Rules of the Game #11: Toothpaste and Coffee

[koganbot]

More Ashlee. I try to do right by the craftsmanship and the poetry. (Thanks to Nia for inspiration.) I also pose a question that I suppose is really "Why do we care about artistry?" Any thoughts?

The Rules of the Game No. 11: Toothpaste and Coffee

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well, I certainly relate more to banalities than more extravagant claims, but I'm not necessarily moved more by the banalities, and can be moved by extravagant claims that contain within them a few key mundane details (Arcade Fire: "then we think of bedrooms/ yeah our parents' bedrooms/ and the bedrooms of our friends," which is a hundred times more moving than what I'd presume is supposed to be the "cathartic" part following it: "then we think of our parents/ hey what the hell ever happened to them?" My dad's probably at his guitar lesson right about now (today's Thursday, right?). So what?

But sometimes I need the stuff that doesn't work, too. And this relates a little to trust, I think, trusting failure. The film I made using my home movie footage is pretty ambiguous/open in "meaning" for the most part, lots of games with time and space, but there's one part where I force myself (at age 4) to say and spell things I wasn't actually saying, at one point spelling out "E-X-P-L-A-I-N" over two images of my mom at the beginning of her illness and end of it. (Mucking even that up in the middle spelling it backwards -- like, these are just letters.) My friend Ian told me it wasn't like me, and I said that was kind of the point; it's an incredibly immature thing to do, to just cry out like that. But it's also important to do that -- it'd be dishonest for me not to go back and mess with things, try to get some explanation out of them that I know more rationally just isn't necessarily there.

So you have your parents' bedroom, and the bedrooms of your friends, and then you have WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED. Or you have the sky falling (what the hell?), then you have the coffee. Or you have Christmas and a piano recital and a birthday cake...EXPLAIN. Can't explain, but also can't shake the feeling that there's something in there somewhere, even if maybe there isn't (but if there isn't...EXPLAIN!).

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

As for point-of-view, it's hard to determine. When I'm actually listening to a song, I don't think about it the same way I do immediately afterwards. So even if I feel like I (or my roommates) might relate to an Ashlee line, it's all Ashlee when I'm listening (carefully or closely), then it's me thinking back on it. I don't usually have the "I spilled my coffee, too" revelation during the song itself. (Usually, being moved is much less definable, more visceral, until long afterwards.)

[koganbot]

But once you've had the "I spilled my coffee, too" revelation, doesn't it become part of subsequent listenings of the song?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

This is true. But it can take a long time for me to even have the revelation -- I can listen to a song twenty times before even starting to understand what it's about (what's above captain, Admiral Obvious?). I do think my focus shifts while I'm actually listening to a piece of music (well, Ashlee music anyway) to think about her and what she's trying to do; knowing that I'm sort of a character by association in all of it, too, might facilitate closer attention to Ashlee in those three or so minutes, but even if I bring the revelation with me, it hangs out in the background and acts as a piece in the puzzle while I figure out what's going on with her. But maybe she's a special case. (Weirdly, I can't think of a single song that I consider "about me," that I would ever claim as my song or insert myself into. Except maybe "Lip Gloss," which Emily bought for the first time at M*A*C, btw, after kicking the song around in her head for ages. It's special non-sticky lip gloss, highly recommended -- the shade is "Lu-Be-Lu.")

Haven't tackled your question above, btw, but...why wouldn't we care about artistry? Even if a music exists to celebrate a "lack" of artistry, doesn't it become its own sort of artistry with its own conventions and standards of beauty? (One question I have re: Ashlee dismissal is usually what standards of artistry are being employed -- it seems to me that the standards are often picked AFTER the decision has been made to dismiss, as you've made clear in several of your columns.) I don't think Ashlee's artistry is questionable, but you also have to understand the terms she and her genre are setting, both of which can be a barrier for people that have never given the music a chance.