Lateral Transmissions: Steam Engenious

The Beatles got it right at the end of Sgt. Pepper, ending A Day in the Life – the contemplative fragmented waltz – with a dissonant orchestral crescendo.

I think that the next great step in pop music will be to integrate dissonance.

It’s almost ironic that The Beatles were the first – and possibly last – band to have such a famous song centered on dissonance. And even though it's only the end of the track that's notorious, the whole song really is structured around that climax.

Pop songs have clean melodic structures that are as condensed as possible. No one knew this better than The Beatles. From Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da to She’s Leaving Home, they had an uncanny ability to immerse you in a whole world in only a few minutes, catchy, compact like poetry, almost dense, like a song from a musical but better.

It’s fitting that on A Day in the Life, they went to such lengths to try to snap you out of their pristine songs, ending on a nightmarish almost unsatisfying crescendo, as surreal and dirty as their songs tend to be pleasant and sweet.

Wrote producer George Martin about that famous last chord:

What I did there was to write ... the lowest possible note for each of the instruments in the orchestra. At the end of the twenty-four bars, I wrote the highest note...near a chord of E major. Then I put a squiggly line right through the twenty-four bars, with reference points to tell them roughly what note they should have reached during each bar ... Of course, they all looked at me as though I were completely mad.

This proved to be only the start for John Lennon, who later went to absurd lengths to embody a sort of over-realism: his experiment with psychotherapeutic primal screaming – it sounds as odd as it looks on paper – and posing nude on an album cover.

Dissonance is an odd term, at once technical and completely subjective. It simply refers to a combination of notes that sounds unstable or unpleasant. You know it when you hear it, yet what is considered dissonant shifts across culture and time. Like all things when you study music, it’s about context, structure and temporal relation. When it’s employed well, it can provide a sort of driving force to music. Roger Kamien (quoted on Wikipedia) has a stimulating explanation:

An unstable tone combination is a dissonance; its tension demands an onward motion to a stable chord. Thus dissonant chords are 'active'; traditionally they have been considered harsh and have expressed pain, grief, and conflict.

You can hear dissonance here and there on the radio, but surprisingly few rock and roll bands have really integrated it into their songs. Used well and it’s as if an artist is harnessing a wild force.

Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne & Eminem |MTV Music

Used poorly and you have nails on a chalkboard.

Going back to Kamien’s definition, when I’m in the right mood – say, listening to the right song while driving my car at night – it seems like there’s an underlying dissonance which drives intelligence and clarity of mind. In a sense, the drive for knowledge is predicated on not being content with the current state of things. In a world of perfect contentment, there’d be no need to learn more. In this sense there’s a truth to the archetype of the happy idiot, though I’m not sure whether it says more about man or knowledge. The inability to just be content seems to have a biological correlate as well.

I just finished Robert Clark’s In Defense of Self: How the Immune System Really Works, and like the best of books it left me both satiated and thirsty for more. The first part of the book is theoretical – it lays down the general principles, introduces you to the main characters, etc. And the second, and longer, part is applied – it covers disease and immune conditions.

Naturally I assumed that the second part would build on the first, by applying the theory. On the contrary, the applied portion of the book simply went on and on like the theoretical portion. I doubt this is a shortcoming of the author, as it’s more likely a reflection of the beast itself. But I found it rather thought provoking that there should be such a sharp disconnect to begin with.

It was a bit like learning English – or what I imagine learning English must be like: There are principles, structures, and rules, but after you master them, you then spend even more time learning about nuances and exceptions.

Certainly there are theoretical principles and natural laws, but the impression that one gets is that based on some primitive defense-system, mother nature was just making shit up as it went along, constantly responding to new threats and stumbling upon new weapons, necessity giving birth some pretty wild inventions, a patchwork quilt of defense systems.

The analogy to dissonance of course is a stretch – but it’s not as much a stretch as one might think at first. Both lend creed to the a-posteri ever-changing being-at-work-staying-onself/coming-into-being approach to knowledge.

-KJ


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Media (in order of appearance)

Photo: (1)Album cover of Beatles' 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; (2)Moon up, 07/05/2009, [kane]; (3)Ralph Steadman, self-portrait.

Video: (1)Music video of the song Forever by Drake; (2)Music video, Two-Headed Baby channel, of the song Steam Engenious by Modest Mouse from their 2007 album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank; (3)Music video, cdiamond channel, of the song A Day in the Life by The Beatles from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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Thru Fragments of Cinema: History

The achievement of HBO’s miniseries John Adams is a visual one.

History can be difficult to portray on film. Too often what you get on screen is a display of technical prowess with characters that feel like toy soldiers and overdressed dolls.

On the other end of the spectrum is a backlash to this style – a sort of post-modern historical drama – which thrives by accentuating those aspects that are more likely to click with the modern mind. Most notably these include Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Romeo + Juliet, and 300, all of which received mediocre critical reviews despite strong box office performances.

Escapism

Both styles – at their best – provide escapist entertainment, as powerful and fun as the made-up worlds of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. But what makes this discussion about more than just aesthetics is the fact that these historical worlds actually existed. Their big-screen portrayals represent overlapping ways of looking back in time: That of immersing oneself in the past and understanding it from their perspective; and that of pulling distinctly modern lessons out of the past.

Real

The more traditional approach – deemed period pieces, costume dramas – take a prim and proper Jane Austin-like approach, with the tension emerging out of a patient, slow, and literary restraint. But what often limits these films is the director's inability to use more modern elements of filmmaking.

Another part of the problem is that, not only were many past societies more formal than the present, but our hindsight of them is crystallized as well. Once again, this reflects our inherent view of history as setting the seeds for today. As Henry VIII narrates in the opening to Showtime's The Tudors, we know how the story ends; the interest is in how it got there.

Surreal

The modern approach is often criticized for looking like a long music video. Critics, for instance, dismissed the use of songs by The Cure and Air in Marie Antoinette. But isn’t there something artificial about watching a period drama in a movie theater anyway? Mood music – be it pop, classical, or ambient – never existed in the real world to begin with, and neither did quick cuts or long takes.

Regardless of which style you prefer, the contrast betrays the value – and slight contradiction – of looking at history in the first place: That it is in the context of the past; that it is being scrutinized with a modern mind; and that it is informing a modern world.

History

I’ve recently been taking great joy in reading Paul Johnson’s History of the American People. Johnson capriciously flips between narrating the story of America and stepping out to discuss parallels to modern times. Afterall, it’s worthless – perhaps impossible – to analyze and not interpret. Interpretation without analysis, however, often comes off as empty opinion. The mix one employs is a choice of style, rhetoric, and taste, and it can make or break a non-fictional account.

Perspective

I’ve come to enjoy learning about history. In one sense, historical accounts make me feel lucky to be alive today, that I’m able to look back on such a rich history of man to take it in, as if I were sitting on a tall royal throne with the entirety of history at my disposal to learn from and hone my decisions. On the other hand it imbues me with a strong sense of humility that so many chapters of mankind have yet to be written, and that future generations will look back on our time with the same sort of curiosity, attention to detail, and awkwardness as Sofia Coppola looked back at Marie Antoinette. It reminds me of Pascal’s sentiment of being stuck between two infinite abysses.



In this context, HBO’s John Adams takes an alternate approach in which it is true to the details of the time –costumes, architecture, dialect, mannerisms, and all – while subtly eschewing the neat toy doll-look of films that do the same. It largely accomplishes this through a cinematography style that favors slanted planes and off-angles. The Constitutional Convention is held in an orderly wooden house with period furniture and right angles, but it is shot from an angular perspective, with camera tilted on tripod, to the point where it almost makes you seasick while remaining tasteful nonetheless. The characters, speeches, and passions seem set in time – they are just as what one might expect – but the visual style goes to length to remind the viewer that from their perspective, the future, along with its stakes, was just as unpredictable – if not moreso – as it’s ever been.

-KJ
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Media (in order of appearance)

Photo: (1)Poster of John Adams, HBO Miniseries; (2)Shot from 1988 film, Dangerous Liaisons; (3)Poster from 2006 film, Marie Antoinette; (4)Seeeking Solace, 11/28/2009, anjan58.

Video: (1)MaKn channel, Opening to Showtime's The Tudors; (2)jaa2010 channel, Trailer for HBO's John Adams. Sphere: Related Content

Academia, of Sirens and Irrelevance

It is a self-governing and largely closed community of practitioners who have an almost absolute power to determine the standards for entry, promotion, and dismissal in their fields.

So writes Louis Menand of the academic institution. He continues

Since it is the system that ratifies the product…the most important function of the system is not the production of knowledge. It is the reproduction of the system.

Academia is a bittersweet institution. The cliché of the Ivory Tower pays testament to the pursuit of knowledge over superstition, dogma, and tradition, while at the same time being marred by the very same dogma it sought to remove. Nietzsche would have smirked.

Thomas Jefferson obsessed about creating a meritocracy. The backward aristocracy of Europe drove English colonists away, and despite our Anglo similarities with Europe, it still defines the primary difference between America and Europe.

The Economist drew out a practical example contrasting European aristocracy and American meritocracy. They write that Buffett’s inheritance wishes – after his death, he wants his money to be donated away from the family – would be illegal throughout most of Europe. These wishes by Buffett are completely American, intuitive, and they’re almost non-newsworthy; but as the Economist argues, they remain extreme when compared to the rest of the world, even Europe.



Academia is stuck between a few contrasting extremes. It’s attacked for its aristocratic structure – often by its very inhabitants – and yet it’s as American as baseball. The students being pummeled through it grow in number and yet tuition is constantly on the rise. It is oriented towards specialization and detailed knowledge, but it’s slow to adapt to real-time developments.

Imperfect it may be in many ways, however, history has borne out that one of America’s best strengths - like the marketplace – is its ability to self-correct its wrongs, no matter how extreme they may be. US historian Paul Johnson admires how time and again – from the Salem witch trials to the Red Scare – such ugly crises are marked not by the extreme and shameful actions that took place, but by the widespread guilt felt for years afterward.

Lingering examples of this are political debates over affirmative action; the heat of these debates makes it easy to overlook how uniquely American they are in the first place. In some cases, as in the Salem witch trial, those who carried out the heinous actions were the first to express their guilt; in others, like affirmative action, the guilt and reaction were much more insidious, extreme and long-lasting. In all, however, the underlying principle is a desire to right wrong.

Not to liken those events to academia, but the point is that its warts are correctable.

Oddly enough bits and pieces of it become more relevant. The speed of change in today’s economy – manifested by the accelerating frequency of personal career change – increases the import of basic knowledge, analytic skills, and a flexible mind. Euphemized as economic friction, these changes are the result of an odd marriage between technological improvement and material improvement, both constantly moving upward and one-uping the other.

My life often seems like a mixed bag of challenges and experiences. I sometimes try to make sense of their order, but whenever I do this it feels like I’m stringing together random beads, only to make sense of them later, so I can think they look nice and orderly. I imagine this is how Odysseus felt being thrown from one island and conquest to another.

I never enjoyed reading Homer that much, but I have to admire the historical progression from Iliad to Odyssey. The former is a primitive linear war tale, while the latter is a loose combination of fairy tale strands, one which – upon closer inspection – seems ready to unravel.

More and more this progression, from the former set of tales to the latter, seems like a parable for modern life, where academia is one of multiple strands vying for relevance. Multifaceted as its virtue and output may be, its future success – in way or another – will result from their merit, or lack thereof.

-KJ
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Thanks to Michael White at Scientific Blogging for turning me onto the topic here.

Media (in order of appearance)

Photo: (1)The Great Hall -Christ Church, Oxford, 09/14/2009, Lyon; (2)Terry MacMullan Classroom10, 03/06/2009, EWU; (3)Kaleidascope of Minnows, 10/26/2009, hadartist;(4)Head of Odysseus.

Video: (1)Moby - Porcelain, 07/03/2009, video, by LTUcronus, of the song "Porcelain" from Moby's 1999 album, Play. Sphere: Related Content