Lady GaGa as Post-Modern Identity-Art.

When we speak of post-modern art, it is commonly understood that elements of pop-culture play an important role. What this role typically involves when we say this is that artists (who are typically functioning (or attempting to function) in certain ways OUTSIDE of the pop-culture, utilize elements of mainstream cultural trends within their work, as components of the pastiche that they employ. Think of pop-culture as a shade of fluorescent paint, not the painting itself that the pigment is utilized to make.

As my girlfriend was recently reading elements to me of the Wikipedia bio for the current ironic pop-princess Lady GaGa, it struck me that a bit of role-reversal within these conventions may be finally coming into play. From what I can piece together from the wiki and some further digging into similar info available on the internet, here’s a brief synopsis, and my analysis of how and why it works-



“Lady GaGa,” A.K.A. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, is first-and-foremost an Artist (and not in the same way that we might off-handedly refer to Britney Spears as a “recording-artist,” rather in the “Fine Art”/ “Conceptual Project” sort of way) She’s trained at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and maintains a “collective” (“Haus of GaGa”- of which she claims “this is my own creative team, modeled on Warhol's Factory. Everyone is under 26 and we do everything together.”) This is decidedly NOT the resume of someone who (like most of her peers) signed themselves away to a talent-agent with a hysterical (and hysterically naive) cry of “Whatever it takes to make me a staaaaar!”

In her own words, rather; "I consider what I do to be more of an Andy Warhol concept: pop performance art, multimedia, fashion, technology, video, film. And it's all coming together, and it's going to be traveling museum show."


For a couple of weeks I had near-constant exposure to “The Fame” and streamed videos of the songs from the GaGa record… not exactly of my own volition, but not quite in a “kicking and screaming” sort of way either… I honestly don’t mind this stuff nearly as much as I feel that I probably should. From the first time that I heard it, the record struck me as conventional, clichéd, saccharine, girly pop (albeit with better-produced dance-beats and glammed-up electro than most of that ilk) of a sort that I don’t usually like…but somehow, this one felt… DIFFERENT. That difference, I believe, is IRONY. By this point I feel like I could write an entire book analyzing the double-entendres in each song and the mixed metaphors and tongue-in-cheek references in each video… but I’ll spare the close-read for now. Suffice it to say, there isn’t a single song on the record or official video released that doesn’t have an undertone or possible translation that doesn’t suggest the sort of pastiche that I’m speaking of. This is something a bit too artistically-serious to be called “spoof,” but a bit too ironic to be taken serious in the context that it’s presented… which presents another layer of irony- this pastiche is far more serious and legitimate than the genre that it takes as it’s subject. Think the way that Don Delilo, Salman Rushdie, Andy Warhol (a name you might have noticed GaGa herself seems quick to drop), or Sheppard Fairey repurpose pop-culture as a facet of their art. This is basically the same idea, but the formula has been cleverly inverted.

The nearest I can gather, “Lady GaGa’s” current public persona was created as a performance-art stunt. She seems to have taken the current media-driven pop-music market as her canvas, and decided that on it she would paint a construction of herself, an intentionally fabricated pop-star.

Let’s face it. They’re ALL fabricated. That’s part of the deal; the entirety of what currently “sells” in that realm. It’s about time that an Artist stepped up and made themself and their identity into the canvas itself, dedicated themself to creating their own identity into a “pop-star” in order to achieve, in a more extreme and all-encompassing way, the points that nearly all dedicated post-modernists, “pop-artists,” and post-post-modernists are intending to make about the world that we live in and the fleeting natures of “truth” and “reality,” by merely referencing or lifting elements of pop-culture, rather than diving right in, as Lady GaGa has.

Pop-culture is no longer merely a shade of paint dabbed on for effect or to make a point. Pop-culture IS the point, but the post-modern point remains the same. The identity is still the canvas, the artist becomes that canvas, the paint is both the artist and pop-culture itself. Lady GaGa seems on a crash course to prove that artists can BECOME the very thing that they’re critiquing (without devolving completely to satire), and this may prove to be the most extreme and compelling way of making this point to date.

That is, if anyone bothers to take notice that, regardless of the surface-level similarities, there’s something decisively DIFFERENT between Lady GaGa and Christina Aguilera.

What IS LeVautourChronique? ( A Mission-Statement, Expanded Scope, and Updated Aesthetics…)

As my readership begins to gradually diversify a bit, I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been fielding more questions about what the theme and purpose of this website is. I’m aware that it’s not always completely evident from one entry to the next what, if any, is the connection between them…. So, this is probably a good time to establish the ground-rules…

My theme with LeVautourChronique is intentionally and by its nature pliable, but there are definite guidelines, and I feel that thus far I’ve adhered to them fairly consistently. Basically, this is an Arts and Culture blog dedicated to the Poetics and Politics of Identity. Critically, I’m of the belief that all Artists and public figures (and most individuals in general, whether consciously aware of it or not) are actively engaged in a project (or projects) of Identity-Construction, and that for artists this often even goes so far as being a facet of their catalog, one of their primary artistic creations (sometimes even their master-work, the larger piece that all of their other works are merely elements of… I’ve done academic work attempting to assert this about Walt Whitman, for instance.) Therefore, on this site, critique of nearly any element of art, culture, society, myself, my projects, daily life, etc is and has been fair game, as long as it is viewed, observed, and analyzed through this lens.

Now then, over seventy entries in and with those parameters finally clarified, I want to also make it clear that, when I started this site, I never intended to be the sole contributing writer to it in the long-run. My ideas for this site and reasons for establishing it, like most projects, seemed to require to be done in stages, and I think that it’s time to move a small step up that ladder.

So, from this point forward, consider this an open call. Keep in mind the theme just discussed (to reiterate, in a nutshell: An Arts and Culture blog dedicated to the Poetics and Politics of Identity and Identity Construction), let your mind spin, and send me some essays, reviews, musings, guerilla-journalism, poetry, abstract creative writing, whatever. I want it to be known, too, that I’m not only speaking of or to my close friends or frequent collaborators here; this is open to ANYONE if I think that your ideas fit well with what we’re trying to do and say on this site (…although part of me would like to start off with a couple contributions from artists/ writers in my own inner circle that I know and trust, just to test the water a bit [wink wink, get at me, kids.]…)

To get a few potential F.A.Q.’s on the subject out of the way…

Will you get paid for contributing your writing to LeVautourChronique? Yes and no. You will get paid in the same way that I get paid for maintaining the site. For the time-being, therefore, your compensation comes in the form of promotion, readership, networking, the free exchange of creative ideas, etc.

Will contributions published here be limited exclusively to ideas and opinions that agree explicitly with my own? Absolutely not. In fact, a desire for differing ideas is one of the driving forces behind my interest in the inclusion of additional writers. Open dialogue is definitely one of my goals here. Contributions from authors other than myself will feature by-lines, and probably an introductory blurb so as not to confuse my own thoughts with those of others. I will not, however, publish here anything perceived as intolerant, ignorant, or unnecessarily negative, however well you might think that your writing with those traits might adhere to the blog’s theme.

Will I stop posting my own work here once I start accepting contributions? Absolutely not. This will still primarily be my blog, and primarily the online home of my own ideas, reviews, and essays. In fact, you will most likely notice that the next few posts are still my own, as I have a handful in the works and partially written… and that won’t mean in any way that I’ve dismissed the idea of accepting contributions, either.

How do I submit my contributions, or send additional questions, comments, or feedback? The best way is to email me, at bernard.levautour@yahoo.com.

With a newly-clarified mission-statement, and a widened scope for future entries on this site, I think that this is also as good a time as any to introduce a bit of a new look to L.V.C. I am therefore retiring the awkward/ outdated quasi-unintentionally phallic-looking B+W vulture logo (I’ll leave it up until the next post, in case you haven’t a clue what I’m referring to…) and replacing it with a brand new and far more appropriate-feeling logo(the aesthetic tone around here has evolved with the blog, I feel…)…




…which features an image from my portfolio of Miss Chloe Claustrophobia (herself a conceptual-art project pertaining to the theme of Identity-Construction) digitally modified in collaboration with Sara Jane of Alloy Images/ Swords We Swallow / Tipsy Cougar (who is also my wonderful and supportive girlfriend.).

So, stay tuned. Click the “Follow” link at the top of the page. Contribute your writing. Help this site become a home for active, constructive, and creative dialogue. In the meantime, enjoy my rants and rambles more thoroughly now that you hopefully have a better understanding of why I post them here.

Thanks for reading.


-Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour

a bit of a break... Mirrors and Voices.

I have taken a bit of a break from my online postings lately, due to the time-constraints imposed by the grad-school application process. I apologize.

To my avid and disapointed readers (*cough*), I apologize.

To tide you over in the meantime, this evening I will begin to post segments of a piece of essay-work that I am currently working on retyping and reformatting for a professor.

This is the first installment in a series, and thus a cliff-hanger; so keep posted.


Mirrors and Voices;
Borges’ and Beckett’s Collective Postmodern Project of Tearing Down and Rebuilding Representations.


Refining the Scope of the Project


To encapsulate a major theme of the Postmodern project, it has been the job of both artists and critics to tear down all that had existed before, particularly as it relates to the idea of representation, and rebuild admittedly false but just-as-plausible representational constructs in the place where structures that were held as “truth” in the modernist and pre-modern eras had been removed. In this regard, critically, far more work has been done in the earlier phase of this project; that of the removing of past assumptions of representational “truth,” than in the latter stage, the process of rebuilding where the first stage leaves enormous opportunity for new Art-for-Art’s-sake initiatives. In terms of the works of Art that participate in the project, however, effort has definitely been made on all sides of the task. In this regard, Jorge Luis Borges and Samuel Beckett represent opposite ends of this spectrum that compliment each other nicely in view of the combined project of the movement. Borges can be seen to represent the beginning of the postmodern process in this regard, the early process of tearing down, by way of the works of art themselves, the constructs of the previously assumed “truths.” Correspondingly, Beckett represents the end goal of the project, the reconstruction, by way of Art itself, of new constructs based on the assumption that the old ones, by this point, are understood to be irrelevant (these new constructs would, therefore, also be irrelevant in any regard but to the advancement of the Art of representation itself). The two authors, therefore, if taken collectively, represent, in many ways, the fulfillment of the postmodern task. Deconstruction is inconsequential if some form of Reconstruction doesn’t follow, and true artistic construction cannot take place without the tabula rasa that early post-modern truth-destruction (both critical and artistic) provides. Borges and Beckett allow us to view how the two can most successfully function together to achieve a coherent artistic (and inherently Art-focused) statement.

...to be continued...

“This very deep, dark fault;” The “Gap” Between Constructed Artistic Identities in Murakami’s “Dance Dance Dance.”

Demonstrations of theories about identity construction abound in contemporary (particularly “post-modern” and post-”post-modern”) Literature. I stumbled on one recently that spells things out in an interesting way, so I figured that I would share.

At a pivotal moment, in the midst of a tense piece of dialogue in Haruki Murakami’s 1988 novel “Dance Dance Dance,” Gotanda, an actor, explains to the unnamed narrator, “I get this gap between me Gotanda and me the actor and stand back and actually observe myself doing shit. I’m on one side of this very deep, dark fault, and then unconsciously, on the other side, I have this urge to destroy something.” This is a problematic phenomenon for the troubled character, who expresses that it “never happens when other people are around, though. Only when I’m alone.”

Through Gotanda’s dialogue admissions in these passages, Murakami establishes a paradigm, and at the same time a paradox, of the ways in which artists (and artistically-minded individuals) construct their identities. By doing so, he also sheds light on the construction of his own novel, as it becomes suddenly apparent that the narrator, who, on a surface level the work seems to be telling the story of, is NOT being portrayed as having a dynamically constructed and artistically-minded identity in the same way that Gotanda and most other characters in the novel do, thus shifting the narrator’s position within his own narrative from subject to something more akin to a Greek Chorus, a mere facilitator of the tale actually being told.

Gotanda’s “gap” is something expressed as a virtual constant for artistic individuals. The artist builds two distinctly separate identities, one for “self as artist,” and another for “self as private individual.” The “gap” is the void left by the discrepancies and differences between the two constructions, which, as one is distinctly intended for public consumption, while the other functions in terms of private self-perception, is why Gotanda points out that the gap is only present, is only something that he notices, “when I’m alone.”

The identity/ construction -free narrator (who is symbolically identified as such by the very act of remaining nonchalantly unnamed throughout the novel) is able to fulfill his “facilitator” role within the work of allowing stories about the gap to be told unencumbered by the necessary problems created by the nature of the constructs themselves (a description of identity, without the sort of foil provided by the narrator, would necessarily be presented within the context of either one construction or other, the intended “public” or “private” personae of the artist relating the self-involved anecdote). As Gotanda tells the narrator in this conversation about murder over beers, “whenever I’m with you, I feel so relaxed. I never feel the gap. You don’t know how precious that is.” Precious indeed, to an even greater extent to Murakami himself than to Gotanda, as the way in which the narrator’s character is constructed provides the precious necessary neutral backdrop on which to make the author’s larger points about personal and artistic identity. The ironies, complexities, and contradictions with which this is done are far too detailed to expound upon completely in a medium such as this. He is a character skillfully constructed for a difficult purpose; he is, in a broad sense, an “artist,” which allows him to empathize to certain degrees with Gotanda and others and come and go effortlessly or accidentally within their lives and social circles, yet, due to the nature of his “art” (which he views as existing in the realm of “commerce rather than “creation” and refers to frequently as “shoveling cultural snow”) he is devoid of the need to think of himself in such a way that requires a construction of an artistic identity. He lacks “the gap,” therefore, because he has built the constructions on neither side of it, and is therefore able to present Gotanda with a surface on which to lay his own bare, and demonstrate a theory on the way that the construction of identities operates for artists.

We are what we create ourselves to be. Just mind the gap.



(Image courtesy of Alloy Images; I am indebted to Sara Jane D'Agostino of that organization for exposing me to Murakami's writing.)

"Unexpected Situations on a Crowded Street," a preface in poetic explanative expiriments.

"Beyond superstition, I was aware, in a manner more forceful than anything my academic research had brought home to me, of the extent to which my identity and the words I utter coincide, the extent to which I want to form my own sentences or to choose for myself those moments in which I will recite someone else's. To be asked, even by an isolated, needy individual to perform lines that were not my own, that violated my sense of my own desires, was intolerable." -Stephen Greenblatt, "The Improvisation of Power (Epilogue)"

Unexpected Situations on a Crowded Street, Revisited.

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

Full circle…
Riot.
Unexpected situations on a crowded…
Street.
What street?
This street,
That street,
The same

As the space in which we
Make these noises now
Sits a mere block-and-a-half from
That pad we inhabited
When I was a child…
In fact, I can almost see it from our
Grime-encrusted back-window as
I stand now sporting
Straight edge tattoo-work
Chain smoking Specials, sipping
Cloudy Green Fairy and red wine…
Life…
Blood.

To those who think they’ve
Kept tabs on my back-catalogue
So much of this must
Seem a bit strange
So bear with me a bit as I lay myself bare,
I tend to think in some sort of semi-logical trajectory
This makes some semblance of sense,
I swear.

I’ll slit my
{Insert something
Censored here}
For you,
I really will…

This game of performance is a Riot

Leaving faceless idols of divinity hanging
Upside-down from trees,
With banners of perversity
For its own sake,
And so many dead
People from a country that
We all doubted that the song ever
Really had anything to do with…

As the circular nature of this
Riot
Leaves me battling
Myself now,
Pitting what I
Should do against
What I seem to have to…

As after trying to quit
Cold-turkey so many
Times, I pull the
Tourniquet so
Tight again to
Inject “Music”
And “Performance,”
The stuff that seems to
Kill, into my veins with
Rhythmic pulsing pump and
Flow again, banging out
Noise with these people who
Shared the same first ironic
Moronic cult of a “band,”
Performance-art shams,
Devoid of Concept besides
In anachronistic retrospect,
A willing pint we call and
Raise.

As I battle the
Balance of
Sounds I can’t
Seem to cease making
With the words that
Prove my passion,
Squeezing my own
Voice within perversely
Problematic rehashes and
Re-fires of words from the
Past that I put in my
Mouth that weren’t really my
Own,
And try to make them fit
With what I really
Can’t stop needing
To say,
In speech and sounds,
In synthesis.

With this fire,
Raging blue with
Volatile and toxic
Plastic, we
Burn symbolic streets.

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

“Cops can’t do nothing’, even though they have those guns,
Youngsters on the sidewalk, glassy eyes turned to the sun.
You stand in amongst the throngs, try to stay alive,
Chantin’ pro-rebellion songs, smothered by the hive.
Ground comes up to meet your head, scattered mates call your name.
You’re gonna be left for dead, playin’ your private/public riot game.”

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

{The preceding is a piece of word-collage poetry that I posted on the Myspace blog for my electro-rock outfit Tipsy Cougar, who recently finally started posting some actual "music" to our site. It's intended to serve as a strange sort of preface to the next piece of noise that we intend to post, a drastically divergent reworking of the long-forgotten Moron Cult/ Pseudophonics song "USOCS". This seemed to be an ironically fitting choice for the outfit, as all three active members of the band were at one point or another at least tenuously part of the older act (in fact, depending on definitional technicalities, and at different junctures, Moron Cult was all three of our "first" band.) Thus, I must give credit where it's due and point out that some segments of the above that appear in quotations were originally written by C. Charles ("xian") Dyer of that outfit (while sitting next to me in driver's ed. class, in fact). Also, references and lyrical fragments are borrowed liberally throughout from many bands that I've contributed to in the past (we could make a game of it, if you like... cookies of some sort should go to those among you that can pick out and identify the most...)... This would probably be as good of a time as any to point out that if you haven't taken a listen to what I'm doing with Tipsy Cougar yet, you should. Conceptually, what I'm attempting there in auditory form is very similar to some terrain tread often within the pages of this blog.}

This Smirk Is What I've Worked For; a bit of a warning to aspiring musicians and artists.

I’m vaguely recalling that there was once an individual with a vanity license-plate featuring a reference to a song by a band that I was in. There had, to the best of my recollection, never been an official studio-recording of that song.

I think that it’s a good idea to always bear in mind (particularly for musicians, artists, and public personalities of various sorts) that with a change in time-period, time-zone, or both, these sort of reflections quickly change from accolades and rungs on an imaginary ladder to “success,” into mere anecdotes, tales, and quips fun to tell at parties that part of you is always sincerely doubting that the listener completely believes.

As soon as I hung up conscious attempts at musical “success,” my persona apparently changed from “musician” to “eccentric storyteller” nearly overnight. I feel, in many regards, that both are valid, and are skins that I’m fairly comfortable in. From a critical perspective, I am often immensely pleased that, more often than not, most of my listeners, when I begin to ramble about my experiences, don’t seem to care in the least whether what I’m telling them is true or not. The entertainment-level of the perceiver is fixed prior to any question of the probability of the account is registered.

From a more personal level, however, this can be a bit frustrating. As much as my critical stance involves a disintegration of the separation between fact and fiction and the past assumptions of the “necessity” of trying to define one, in the less academic and quixotic parts of my mind I still find myself categorizing things in more structured terms of “reality.” “These things have actually happened to me,” “I’m making this story up on the fly,” etc; These are boxes to place various anecdotes in, that I still make some effort to get across to people that I’m relating stories to.

As I think about this, and reflect on my current balance of amusement and frustration, my mind can’t help but turn as well to what was running through it back when I was accruing the tales that I now relate to nonchalantly disbelieving listeners. As I said before, these things did, at the time, feel like stepping-stones. These were genuine accomplishments that were (hypothetically) to lead to continually larger and more notable accomplishments. We were climbing the ladders. In fact, at one point or another, I feel that I’ve climbed these ladders in just about every slightly-sideways, not-quite-completely up (but definitely not down) direction that “music” has to offer. And in retrospect, many of the rungs along the way WERE, in fact, quite notable, and emblematic of what other versions of the ladder, at other times in my life, would have been happy to call “success.” My “bragging-rights,” if this was at all the purpose of my story-telling (which it is not), are vivid and diverse. I was legitimately, “truthfully,” and passionately engaged in procuring the next rung as soon as I had leapt over the last, and believed in the validity and purpose of doing so with rarely a flinch.


After my flinches at the climb and its purpose became drastic enough that I felt like I was having a seizure, however, these anecdotes and accolades look very different. For all the work put in, for all the “success” achieved that I (and so many others) believed was worth fighting for, what was truly purchased? What remains in the end?

Stories. Tales. A medium that blurs fact and fiction, and demonstrates that, in a larger scheme, the reasons for making the distinction aren’t terribly compelling or necessary.

The thorn, however, is that the story bears a very different sort of substance and grit if it’s being related as truth, no matter how skilled the constructor of a blatant fiction may be. Therefore, what I gain from my past attempts, earnestness, and success is the irony of being able to tell a compelling tale with the confidence of the legitimate memory that can only truly come from having physical experience with the substance of the story, to more effectively point out that the storyteller’s truthfulness is not, at the end of the day, terribly relevant.

What I have seen with my eyes in the physical aspects of my life (what I will refrain from calling “reality” in admission of the problematic nature of that term) has made possible the confident smirk that plays on my face when I tell you that it pleases me that you don’t care at all whether the license-plate that I speak of was ever actually stamped out of physical metal. In truth, much like all of our past ambitions, it really doesn’t matter. It does, however, shape the way we tell our stories, and that is the largest “success” that we could ever hope to achieve.



In other news, I suddenly realized that, sitting behind a laptop by myself in a crowded pub in Manchester, NH, presenting an out-of-state ID for my drinks, a couple days prior to the first-in-the-nation primary, I am probably assumed to be a young campaign-worker, a traveling politico of some sort, as I gather that everyone else in the room is. I also realize, that if I'm asked, saying "I'm a writer," or even worse, "blogger," doesn't exactly get me off the hook. I can't say that this doesn't amuse me immensely, as it couldn't be farther from the "truth"... but in some ways, it's at the same time as "true" as any other identity I could choose to tout at the moment. So, sure, I'm a traveling politico. My politics and reasons to travel are just a bit skewed from those of the rest of the crowd.

Wrapping up my drawn-out show review (Today is the Day, et al.)

OK, so I intended to finish this the next day, but I guess that didn't happen... It's been a wierd week; my apologies.

My challenge now is to combine my scribbled notes with my wracked memory of a show that's now a couple weeks past, and combine those with the vague recollections of the points that I was intending to use that show to demonstrate. Perhaps this challenge (and my rather abstract intended ways of confronting it) will prove large chunks of my point. I think that it will, or will at least help. Some of my intended points may even be made better, if less directly or cogently. This is a study of bias itself rather than of the subject, and the limitations of this post, and the necesary piecemeal/ goulash nature of its presentation, are the bias. This is much like post-modern critical anthropology. The anthropology of a rock show. All writing is fundamentally primarily about the writing task itself, and the biases of its author rather than about the subject undertaken.

With that in mind, I return to the show itself. After Christine, Defcon 4 from Boston took the stage. Musically, these guys were strikingly dissimilar to the rest of the bill. A hardcore band that leans harder toward thrashy punk than metal, their set felt a bit like a circus act for intermission at the opera. Not that this is a bad thing, necesarily. The crowd seemed to revel in a brief change in the mood of the room. And I practically grew up on Boston hardcore, so their set struck me as a refreshing chunk of nostalgia, even though I wasn't previously familiar with anything besides the name of the group prior to this show. Say what you will, the Boston area has (and will probably always have) a pretty distinct sound in violent music, and Defcon definitely has a bit of something in them that would give me a good guess where they were from at the most casual cold listen. Their set was alot of fun, in a similar way to how it can occasionally be fun to dig through boxes of old cassette-tapes with hand-made labels and reflect on the chaos of the shows that I picked them up at.


Today is the Day themselves delivered what their reputation promises. From the moment that they began playing, they assaulted the crowd with nearly transcendentally precise walls of rhythmic sound. From my place in the bobbing crowd in front of the stage, their music struck me as having a distinctly trance-like quality that I found thoroughly enjoyable. The sensation that their music created for me was similar to being lifted into it and then sorrounded or wrapped by it, taken completely into the different sort of space that the music comes from (whatever that may be). From inside of the grip of the music, it seems that the point of it, the purpose for the construction of this space, the composition of the music that is the tool to propell the listener there, is completely atmospheric and textural. The culmination of this feeling came, rather predictably, with a heavy and rythmic rendition of the song "Temple of the Morning Star" (a song that appears on their myspace page in an acoustic form) which features a well-crafted pulsingly repititious chant that sucked the crowd, joining in and mobbing toward the stage, further into the embracing effect created by the sound. "I can't be... what you want me to be... I am... dead..." By the last time through, I couldn't see a person who wasn't positively screaming. If the show is intended as a sort of ritual (which at times it felt like) and the embracing sensation of the rhythms is in some way thereputic and building toward some sort of goal, this refrain serves as a most definite point of release. And it felt damn good.


Of course, this could have been merely an idea that I had been spinning on my own that evening (or something that part of me bady wanted), and the sensations that TITD created for me played into it rather (coincidentally) well. Jotted in my notebook from prior in the evening (I believe just after Black Hell finished playing) is this-

The purpose of "scene" has nothing to do with other people. It has to do with the constructin of individual identities, something to allign yourself with, the ability to space-out and step into the pseudo-surrealistic realm of an option for "reality" that the band is creating for you.

Music communities, it seems, aren't fundamentally about community at all. The aspect of community created as part of the activity of musical enjoyment is merely a tool with which individual identities are sculpted. Therefore, the most artistically valid moments in the act of musical appreciation are intrincically and harshly individual moments. At this show I remembered that it is still possible to say something artistically valid within a guitar-bass-drums cliche box-structure or with the utilization of otherwise unnecesary social frivolities like music scenes or the cheap enjoyment of conventional entertainment. Even if what's being said by the art is merely the brief expression of a single feeling, atmosphere, or texture that an individual wants as a facet of their self-constructed identity. As I left the show, I felt decidedly disconnected, dazed, and strangely somewhat content. If music can still be relevant art, I think that this feeling alone may be a valid and important point to make, and I commend Today is the Day for making it for me that evening.

A show review, or a review of shows in general? (...part 1)

Reconstructionist journalism, the documents of the post- post-modern, must make a thorough assumption of bias, discard all presumption of "truth" or "fact," and closely examine the broader representations of what we do/ think and why we do/ think these things. Conventional entertainment is therefore dead and invalidated, and it is the critic's job to either reconstruct its purpose or choose to discredit and discard it completely. (yes, this passage may sound a bit familiar to some of you. I posted it yesterday as part of my promo-blurb on my myspace blog for the previous entry. Reading back over what I had last written, though, this looked like as adequate as any of a place to begin.)

I've been having a rather intense inner-dialogue lately about these subsequent purposes of "entertainment" and the significance that is culturally imbedded into it, particularly by individuals who associate themselves and their constructed/ chosen identities with entertainment (particularly music) "scenes." I realized, over the course of these ponderings, that it had been quite a while since I had been to a show or concert at all (particularly by choice), largely due to the more cynical side of my thoughts on the matter. After a final burn-out run with ambitions of "success" (of some hard-to-define sort or another) as a performer, which concluded in a defiant decision that musical interests were most certainly NOT worth the academic sacrifices that they required to take either as seriously as I wished to, I had settled into a bit of overanalyzation of the show-going experience; the general questions that most commonly came to my mind when I thought about live music performance included "exactly WHAT am I watching," "WHY am I watching it," "WHY would this entertain me, or anyone else," etc. My assumptions rested on the methodology of conventional rock-based music, at our present juncture, being a mere following of formulaic structures that had, to a large degree, become by this point "understood variables," the mere basics of how it is, or is "supposed to be," done, as well as the speculation that the social and cultural cliches of building personal identities around music preferences and scene affiliations had more of a factor in our level of "entertainment" by a show than the spectacle of the performance itself.

In a word, I've been wavering in and out of varying degrees of "jaded," from a critical perspective. I tend to see structures and assumptions rather than entertainment, envelopes that neatly contain rather than "art." I've become, at times (ok, most of the time) a rather hard person for a musician to hope to entertain.

From this standpoint, when the urge suddenly DOES strike me to go out and check out a live music performance, I try not to pass it up, for fear of losing important potential revalations on these questions to my own potential for slipping back into the "fickle" and "difficult." Somehow, this urge struck me recently twice in one week, and I jumped at the occasions to creep out of my cantakerous bubble.

(to be continued, as usual...)

Words On Naked Mannequins Render Them No Longer Naked?

The future of Miss Claustrophiobia, in her plaster form of representation, involves paint and words and modifications.

I have many ideas, and many notes scribbled in various notebooks, about the elements (an extremely varied and diverse set) that are to be captured on her body. These words and images and elements will all factor as components of the eclectic identity of the conceptual lady, and will help me to demonstrate the ideas about identity, insecurites, phobias, and humanity/ human life/ psychology in general that I undertook the project in order to demonstrate.

In one particular notebook that is dedicated to scribbles, ideas, and very early drafts, I have haphazardly jotted the following.

Installment-art/sculpture

project- collage

on mannequin

"Thrill of the chase."

words to put on-

I don't need this,

But I do.

(Conflicted ideas of attraction,

based on female body)

include- clock,

house (symbols of

comfort)

These words are a form of poetry, these images and scribbles a form of visual art. These are still more completed facets that lead to a larger, perpetually-incomplete work.

(I must warn once again that these words do NOT express anything near the entirety of the concept of the project, but are merely a small subset of examples of smaller concepts that accumulate to make a (ideally) far larger statement about the construction of individual human self-identity conceptions.)

Miss Claustrophobia's future, as it relates to her past and present, as it sculpts her identity.

Miss Chloe Claustrophobia, as she appears in the photographs posted in earlier entries of this blog, is not in her completed state. Those photographs are depictions, each an individual completed work of art in-and-of-itself, of a raw-material, prior to its use, for a larger piece of art. Miss Claustrophobia the mannequin is merely a canvas, on which Miss Claustrophobia the piece of art, which is merely a depiction of a single set of facets of Miss Claustrophobia the concept (the larger piece of art), will be rendered. The prior-posted photographs are therefore similar to art photographs of a blank canvas, positioned at particular angles, in order to make a statement.

Is one phase of her existence, one particular medium of art with which her concept is capture or exemplified, more genuinely, therefore, who "Miss Claustrophobia" is or is intended to be than another? Absolutely not. Is the pre-modification mannequin that graciously sat as my model for the photography set less authentic, complete, or representative of the themes that I use her to demonstrate then the form that has been muddled and modified with paints and words and sculptural elements? Absolutely not. Much as an individual at a prior stage of their development is still relevant to understanding their identity, even if their views or dispositions may not agree with the present juncture, each stage of rendering of the identity of Miss Claustrophobia is relevant and crucial to a complete understanding of her conceptual identity. Miss Claustrophobia as a naked, unadorned mannequin, struck and captured into a variety of poses by the click of a camera-shutter, can tell us things about the ideas being expressed that the post-adornment version of the same physical mannequin cannot after the time has been taken to spell out on her the physical ideas that I wish her body to eventually express.

I might be getting ahead of myself a bit. Miss Claustrophobia has yet to actually be modified or adorned.

In fact, she currently sits, still naked, in a corner of my office/ bedroom/ studio, with a ribbon on her neck, placed there on a whim one night and yet to be removed. The ribbon says "Bride to Be," and was worn by my frequent (and oftentimes reluctant) performance-art collaborator Hysteric Noir to a suicide-themed costume-party (get it? social suicide? yeah, ok, hardly anyone else seemed to think it was as funny as we did, so you're not alone...). The whim worked. The "Bride to Be" ribbon, and the reason that it was initially purchased and worn, fits the concept of the project rather well, and is therefore an appropriate adornment for Chloe at this phase of her development.



(I'm betting that the reader is now beginning to think that this sort of description seems a bit over-wrought and superfluous. And I agree. So I will alert you now to a shift in narrative modes. I am now relying on abstraction to illuminate, which I thoroughly believe not to be the non-sequetor it might initially seem.)

Performance art? Yes, this factors into the identity of Miss Claustrophobia as well. Does this mean that as one of the medium facets of the project I have a large scale and conspicuous performance-art exhibition planned? As of now, absolutely not.

However, this project is one which deals with, at its most simplistic level, issues of identity.

It is my firm belief that an artist's creation of his own identity is inherently an act of performance-art.

Therefore, individuals who come into contact with artists who are aware of this act of identity-creation that they are engaged in factor, whether they wish to acknowledge it or not, as collaborators in the demonstration. They are participants, and often even raw-materials, in the piece of art being constructed.

The relation of my anecdote about the suicide-themed party, and the subsequent placement of the ribbon on Chloe's neck, where it accidentally seemed to make sense to me as a facet of the mannequin's current identity, is in-and-of-itself a piece of art (another raw material) that I am utilizing to demonstrate a particular angle on the overarching idea.

This entry itself, therefore, is (hypothetically) merely another piece of art, another aspect of Miss Chloe Claustrophobia's identity. As will, and has been, every other, subsequent and to come.

An Introduction to Miss Chloe Claustrophobia.

One of my primary intentions with this blog involves the construction of a centralized location from which to synthesize and blur the lines between art-genres as they weave in and out of each other as the multiple mediums that I work with engage in the same projects from multiple simultaneous angles in attempts to more thoroughly adress the same concepts.

Whew, that was a mouthful. Basically, this blog is a place for me to put it all together, to place in the appropriate context {the piece of music} that needs {the fiction sketch} that needs {the visual image} that was rendered in response to {the critial review} in order to fully make sense or create the sensation or idea that it is intended to. (obviously all {brackets} in the foregoing statement are examples interchangeable with countless other variables. I think you get the point.)

This catch-all idea is also intended to afford me the oportunity to address other topics that enthrall me, using my own work as examples, such as the lack of binary and objective certainty in matters of creativity, such as ambiguities as to the "source" or "credibility" of artistic creation (see my prior post about windchimes), and similar ambiguities about artistic "end-results," questions of which stage in the artistic process constitutes the "artistic product." It is this last question that I wish to adress by introducing my readers to a multi-faceted project that I'm engaged in. That project is, loosely, the construction of the artistic identity of an otherwise non-entity that I call "Miss Chloe Claustrophobia."

Miss Claustrophobia, as a project, is currently still in the nascent stages. I am by no means currently exibiting a completed work, as the "completed work" of the project will involve many elements and may never completely exist, although many of the elements leading up to the hypothetical "completion" of the project will be exibited in "completed" forms. Many "completed" pieces of work will therefore be exhibited as components and raw-materials for a larger work-in-progress. In theory.

This project is not a puzzle. If you watch the updates on the project that I leave in this blog waiting for some sort of thorough-going "answer" as the project gets closer to "completion," you will be sorely disappointed. I don't believe in binary "answers" to artisitc questions, or "statements" made by art that can be "cracked" so definitively that they hit you like the punchline to a bad joke. Much of the concept itself has to do with the necesity for conceptual subtlety and the lack of finite answers to questions of statement, purpose, and intent.

Miss Claustrophobia began as a dream. A very vague dream that I remember almost nothing of, at that. But a dream that left me with a very definite impression of a better understanding of latent human (and personal) phobias, obsessions, and insecurities upon waking. The day after waking from this dream, I wrote a song with my Doom-Rock band The Green Sea called "The Plea of Miss Claustrophobia" that captured the concepts of the dream as they seemed in my mind at the time, in an appropriately vague, elusive, and frantic manner.

This is the song that therefore began the project-


This is a video of The Green Sea performing that song while writing it the day after the dream that inspired it-
Snake pitt

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I will continue this explanation, with some of the images and ideas that followed, as well as future plans for the project, most likely tomorow.

Until then, stay out of the snake pit.