Mark, am I representing you correctly?

[koganbot]

Tom's been posting on both his Tumblrs about "opinion leaders," his questions seeming to be: to what extent are there such creatures; do those outfits who claim to have the special ability to identify opinion leaders actually know what they're doing; and where these creatures have apparently been identified, is there any special value in trying to influence them in particular (influencing the influential, as it were)? I've been posting on the comment threads, and Dave chimed in on his own Tumblr.

I may or may not swoop into the subject from my own angle, but first I have a question for dubdobdee:

Tom entitles one of his posts "Now I know why Mark S hated the word so much." I replied with this:

Except "influence" as you've been using it here and in Blackbeard is exactly how Mark thinks it should be used, to reference actual power in the world. What Mark was objecting to was the unearned authority of "The [New Band] cite a range of influences from the Velvet Underground to the Fall," or "[Supposedly Valuable Rock Critic] has influenced everybody from Chuck Eddy to Tom Ewing." So what you guys are (and Mark is) trying to understand is who has power and what actual influence/resistance it engenders etc., whereas what Mark is objecting to is the attempt to borrow power by invocation and proxy.

So Mark, is this a good representation of your ideas?

(I'm referring back to a convo that occurred in many places including here and here.)

Of course, the syndrome that Tom is criticizing goes "We can give you access to power by giving you access to opinion leaders" as if the mechanism of influence needed no explaining beyond this.

Other posts in Tom's series:

http://blackbeardblog.tumblr.com/post/85530795/mmmm-nodes

http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/85722965/finding-the-first-mouth

http://blackbeardblog.tumblr.com/post/85248557/conversation-is-nomadic

I'm considering "Conversation is nomadic" to be relevant to the discussion of opinion leaders because certain nomads carry other people with them on their journeys - e.g. the fellow whose blog I'm linking to.

Comments

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I am under the impression that Mark's objections are broader than that: that when someone says a band is influenced by the Velvet Underground, there is a very wide range of meanings that could carry, many different things that "influence" could mean, and that the writer shouldn't choose one wide and muddy word when they could say just what they mean. For instance, don't say "the Ramones were influenced by the Velvet Underground", say "the Ramones picked up the idea of a pretty pop tune overlaid with a godawful racket from the Velvet Underground".

[koganbot]

But there's nothing wrong with using vague, broad terms when vagueness and broadness are called for. Must you always elaborate on what you mean? Can't you leave that for the reader?

"She heard from him," "They threatened the town," etc. These don't say what what she heard or which medium he used (phone, courier, fax?); nor do they tell us the nature of the threat or the name of the town. Perhaps the writer doesn't know and this is all a subject for further research. Or perhaps getting more specific may carry its own distractions. ("Oh, he used a courier? How could he afford to use a courier?" - when really all that's important at this moment is to know that he got in touch with her.) Or in the Stooges' lines "She wants somethin', she wants somethin', tonight/She wants somethin', she wants somethin', all right/But I can't help, ’cause I'm not right (and it's always this way)." Well, what does she want? SHE DOESN'T KNOW!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"what do you mean when you say yr you're influenced by the ramones?"
"I DON'T KNOW!"

this is an interesting exchange, obviously (because unlikely), but it needs the follow-up to make it interesting

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

frank and martin are both somewhat correct -- it was a multivalent complaint, about sloppy usage as well as unjustified claims

i think the political usage -- while it is often a shorthand for a variety of different kinds of power in the world (political, military, economic, cultural...) -- rarely collapses into the kind of unclarity i'm objecting to (the nature and extent of, say, israel's influence over american politics is a bitterly contested issue, but that's because the underlying politics is bitter, and replete with extreme claims and fears, an atmosphere in which attempts at clarification sometimes collide with the interests, whether unthinking or very clearheaded, of engaged factions)

here's what i'm objecting to, cast as a fable: [band xyz] arrives in our purlieu, announcing that it comes as envoy of the emperor ["We are influenced by Television"]

the assumption seems to be that (i) the emperor's writ runs -- viz that you the listener respect and acknowledge his power; and (ii) that the emperor's imprimatur is discernible -- that the envoy can and does act in the emperor's name ; not to mention (iii) that in so far as [band xyz] are not the emperor, they can nevertheless be taken to extend and deepen his power

how and why do envoys get their power? what is the cultural equivalent (if any?) of political power? what is it about [band xyz] that demands they cede authority to others, rather than seek to foster their own?

in all of these -- in cultural terms -- the key bit, where the interesting questions lie, can be cast as something like: "if power is here, how and why is it here? in what way is it passed on? in what way is difference not the opposite of 'being influenced'"

(this doesn't even begin to tackle examples where the envoy claims the imprimatr of rival emperors: "we are influenced by Television and Funkadelic")

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(deleted comment is pre-corrected version of the above)

[koganbot]

Yes, but aren't these invocations at least sometimes interesting, even when not elaborated upon? Would you necessarily want people to stop naively invoking the gods on their behalf? It's true that most people aren't fessing up to the fact that these are invocations, but then again, most people aren't very self-analytical.

Perhaps the envoy who serves two masters is secretly trying to become his own man.

Can there, someday - after you've written your book and mastered Kuhn, of course (or not) - be a Mark Sinker Anatomy Of Influence to supersede the flawed Bloomian Anxiety of same?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

agreed on most ppl not especially self-analytical, but this doesn't excuse everyone else refusing to be analytical in sympathy -- my crossness is a lot of it related to the fact that this invocation seems like a superb pretext for all kinds of interesting discussion about value and effectiveness, both of which seem somewhat germane to critical discussion if nothing else

(i don't actually so much mind the musicians themselves using formulae like this to fend off the request that they analyse themselves -- there's a superstition there which isn't going to be shkaen, in many foax, and is not necessarily usefully shaken in others... a lot of makers aren't particularly useful critics of themselves, even if they are (bloom would say) by definition critics, strong or weak, of those they put themselves in inspirational relationship with

Noted without comment

[koganbot]

Simpson watch

ASHLEE CONFESSES: "I'm a huge fan of female singers like Etta James and Courtney Love."

I have to admit that this confession makes me love Ashlee. So few singers can bring themselves to promote OTHER artists, and I think it's refreshing to read about Ashlee gushing over her favorite female singers. To me, that just gives Ashlee more credibility, and just moved her up a few notches in my book.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i have no problem whatever with the formulation "i am a huge fan of"

[koganbot]

Personally I love being asked who my influences are, since the people whom I've cited become my envoys. See?

Influential

[koganbot]

From the YouTube comment thread for Tom Verlaine album Around:

Franco Frau 2 years ago
One of the most original and influential guitarists in rock history
Reply
Comrade Xenuuu
Comrade Xenuuu 1 year ago
Influential is pushing it, but I agree that's he's brilliant.

(Unfortunately, we get this from Wikipedia: "His poetic lyrics, coupled with his accomplished and original guitar playing, are highly influential and widely praised in the music media.")

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Been reading this, not sure I have anything to add, except that it made me ponder my own usage of word "influence" - it turns out I don't like to use it very much, because it makes the discussion about creative/authorial intent. And I usually don't know anything about the creative/authorial intent, or can't be bothered to find out. XD; Like, if I read an interview with dude X saying "act Y's work Z was part of the conversation happening in my head when I made W" that would be one thing, but I wouldn't feel comfortable writing "X was influenced by Y" if what's happening is "W sounds quite a lot like Z". And when other people write "influence" it makes me wonder if they're not making that unsupported leap.

I mean, I suppose you could say X was unconsciously influenced by Y, like if there were transitiveness or they randomly heard it on the radio (how would you know, again?), but you could also have parallel paths of discovery in which case Y has nothing to do with X. Which would actually make for an interesting piece if you could draw the logical link between the two. But to me influence has to be acknowledged by the party in question to be a useful concept. And even then it is usually not useful, because musicians are inarticulate.