vietnamese pop, and a review by one Nick Currie of a Berlin art show -- Allora and Calzadilla's piece at the Temporary Kunsthalle, in which they installed a temporary ceiling halfway up the wall and had a flamenco dancer stamping away invisibly above our heads.

I thought I'd go through the issue today with yesterday's theme of authoritarianism-and-creativity in mind, just as a reminder of how insistently this "false binary" tends to play out when artists are interviewed about their lives.

My art review ends: "My friend, the composer David Woodard, was just whispering something about David Byrne’s Playing The Building piece when the guard came over and told us, rather sharply, to stop talking. “The artists wish visitors to experience an imaginative landscape,” she explained, “and that requires silence in the room.” We complied, but not without experiencing a brief echo of another imaginative landscape: the authoritarian republic administered from this site 20 years ago." Notice how authoritarianism there is attributed not just to the defunct DDR (Allora and Calzadilla's piece specifically references the now-demolished Palast der Republik, the DDR parliament next door), but to the artists themselves.

Later, there's an extensive interview with another friend, Aki Onda. A couple of pages in Onda (whose father was born in Korea, and who travelled a lot when he was a child) says, in a pull quote blown up big on the page: "I really hated Japan. I thought it’s just boring. If that’s the only system you know, you have to obey it, but I knew many other countries".



The brush-with-authority theme continues as Onda describes his schooldays: "I quit kindergarten within four days,” he recalls. “Every morning I cried and refused to go, and my parents gave up. On the first day we had to take a nap and I didn’t want to obey. In elementary school all I did was drawing, I didn’t listen to what the teachers said at all. People just ignored me. But later, Japanese junior high school is really conservative and the rules are strict. I had long hair and I completely ignored them, so they called my parents, who didn’t take it seriously. They told me I should do whatever I believed. So I became famous as the only student who completely ignored the system. I skipped classes. And then I shut my mouth for five years. I didn’t say a word. I was just obsessively reading books. And sometimes I went to university classes. My father was teaching there, so I knew the professors."

Later, though, Onda says that his Cassette Memories project has been an attempt to come to terms with this childhood. So authoritarianism and creativity connect; one dimension can be the irritating grain of sand the oyster turns, in the other, into a pearl.



In the Sylvian feature the rebellion is against God and his representatives on earth: "Undertones of violence ripple through a number of tracks: the first, most significant occurrence coming on the disillusioned opener “Small Metal Gods”, which is a barely veiled allusion to Sylvian’s break with the gurus who have played such a large role in his art and life these past 20 years. Picking out the layered and intercut improvisations of Polwechsel, Fennesz, Nakamura and Otomo, Sylvian sings: “I’ve placed the gods/In a zip-loc bag/I’ve put them in a drawer/ They’ve refused my prayers/For the umpteenth time/ So I’m evening up the score.” The concluding verse goes: “Small metal gods/Cheap souvenirs/You’ve abandoned me for sure/I’m dumping you, my childish things/I’m evening up the score.”

“There’s a sense of liberation in expressing this disillusion, whether it’s true or not,” reveals Sylvian. “It’s the freedom to doubt. I think it’s in the Tibetan Buddhist religion where they have these gatherings, I think even on a daily basis, where they dispute the teachings of the Buddha. They argue against him. That is extremely healthy for any community, for any democracy. Let alone a religious group."

Comments

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

To me, Onda sounds like he's bought into western ideas of Japan because he's spent too much time abroad. His childhood rebellion doesn't sound that remarkable to me even though he's painting it as a case of his spirit being repressed by the Japanese status quo. He speaks of strict schools and "obeying the system" but that's hardly a peculiarity of Japanese society. He's carrying around his stuffy, difficult childhood with him, he's been abroad and listened to too many foreigners say "Yeah, we see Japanese people as robotic drones here in the west. All that bowing, you guys are a bit strange". In reality, we have just as many subtle rules regarding behaviour as the Japanese, it's just that we're not completely aware of them or we take them for granted as "normal" or self-evident. The only part of his story that's remarkable is his 5 year mutism, which is a sign of some of kind of childhood anxiety disorder.

"Small Metal Gods" and Change

[jdcasten.livejournal.com]

It sounds to me like Onda was resisting the disciple of schools more for their contrast with his parents (who sound open-minded enough), than with western counterparts.

I found when switching from the Syracuse to the Bronx school system in New York, in the first grade, that the stricter discipline of the former actually helped me to learn to read better—one can turn discipline into a tool, rather than be used by it. But I think it usually better to be driven by creativity, than to it.

As to Sylvian’s lyric’s about unanswered prayers, I’ll quote my book “Post-Digital Revelation” where the devil says:

“And you may ask,
‘God, why is there so much suffering?’
And I will reply,
‘Well things could be worse…
Like eternally burning in hell’s fire!’”

BTW: I hope I’m not the only one here who thinks “materialism” need not oppose “spiritualism.”

agree, but...

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

I agree with your point(s)...
But I do have a feeling that Japanese school experience is MUCH more demanding in the soul crunching kind of way then here in US (for example)...
The 100% expectation to conform and give it your all means exactly that, here... even with all our more vague system of rules,,, we have well established poly-cultures and well established ideas of 'fight for your own way of thinking/being' which I know mostly boils down to 'fight for a pre- prescribed way of thinking/being'... but being america its a bit of both worlds... theres is one....

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

In reality, we have just as many subtle rules regarding behaviour as the Japanese, it's just that we're not completely aware of them or we take them for granted as "normal" or self-evident.

I would agree that there are aspects of Western behavior that are just as subtle. But "just as many"? Maybe, maybe not. And I wouldn't say that behavior is as rigidly codified, at least not in America, because we immediately take it as a given that people "do things differently in their family" or something like that. The quirks and idiosyncrasies of others--while they can and do often create static--are also more easily shrugged off via a series of standard mental excuses we actively make for those with whom we communicate.

I think the problem is in the portrayal of these behaviors as particularly "robotic," as if the perhaps slightly more organic or fluid behaviors of Westerners aren't just as prescribed in their own ways.

I would say, however, that the Japanese are, by and large, far more comfortable supplicating themselves to authority figures, the elderly, etc. Age and status are such big things there, whereas most Americans assume from the get-go that they can stand in the same room with a rank-superior, and that no deep bow or signal of self-effacing respect is necessary. It's true that we engage in special acts of courtesy with superiors, but none of them require that we take ourselves down a notch in the process.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

The military is, of course, a glaring counter-example. But that culture is roughly the same anywhere one goes.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

he's been abroad and listened to too many foreigners

I don't think it's this. I think, rather, that what's often presented as privilege -- traveling around as a kid, having a foot in many different cultures -- has a downside, which is that it makes it hard to stop yourself endlessly comparing one state to another, one way of life to another. This is exactly what Aki Sasamoto is talking about in her Judgmental Hopper idea. Becoming judgmental is inevitable in these circumstances, but it doesn't make you either popular or happy, so you learn to hide your judgments from people who haven't had your advantages. They, after all, are just going to see you as privileged. They won't have much sympathy.

This also connects to what social psychologists tell us about happiness, and its relationship with "relative deprivation". We tend to be unhappy not because of objective measures of deprivation, but because of our expectations and our knowledge of what other people have. Someone who's traveled enough to see the world (or just seen it on TV) but then been locked down in a local situation again is going to be an unhappy bunny. Ignorance is, in many ways, bliss, especially when it comes to socialisation.

Later in life, of course, things may reverse. I'd wager that Aki is now happier than many of the people he went to school with. He certainly seemed it when I had dinner with him in Brooklyn at the end of May!

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

So is a Judgmental Hopper necessarily a privileged person? I can imagine people traveling for any number of reasons (because they can due to privilege, because they're seeking greater relative prosperity, etc). It would seem that, the more privileged a traveler you are, the more you are a part of a master narrative. Which is to say that the foreign culture seen by a privileged person is not the foreign culture seen by an unprivileged person. These two travelers will not judge the same culture, and they will not judge it in the same ways. What do we call the Hoppers who don't come from privilege?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What do we call the Hoppers who don't come from privilege?

We usually call them "economic migrants" or "immigrants", no?

(Cue link to my article on The cosmpolitanism of the poor (http://imomus.livejournal.com/217216.html).)

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

And don't we usually call Judgmental Hoppers "expats"? That unprivileged travelers are relegated to the white-label, generic categories of "economic migrants" and "immigrants" seems to imply that their experiences are white-label and generic, as well. The Judgmental Hoppers, on the other hand, have exceptional experiences deserving of an exceptional category. Doesn't seem quite right to me.

[(Anonymous)]

do you still have a scottish accent?

you write with one , sometimes :)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I have enough of a Scottish accent that those with an ear for such things can easily hear it, but not enough that people can't understand what I'm saying!