How Art Works

One of my favorite musicians is Jens Lekman, a Swedish singer-songwriter whom John Barret introduced me to last year (I was actually introduced to Jens in person at a concert later that year, but that's a different story).

He was elated to meet me, to say the least (the girl was the

opening act, Taken by Trees)

Jens is an extremely unique artist, and one of the main distinguishing characteristics of his music is the storytelling. Almost every song revolves around a story, told in a way that's both personal and theatrical.

Reading an interview of his one day, I came across a comment he made about storytelling in music. Responding to the question of whether he considered himself to be a storyteller or not, he said,

"Yeah, I would say so. When I grew up and became aware of music and lyrics in the 90s, lyrics were very abstract and bands said things like, the lyrics can be interpreted by the listener or it’s up to the listener to determine what the lyrics are about which I thought was bullshit. I really wanted the artist to tell me what the song was about and there’s of course nuances that you can relate to in a personal way. I felt that it was almost lazy to put the interpretation on the listeners’ behalf. Ever since I started writing music I’ve wanted to know what the songs are about and to be able to tell stories."

 My first reaction to this was one of total identification; I had always felt that way. When an artist, in any kind of art medium, said that the meaning was determined by the audience, I would become frustrated. Like Jens, I've always wanted to know what songs are about, and saying the audience came up with the meaning seemed like a cop out. The way I saw it, the person(s) who wrote the song must have written it about something. It didn't have to be anything in particular, but it just had to have some kind of intended meaning, and how could you really get a song if you don't know what it's about? If you just come up with something on your own, it might be nice, but it's not what the song's actually about, so it doesn't really count; or so I thought.

Now, I think I, though still empathizing with Jens' position, would respectfully disagree.

Let's think about why we like music. Seriously, what's the appeal? Listening to sounds that follow certain rules and structures, sometimes with words said at different pitches with different rhythms and length, is kind of an odd thing to do if you think about it. What appeals to us, or rather, what resonates with us in music? It's obvious that it strikes the average person deep in their identity, and so because the phenomenon is virtually universal, there must be some reason.

I think the answer can be related to why story resonates with people. We learned about this when we read The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gotschall. Story is universal and important to us because it does something that nothing else can do; it allows us to experience an alternate reality without any adverse effects. We can live through experiences, understand emotions and thought processes, comprehend ideas, and be thrilled without any concern for danger, risk, or consequences.

More deeply, story allows us to connect with people. No matter what your relationships with people are like, or how close you may be with them, you cannot know what it's like to be them. Story is the closest thing to that we can come to, it's as close as we can get to being in someone else's mind. It works because it's at once personal and foreign, relatable and new. To understand it we have to understand certain universal thoughts, emotions, and experiences, such as fear, pain, desire, and self-preservation. However, story also has to be new to us; it's thoughts that we didn't put together, put together for us. It's totally different than working through thoughts yourself and building them into narrative or reasoning. It has to be the product of a mind other than yours.

Music is similar. I would say that what story is for the communication of experiences in the form of objectivity and thought, music is for the communication of experiences in the form of subjectivity and emotion.*

Story takes a subjective, personal experience and makes it objective. Story is the method of turning an internal experience into something external, so that it can be internalized by someone else.

Music takes a subjective, personal experience and solidifies it. It's a way of taking an internal experience and communicating it through direct experience as opposed to thought.

Think about it this way. Imagine you're meeting up with a friend. As you greet each other, your friend begins telling you about how they're having a horrible day. They list what has gone wrong so far, and voice how fed up they are. That's story. You understand their experience by taking the information and internalizing it. It's analytical, because you have to break the information down.

Now, imagine that after you greet each other, your friend doesn't tell you about how bad their day has been. But you can feel it. Their tone of voice is slightly different. You can tell in their eyes, in the way they carry themselves. That's music. You understand their experience by immediate perception and "vibes." It's intuitive, because, though there are informational clues that could be broken down, it's by no means confinable to a finite number of individual clues, and the process doesn't use reason.

Good books make you understand and think of new ideas, concepts, and perspectives. Music makes you feel new feelings, or maybe feelings you already feel, but in a more vibrant or clear way. Joy, sadness, apathy, anger; all are communicated through music. But it's not limited to emotions. Any subjective, ineffable experience can be felt. Profundity, confusion, confrontation with the absurd, helplessness, alienation, excitement, passion. These are things that you can have words for and talk about, but you could never really translate exactly what they're like into words.

So, this being the case, I think we can learn something about art in general from this. Once we know what it does in the particulars, we can a priori determine what it does in the general. I say, art is the sharing of experience, the creating of a middle ground where artist and audience meet and mix identities. It's dynamic; it's organic.

If this is the case, then art must be in the hands of the audience. The intended meaning is of course important, but for the art to fulfill its purpose, the audience must be joined to it in a sort of chemical reaction. If there's no personal understanding and experience, then the relationship remains unconsummated.

When you read The Odyssey, what do you get out of it? Do you relate as a young, exceptional, cocky person? Do you relate as a tired, more aged person, perhaps as a spouse or parent? Do you relate as a restless, ambitious person? Think of Tennyson's "Ulysses" (also Dante's portrayal of Odysseus in The Inferno, which is the source of "Ulysses"). Was this understanding of Odysseus Homer's intended meaning? Probably not, but it's at least ambiguous. But, because the art and Tennyson reacted dynamically, he pulled meaning out of the story that is valid, real, and compelling. And this is what we all do, with good art.

All in all, I get Jens' struggle. And sometimes the "let the audience determine the meaning" shtick is a cop out. But, although I think he has a point, I think the people who say the audience has a dynamic, involved relationship to the art are onto something too.

Your reward: this is from the same concert.She's

the violinist from Jens' band who I considered

proposing to. Note the awkward, unsure hand

on her shoulder. Classic Zach charm.

* N.B: For the sake of this post, music is meant literally; I'm not thinking of lyrics. Lyrics can be joined to music, but music exists in and of itself as instrumentation without words.

Living on Purpose

(The ideas in this post are in part borrowed from and in part inspired by a lecture by psychologist Jordan Peterson on the necessity of virtue. I highly recommend it; it's one of the most influential lectures I've ever heard.)

Nothing is so hard as figuring out what to do with oneself. Or, rather, nothing is so hard as figuring out what to do with oneself, and then doing it. I don't mean figuring out what school you want to go to or how to spend your Saturday nights. I mean figuring out what you want to do, what you want to be the impression you make on the world. And as anyone who's ever attempted to before knows, you realize very quickly that, despite sounding like a dramatic and significant thing to do, trying to live purposefully shows you how much of your time is spent doing things without significant purpose: eating, sleeping, small talk, waiting, going from point A to point B.

Anybody can decide they want to stand for justice and become a successful, respectable lawyer, but we'd all question them if they lived the details of their life quite unconcerned with justice. Therefore, this striving to make an impact on the world (which we all do, whether intentional or not, conscious of it or not) is more than the "big" things in life like your job, possessions, or family.

This striving comes down to what you value and stand for, which are themselves summed up in what you live for, and living for something is a baptism. You immerse yourself in an environment that is both outside of and bigger than yourself, and by doing so you take some of it with you while leaving some of yourself within it.

This task is common to everyone, and because of that, we'd be safe in assuming that it's discussed in our mythologies that have been passed down throughout history. Because this task is so hard and yet so central and necessary to our existential identities as human beings, it's often tackled in mythologies surrounding the origin of man. The typical and, in my opinion, perfect example would be the story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis.

After humans are created, it doesn't take very long for them to screw things up. This event is pivotal to Judeo-Christian beliefs, and is the first dramatic event in the Bible. Christians refer to it as the Fall. Shortly after G-d creates the first man, Adam, and then his wife, Eve, a mysterious and sinister serpent comes and tries to convince them to eat the fruit of a tree known as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The problem is, G-d told Adam that this was the only tree in all of Paradise that they weren't allowed to eat from. Man's first brush with temptation sets an unfortunate precedent, and Adam and Eve give in and eat the fruit.

The Bible says that as they ate, Adam and Eve's eyes were "opened." That's a very confusing metaphor. In a word, what they experienced was an "enlightenment," or an "awakening." Something has changed, about them, and thus about mankind as a whole, and thus about the course of human history. History as outlined in the Bible is a reaction to this specific event. And, judging from the metaphor chosen to explain what happened to them, it appears that the change was within Adam and Eve, and not a change in the external world. I posit that this was a change in man's existential identity.

Before the Fall, man and the world were good and in tune with each other. The humans lived as innocent and benign creatures, the masterpieces of a cosmic painter who found his culmination not in forming suns, moons, and seas, but in living creatures; and not just any living creature, but man. This Creator and his creations lived in harmony, with their fellowship taking place in a specific garden set apart for humans. It was a paradise, where no evil, suffering, or struggle existed. Man was happy, moreso content than joyful, and things were pretty good.

For this reason, the Fall is seen as a disaster in classical theology. The peace and goodness of an innocent Golden Age were defiled, and man lost his collective virginity and, therefore, innocence, becoming in a moment impure and wretched. It is a tragedy beyond epic proportions, and has disconnected mankind from what is good and pure ever since. Something is off about the world now, and we're supposed to wait for it to go back.

I'm of the strong opinion that if I were to live in a world with no Fall, I'd rather drop dead. To me (and I don't think you have to believe in this story to see this or believe its relevance), the Fall was an integral part of history. Life as we know it would not be the same. If the world were only the Garden of Eden, it would be purposeless. It would not be a world worth living in.

As I said earlier, this myth explains man's curious and contradictory existential identity. He became independent; he was not G-d's baby living in the crib of the Garden. He became G-d's grown son sent out into the world on his own. What changed? Man ate of the fruit that gives knowledge of good and evil. What does this mean? Why is this the defining feature of man as he now exists, post-Fall?

Take note of the first thing Adam and Eve do after attaining this knowledge. They cover themselves up with leaves (oh, did I mention they were naked until this point?). This is shame, vulnerability; these are new feelings. Shame and vulnerability are reactions to the recognition of one's own limitations and capacity for evil.

Man is limited by nature. He can't be in more than one place at once, he can't live forever, he can't know everything, he can't be good all the time, he can't not make mistakes, he can't win every battle. This causes suffering.

Recognizing one's own vulnerability and finitude leads to knowledge of two things: Awareness of one's neighbor's vulnerability, and awareness of one's capacity for evil. With these realizations, one can be inspired to one of two dispositions.

One is of cruelty. It's due to insecurity in one's weakness, attachment to one's evil, and a desire to exploit one's neighbor's weakness for personal interest. The other is of compassion. It, inversely, is due to acknowledgement and acceptance of one's weakness ("humility"), acknowledgement and rejection of one's evil ("repentance"), and empathy and concern for one's neighbor's weakness ("love"). Both of these dispositions exist in every individual, but one is superior.

Before one can honestly and fully commit to one of these dispositions, he has to recognize his capacity for evil. Some people can't bring themselves to, and for good reason. It can be traumatic. What happens is you find out that you're not so different from killers, thieves, adulterers, or drunkards. Oftentimes the difference is impulse control and more ordered and peaceful surroundings. Everyone believes himself to be a good person, even better than the average person. And yet, statistically, 95% or more of the people in our school, or even the kids in our class room, would have either been among the perpetrators of the Holocaust or those who went along with the perpetrators, if they lived in Nazi Germany. Everyone thinks to themselves, "Oh, well not me," and some people may be right, but it's just not true more than nine times out of ten.

You can't know your true identity until you know your capacity for evil. What kind of cruelty are you capable of? How far would you go to hurt somebody? How small of a reason could you cause somebody suffering for? How often do you do it for your own gain? How often are you cruel and not realize it until during or after the fact? And, in the right circumstances, what kind of atrocities could you be a part of? These are questions you need to ask to start to know yourself.

Our opinions of people change very easily when we find out some evil they have done. Adultery, theft, lying, murder, etc.; they all change our opinions of people, and to an extent rightly so. But if we're honest with ourselves, and we're honest about wanting to live a meaningful, good life, we need to first acknowledge our personal ability to do wrong, and grave wrong. You won't know who you truly are, when the lights are turned out and nobody's watching, until then.

You also won't take yourself, or other people, seriously enough. As Jordan Peterson worded it, "If you know you're a loaded weapon, and an unstable loaded weapon, then you're much more likely to pay attention to what you do," which is necessary for living a purposeful life. And you'll also start to realize, when you're asking yourself all these questions, that you're not a single individual in a crowd of seven billion. Everyone is interconnected and related, fundamentally. Choices and actions have serious, long-lasting effects. Probably more serious and long-lasting than we'd like to think. There's an importance difference between an act of kindness and an act of cruelty. A smile and a sneer can both change someone's course in life, and thus everyone involved in that person's life. Coincidental encounters with the right people at the right time result in both adulteries and kicking addictions, the making of friends and the losing of friends. These little, everyday things are important.

So hopefully we think on these things, and realize what we'd like to do with it. We'll unfold into the people that we not only want to be, but that we're meant to be. By living meaningfully, there'll be a few more lights in the night sky of others who maybe haven't had the opportunity to see much light quite yet. And I think that's the point.