My 3,000th Post: A MEGA-RANT & A POINT

It is an old cliché that art imitates life. But when you're trying to appreciate very-long-term trends and shifts that happen in only tiny increments, it pays to back far away from the things in which you are trying to discern those trends and shifts. And, from that distance, it?s clear to me just how true that cliché has proven.

Throughout history, our Art has been a reflection of who we are and what?s going on for us ? even if we don?t know it consciously. For that reason, artists are like the Dreamers of our culture ? through their work, they give rise to ?Dreams? we can all look at (as when we awaken in the morning) and then use those visions ? which will be at times nightmarish, at times beautiful ? as windows to otherwise unavailable insights about ourselves.

That was true for a long time, but I don?t think it?s true anymore. I think Art, in its essential usefulness as bridge to? let?s just call it Alternative Experience, has been replaced by something else.

Let?s consider how we got here.

I think the power of Art is bound up in the ways in which, and the degree to which we are connected to other people.

At the end of the 19th Century, Freud and the advent of wire-based communications technologies brought a sense of instantaneity, fleetingness and greater personal subjectivity to the human experience than at any other moment in human history. Before then, I believe, people imagined others living in far-away places of the world as either very similar to themselves, or, otherwise, as so dissimilar as to be able to completely disavow their existence in Abstraction. Art was, therefore, quite free to serve us in all the ways we needed it to, because there was little to contradict it in the form of actual information from Other Places. But, when a degree of ?remote verification? became possible by way of transformative new communications technologies and faster modes of transportation, it became more difficult to indulge our fantasies of Alternative Experience. At the same time it was becoming more popular to think of the Mind as the ?maker of a personal reality? instead of as ?the perceiver of a shared reality?.

100 years ago, the effect to Art was the unleashing of a bold diversity of expression that reflected both the Terror of being alone and the Power of being alone. Psychoanalysis and the thinkers, philosophers, writers and artists it inspired, bestowed unprecedented power on the Individual, by telling everyone, basically -- "It's all in your head."

This trend continued aggressively for 100 years. And art was an important catalyst. By the 1960's, so many people all over the world had simply stopped trying to measure their thoughts against pre-existing standards, that the Liberals (those people prepared to live with questions, and make things up as they went along) and the Conservatives (those people for whom happiness required participating in Vested Systems of Behavior) had come into violent conflict.

Though it was occasionally ?relieved? by episodes of collective tragedy and collective xenophobic/nationalistic revelry, the tension never really went away. Instead, the Human Horror it had become impossible to deny ? for it being everywhere in pictures and films made by photojournalists who traveled to those places where Horror happened ? became internalized in Us. The devaluation of human life bred cynicism and Existential Boredom in the Haves, and despair in the Have-nots. The feeling of global connectedness initially fostered by ?broadcast-based? communications technologies was displaced by a feeling of isolation. As television programs and commercials came to dominate the collective sensory experience of the ?Advanced Nations?, it became easier to pretend that nothing which came to us via Television was real. Art, in response, was overrun by Synthetics and Surrogates of all types, which, even from the greatest of artists producing at that time, did little more than stir a vague, introspective melancholy. Had this trend continued, we might today be living in a world pervaded by Selfish Apathy, instead of Xenophobic Paranoia.

But something happened in the early 1990?s that simply changed Everything. All of you know what I am talking about ? so let?s just say that the desire to connect our ?tools? to each other and to centralized resources ended up connecting all of Us to each other.

Able to ignore the hypnotic lure of Television for the first time since its introduction 40 years before, more and more of our time was given over to computer monitors, instead, which (by way of the Web browser) gave the power of experiential self-determination to millions of people who had never dreamt of such a thing. Suddenly, exploration and discovery could happen at any moment. Whatever the physical circumstances of the User might be ? whether a paraplegic senior living alone on Prince Edward Island or a Somalian orphan ? if they had Internet access, they could be a bona-fide Participant in the Biggest Thing Ever.

I think most of us who?ve been online for a long time have forgotten just how much we got practically overnight, practically for free. It says a lot that we take it for granted now, and never dare to think what our lives would be like without it. But, it?s never been easy to see oneself from up-close.

So, what IS the state of Art on a planet overrun by a Network? Are we closer together, or farther apart? Has ?virtual? connectedness increased our feelings of empathy towards other people, or has it reduced them to mere pixels on our screens? Where is Art? Where are we seeking our Dreams?

We?re forced now to consider what it means to ?connect? with someone. Since the advent of photography 150 years ago, we?ve been staring vacuously at other ?people? in print and on screens, and learning that they are NOT really ?there? in the only way 100,000 prior years of human experience had taught us matters. It used to be that a person had to be in the same room, or at least likely to be in the same room with you in order to stir you or stimulate you or threaten you. But that is obviously not the case anymore. We are learning to build relationships that are important to us, that fully engage our emotions our ?spirit? ? even though there hasn?t been ? may never be ? a physical meeting. How did that happen? How did it happen so quickly?

It can only be that we have migrated so essential an aspect of ourselves into so strange a place and so strange a form ? so quickly ? BECAUSE IT FEELS REALLY, REALLY GOOD.

Whether we want to admit it or not, at some point in our development as a civilization, Art began to fail us. Perhaps this happened simply because Art became inaccessible to most people ? either because it was locked up in museums or because it had become irrelevant to us, though it ?hung? everywhere.

It?s clear that something was starving in us, and that the Online Revolution that began only a decade ago, somehow, provided that essential nourishment we?d been wanting for.

If you?ve ever read Sigmund Freud, you know that he believed that Sex is everywhere and in everything, that it gives urgent motivation ? vital animus ? to all that we do. If you believe that is true, and I think it is ? though I broaden ?Sex? to include many things not immediately associated with sex ? you can begin to guess why Art was failing and why the Internet SAVED us.

The Starvation I am speaking of has been worsening for so long that there isn?t a person alive today who could say they?ve noticed it ? however long they?ve been alive. We?re talking about something happening over hundreds of years, in very small increments. As our civilization developed, as our societies grew larger and more complex, individuals began to lose their bridges to Alternative Experience ? bridges they once sought out in Art.

Now, I am going to suggest something to all of you that is extremely controversial, but also extremely powerful. I hope you will be more excited by the power than daunted by the controversy.

I know many of you have an inferiority complex, as professionals ? perhaps even as people. It?s hard as hell to work in this business, under the constant barrage of judgment and condemnation we suffer without getting a chipped shoulder. We are frowned upon from so many directions, never see the service we provide to our customers characterized in a positive light, never hear from our customers how happy we make them ? unfortunately ? because our society condemns their consumption almost as harshly as it condemns our production. At the end of the day, we have only each other to turn to for understanding and approval. You think there?s any equivalent to GFY in the clothing business, or the medical profession or among shoe retailers? Of course not ? those industries haven?t been forced into the kind of cohesion we have for being as oppressed as we have been. I tell you, that cohesion is our greatest strength ? but we have been persecuted so long and held apart so long, we are almost at a breaking point. We desperately need a new idea, a new way to see ourselves, an answer we can give with pride when a PTA member asks us what we do for a living.

My suggestion is this:


(contd.)