Idea Essay #1: On Self-Referentiality

A few weeks ago, I was struck by this line in the NYT review of the ballet movie "Black Swan":  

"It’s easy to read “Black Swan” as a gloss on the artistic pursuit of the ideal."

The bulk of the review does not focus on this comment and instead discusses the film in other terms, particularly its focus on insanity and sexuality (and ballet itself).  But when I first read the review, this statement made me consider how often I interpret specific works of art to be saying something about Art itself, and how quickly I pick up on this critical-interpretative move when others use it.  

In these kinds of readings, texts are, in other words, allegorical stories about their own status or power. I don't know if this way of (my way of) thinking about art is a result of a certain kind of critical background, one steeped in the obsessions of twentieth century art, or if art-texts (music, painting, poetry, etc.) really do have a habit of speaking about their own status and use as human creations.  In short, do all artistic objects in some way talk about themselves as art?  And, when they do, what ideas are they trying to convey or capture? Perhaps I can get at this issue by discussing a few examples.

Here's a song, called "The First Line," that I happened to hear a couple of weeks ago.  Listen to the first few lines.  This sort of self-referentially, joking in this case even though the song is pleasant if not beautiful, is NOT what I'm trying to get to the heart of in this post.  Here's a more famous example:

We all came out to Montreux
On the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile
We didn't have much time
Frank Zappa and the Mothers
Were at the best place around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground

If you don't know what (famous) song this is yet, listen here and you'll recognize it pretty quickly.  And if you have time, note how this version plays with audience expectations with a long and unrecognizable intro.  So -- both of these songs talk about themselves as songs.  But I'm after a different sort of self-referentiality.   


Here's another song -- "Slow Turning" by John Hiatt --  that does perform the operation that I'm interested in:

When I was a boy,
I thought it just came to you
But I never could tell what's mine
So it didn't matter anyway

My only pride and joy
Was this racket down here
Banging on an old guitar
And singin' what I had to say

I always thought our house was haunted
Cuz nobody said "boo" to me
I never did get what I wanted
But now I get what I need

It's been a slow turning
From the inside out
A slow turning
But you come about

A slow learning
But you learn to sway-ah-hay-hay-hay
A slow turning, baby
Not fade away, not fade away, not fade away

Now I'm in my car
Ooh, I got the radio on
Now I'm yellin' at the kids in the back
Cuz they're banging like Charlie Watts

You think you've come so far
In this one horse town
Then she's laughing that crazy laugh
Cuz you haven't left the parkin' lot

Time is short and here's the damn thing about it
You're gonna die, gonna die for sure
**And you can learn to LIVE with love or without it
But there ain't no cure

It's just a slow turning
From the inside out
A slow turning
But you come about, ya

A slow turning, baby
But you learn to sway-ah-hay-hay-hay
A slow turning
Not fade away, not fade away, not fade away
Not fade away, not fade away

A slow turning, a slow turning,
A slow turning, a slow turning

I think this is a (self-referential) song about how an artist has used art (bangin on an old guitar) to give shape to his life, give it a direction or purpose.  Ultimately, though, he realizes that another part of experience (he didn't get what he wanted from his music, but he now gets what he needs -- love and family) is more important.   Turning from the "inside out" encourages him (and us?) to forsake the notion that art is about one's interior self or soul.  An artist's life (or a life with art) is about some other kind of relationship, the kind that doesn't mind the "one-horse" town or that getting stuck -- with the kids -- in the parking lot.  It's not by accident that this artist is no longer worried about "fading away," the fear that haunts The Who's great song, "My Generation" and its most famous line, "Hope I die before I get old."  This is a song that emphasizes the mundane and domestic world that is outside the artistic life.   In terms of our class, its about how pragmatics (the ways we live our lives) are more important than the expressive power of art or a formalist concern for art itself.  [Note: take a look at this video for the song if you have a minute; I can't make any connection between the song and the narrative created by the film, but this is the (better) studio version of the song.]

Here's one last example (which I won't explicate), a poem by Yeats, that moves in pretty much the opposite direction, from a critique of art's obsession with itself (Artist = Narcissus) to a rhapsody about a real aesthetic experience (in Kant's sense of what really counts):

"Lapis Lazuli" by WB Yeats (1939)

(For Harry Clifton)

I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out.
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie bearen flat.

All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
All men have aimed at, found and lost;
Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

On their own feet they came, or On shipboard,'
Camel-back; horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus,
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea-wind swept the corner, stands;
His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem
Of a slender palm, stood but a day;
All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay.

Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instmment.

Every discoloration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent,
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

I love this poem.  But, of these two stories and their two different ethical outlooks, I have to side with "Slow Turning."  And, besides, it's a great song.