You’ve watched some YouTube clips, and in concert they are passionate virtuosos.
You’ve watched some YouTube clips, and in concert they are passionate virtuosos. You get parked, through the line, through the pat down, and just as you are taking your first sip of beer you overhear someone saying the bass player was just charged with beating his girlfriend. You have no idea if this is true or not, but the house lights go down and the band takes the stage.
This is an unlikely example of how context affects your impression of art, but there are countless examples of how another person can define and control your perception of art before you even get a chance to hear note one. On the way to a movie your husband’s friend says the filmmaker has been off his game the past few years. The night before a ballet you read a sarcastic tweet about gauzy set decoration. One the way into the venue you see your ex-wife.
Can it ever be possible to perceive the Insane Clown Posse objectively? What if you heard a beautiful song in a bar, and when you asked the bartender, he told you it was Jimmy Buffett? When a friend of mine first heard about the Grateful Dead in the 70s he was told they were a heavy metal band. After a long party he heard American Beauty and fell in love. It took an hour to convince him who the musicians were, and unfortunately Jerry Garcia had already died. He’s been playing catch up ever since.
Not only do others create context before we experience art, they play an outsized role as we experience it.
Tweedy’s frustration is one I have felt many times. Just last night I had to shush a teacher who was talking over the overture of a musical. There’s a guy who shows up to my bookings who claps loudly when no one else is, yells, tries to touch the musicians, and holds his glowing screen up whenever he’s not busy falling downstairs. At The Lumineers concert at the NorVA the band asked the crowd to put away their phones and devices seven or eight times before giving up. AltDaily editor Jesse Scaccia wrote this about Sam Beam of Iron & Wine when he was at the NorVA: “Before I get started,” he said, surveying the crowd, “I want to say, Shut the fuck up.”
I met a guy who is proud of all the talking he did at that show, proud of the fact that he interfered with a performance by a genius songwriter, which is puzzling unless you think of this true dichotomy: Music occurs at the intersection of hedonism and humanism. For modern music to occur both principles are necessary, but many so-called fans are missing the humanist element, and hedonism without humanism is narcissism. When I go to concerts I am there to celebrate. I, too, desire to get toe up and holler at the moon, but I am always aware that my experience is not more important than anyone else’s.
Watching the play last night I thought of countless jokes to tell my wife, but I stayed silent because as a humanist I cannot give greater weight to my desire to joke with my wife than the next guy’s desire to experience the play without my jokes. What the hedonist does not get, and what makes him or her a narcissist is they only care about their experience and do not consider how their behavior corrupts the experience of others.
This point of view is usually attacked with a straw man argument, so let me make it clear that it is okay to talk at concerts. It is okay to snap pictures or video. It’s okay to be drunk or on drugs. The point of contention is when one person’s behavior begins negatively impacting others. Holding up your glowing screen and blocking the view of others is not okay. It’s narcissistic. Having a long conversation over the music for an extended amount of time is narcissistic. It’s not like I care whether or not you are paying attention. Please talk to your friends for every second of every concert you ever attend, just have the basic decency to make sure no one else can hear it.
By incorporating humanism and hedonism we all have a good time. By being a narcissist you are insuring that only you have a good time. Interestingly enough if musicians didn’t incorporate humanism, there would be no concerts. There would be no bands. There would be no event get drunk and text at. Sure, there may be one guy’s name on the marquee, but if you think musical performances are possible without a healthy dose of humanism, you’ve never played music nor hung around with musicians.
Unfortunately I have no way to deal with event-going narcissists. Virtually all religions and philosophies have some version of the Golden Rule. Writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski and Williams Carlos Williams taught me these lessons long ago. I love music, and it is puzzling that others who claim they do too spend so much time talking over it. I almost got in a fight in Maine with a guy who was clapping off beat and loudly when no one else was. Last night it took two shushes to quiet the narcissists. At the next gig down the road it may not be possible to convince the narcissists they are corrupting other people’s experience, but at least there seem to be signs of a growing amount of musicians, fans, and venue owners who truly value art, and are willing to risk a confrontation to insure everyone has the chance to behold it.
