Copyleft authenticity

[imomus]

I want to draft this idea as clearly and concisely as I would a patent application. My idea is to apply the Copyleft idea to authenticity as it plays out, for instance, in popular music. Copyleft, simply stated, is the idea that we make our intellectual products open-source and communal. Anyone can have free access to them and change them, on condition that the changed version itself stays open source; that it, in turn, can be modified by anyone and remains free to all. You can't take code from a copyleft program free and then make something with it which you charge money for.

Now, let's apply this principle to authenticity. Let's say I'm a middle-class Jewish student from Minneapolis. I become fascinated by Woody Guthrie, mainly because of his authenticity. Now, it's fine for me to become a sort of fake Woody Guthrie, to copy Woody Guthrie, make changes to his style, go electric, whatever. But I mustn't then make my actions the basis for a new claim to authenticity (by, for instance, publishing an autobiography that portrays me as some sort of wandering visionary hobo who never quite mastered conventional English prose style). Just as copyleft asks me to keep my coding activity always in the realm of the non-commercial, so copyleft authenticity demands that I keep my musical activity always in the realm of the fake. And just as copyleft demands that software remain open to all programmers, so copyleft authenticity demands that anyone can become a fake version of me the same way I became a fake version of someone else. I cannot kick away the ladder of fakery. I cannot disapprove of fakery, having used it to climb to where I am today. I cannot close the gate and make this space private property.

There are two problems with the copyleft model of authenticity, though. The first involves "the dark star phenomenon". (I came up with this idea during a conversation with Stephin Merrit.) "The dark star phenomenon" states that authenticity is relative. It's possible that for every star we believe to be the epitome of authenticity there's a hidden model, a "dark star", who served as his inspiration. Woody Guthrie himself, for instance, "just ripped off Dark Star X". All Woody's authenticity cred then rushes, like matter into a black hole, towards the "dark star". But then some music snob tells us that Dark Star X ripped everything off from Dark Star Z. And so on.

The second problem is that authenticity claims may not be what they seem. They may in fact be the best way of establishing one's fakeness. Like Sherlock Holmes in one of his infernal disguises, the best faker is one who can pass as the real thing. The artist most dedicated to inauthenticity is not the one claiming to be fake, but the one claiming to be real. No wonder Bob Dylan's songs are full of card sharps and poker faces.

"Hello, Patent Office? I want to register an authentic new idea. Oh, wait, never mind..."

Comments

[d-g-m.livejournal.com]

Ha. Your a Pisces right?
Total absorption of ideas with no use for consistency or organisation.
Are you being critical of this process?
Just the other day you wrote -what I took as- a positive review how the Japanese are ahead in the Postmodern.
Isn't your theory here just a poorly thought out paraphrased, "Copyleft", construction of Postmodernism?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Gosh, I wish the accusations of unclear thinking and writing I get could at least be as clear as my "unclear" original post.

Your a Pisces right?

I'm an Aquarius. But if you think astrology has more explanatory value than postmodernism, we don't have much more to discuss.

I don't see anything "inconsistent" in what I'm saying here, or anything "poorly thought out". My position is that fakeness is freedom. Anyone can be fake. In that sense it's like open source. Authenticity, however, is a closed system, like private property. There are various barriers, hurdles, padlocks, ladders to authenticity. Just as you have to pay for a piece of private property (which then restricts access to all but you), you have to "pay your dues" to attain authenticity. It's paid for usually by suffering. Those of us who buy into this mythology (and I don't) disdain arrivistes, upstarts, montebanks, impostors with as much vehemence as a property-owner disdains an intruder on his land. Copyleft is a part of postmodernism's egalitarian and flattening tendencies. It's part of the ongoing de-hierarchicalisation of original and copy, surface and depth, high and low, etc.

So yes, my theory here is a copyleft construction of postmodernism. And because I'm an Aquarius, I phrased it as elegantly as I could. We're communicators, you know. Air sign.

(i hope this doesnt look accusatory)

[alionunderaw.livejournal.com]

But out of curiosity; you're talking about a shift in attitude primarily, towards fakery or inauthenticity? I personally don't find anything wrong with it, and it's really kind of inevitable...

Re: (i hope this doesnt look accusatory)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What I had in mind was the formulation of a moral precept that would say it's fine to be fake, but not to use one's fakeness as a new claim to authenticity. I could have used a metaphor about kicking away ladders, or a metaphor about throwing stones in glass houses. Instead, I used the metaphor of copyleft. Copyleft fitted my idea because it contains this idea "don't take into the private domain what you find in the public domain". Real / fake and private / public map quite well to each other, metaphorically.

Re: (i hope this doesnt look accusatory)

[alionunderaw.livejournal.com]

Well put; I think it's interesting, too, sort of, that when you take something out of the domain of "authenticity," (especially 'charges of inauthenticity') it takes on less of a fuming-moral-wrath sort of tone and becomes something valuable, even. If I take some idea of yours and do something with it and call it "development," it's worthy; if someone else watches and calls it a pose, it's awful....

Re: (i hope this doesnt look accusatory)

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

(stirs tea in corner, glances about anxiously, takes a sudden interest in nearby curios)

Re: (i hope this doesnt look accusatory)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Take Whimsy, for example. He's a mountebank, an impostor. But I don't mind! It's okay! Americans can be aristocrats too! Why ever not? We're great friends!

Re: (i hope this doesnt look accusatory)

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Guilty as charged, I'm afraid--although I'd say that I'm more of a chutney-bottomed ninnyroger or finical dapperling. It's curious how, over time, a playful jibe of a nickname can become a personal constellation.

Do you take sugar?

W

PS: My congratulations on your new art venue, Nick. I'm sure you're thrilled.

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

you have to "pay your dues" to attain authenticity

And I guess it's true you can't just proclaim yourself authentic, you have to be accepted as authentic by others, critics, other "authentics". Fake until proven authentic.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Deep enough to be shallow, authentic enough to be fake and Aquarius enough to realize that there are more flaming chunks of gas in the universe than the sun.

[odyshape.livejournal.com]

This is my new sig.