Why high culture is always counterculture, but not vice versa

Tucked inconspicuously in the back of The Mencken Chrestomathy, in a section titled...

How to profit from the dollar-standard in the arts

Heaps and heaps and heaps of paper, and sitting atop one heap for the longest time, Hilton Kramer's The Revenge of the Philistines, subtitled: Art and Culture 1972-1984.
    On the pretext of attacking and subduing the heap, I grab it and toss it onto my "immediate" heap of supposedly high-priority stuff. Neither as decisive or shrewd a move as I'm trying to make it...

So far ahead of his time he's lurking in ours

It's a pretty rare day I don't think about H. L. Mencken at least ten times.

And here is Dan Gardner of the Ottawa Citizen, Sept 3, starting a column on presidential aspirant Mr. Romney by citing the "dour" satirist of yore. Dour??
   And yet, I've heard Mencken called "bilious" too, an even more tone-deaf assessment. Is this the same Mencken who publicly regretted not calling his second and third volumes of memoirs Happy Days II and Happy Days III to match the first title? (yes, LONG before the TV show, you ahistoric moron). Is this the 67-year-old summing up his life at an age when bitterness is almost automatic, who states:

(Chrestomathy quote: "I have little call to join the race of viewers-with-alarm" etc./approx.... damn but I hate research... and of course my copy of the Mencken Chrestomathy  has disappeared into the office uber-mess...)

(Yep, another teaser for an item for sale. Sorry! Stay tuned!)  =]

Short note to Russian Visitors and/or Porn Freaks

As I noted on Facebook, one of the charms of the Culture Monitor blog is that Google supplies data on visitors to the site. Admittedly my blatherpatch has a nearly nonexistent readership, as befits an inconsequential clown like myself, but a few visitors do drift by, and the question nagging me is--WHY?

   An easy default answer is that they are topic-hunting, and something in their search-terms directs them to my "labels" as Google Blogger calls them. Moreover, such an explanation strokes the ego, because it tells me people are actually interested in my ideas about art,conservatism, culture, Bob Dylan, Shakespeare, Mr. Ignatieff and his striking resemblance to Shemp Stooge, or whatever.

   Alas, the statistics seem to undercut this. For one thing, no one ever leaves a comment, good, bad or indifferent, and that's a rather dismaying statistic. For another, most of my visitors seem to be... Russian? Yep. The U.S. has been ahead occasionally in the numbers game, but Russia is never far behind (my fellow Canadians are always a distant third) and for the last week or so Russkies have have been out-visiting the Yanks about 2:1.

   A pleasant, idealistic theory would be that the Russians are interested in my review of the film Danton since, really, there is nothing else hereabouts of any special interest to them. No Pushkin. No Pussy Riot. But the Danton review hasn't popped up in the statistics, and the blog-leading Dylan-Shakespeare items are only getting one or two visits per day. What are the other four or five Russians per day looking at?? (actually, a burst of 11 or 12 today).

  A disturbing possibility reared its head when I finally decided to investigate my Blogger listings of "Traffic Sources" that seem to be mysteriously directing people my way. Clicking on the main one, which seems to be generating 90% of all my traffic, and whose name suggests something film-related, I was shocked to discover (luckily I don't have a heart condition!) it is a hardcore porn site! Whaaaat?!

Further investigation revealed that this film site nestles here in two versions: the short version which is some sort of legitimate film-selling site, and a long version with the word "redirect" in it, leading to the porn site. To make a long story short, my fragile ego must now contend with the possibility that 90% of my tiny trickle of traffic is merely landing here at the Monitor accidentally, as a side effect of, um, shaky-handed uni-coital button-clicking.

What is worse, the CSIS agents watching me (hey, I'm a paranoiac, I assume such things) have probably concluded I'm a hardcore perv myself. After all, I clicked on that porn site a second time, just to make sure my first hit hadn't been accidental. Roll over, Pete Townshend.

Postscript (August 27)
Was rather surprised to see that this post disappeared from the blog for a few days. Somehow, tweaking it a little after first posting it, I saved it as a "draft" and thereby withdrew it from circulation. Didn't even notice this disappearance until I did a further investigation on the mysterious sites that direct visitors here, including one that is now providing as many vict... er, customers as the porn site. What might this NEW burgeoning provider be? As it turns out, a multi-site which "breaks down" into both a cooking-recipe site and a dating site: and a third site billed as:

Find Top Girl Sites

Looking for Girl? Search for it with Findiest!

YOU tell me what it is, I'm scared to look.

Part 2: Tying up 300 or so Dylan-Shakespeare loose ends...

There was some urgency in finishing that last post (actually, being an endless revisionist, like Mr. Dylan himself, I may tweak it a teensy bit yet). But after almost four days I wanted badly to "make it a wrap" of the basic argument. And tackle some of the bulking backlog here, like the "Glossy Magazines" autopsy.
   Alas, readers must be aware that the post leaves a lot of questions dangling, like--how far did Dylan go in tapping Shakespeare? Was it a one-play-per-song program in Dylan's mind? Were Band members in on the joke? (for it does strike me as a joker-thing to do, on one level a prank that his nemesis, Mr. Jones-Weberman would utterly fail to find when he emptied the trash). Again, are there some songs (besides the Band's) that were NOT "keyed" to Shakespeare? (at first glance "Going to Acapulco" and "Tiny Montgomery"--personal favorites by the way--do NOT seem to contain anything Shakespearean, but then again the Shakespeare-keyed songs are very low-key, and I haven't read every Shakespeare play, so who knows what a heavier scrutiny of the other songs might reveal).
   But in addition to this, I had questions of my own, some of them arising from my adventures as a student of Shakespeare, and finding that the Bard did a great number of sneaking "stealth allusions" that bear some resemblance to Dylan's covert operations. Is there then some sort of primal (or sophisticated) artistic method at work between the two word-slingers?...

(Aug 27) Again, the little hint of Othello at the end of the the last post really needs expansion, for it isn't as offhand or joke-y as I perhaps made it look. Being a Shakespeare semi-pro I know the The Wheel of Fire is a reputed book of Shakespeare criticism, and not unrelated to the Bob Dylan song. Check this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_Fire

Little wonder Dylan in the recent Rolling Stone is emphasizing Shakespeare so much. But the whole Shakespeare-in-Dylan thing is a HUGE row to hoe. It'd be easer if Dylan just came out and admitted his roots, but I suppose it might be futile to peevishly beg him "Let us not talk falsely now"..

(Sept. 2) On third thought, maybe let's just leave the dangling questions dangling for now. The big ones require too much reading and research (hey, Timon of Athens could parallel "Tiny Montgomery" maybe?--or Midsummer Night's Dream parallel "Million Dollar Bash"?), the small ones will resolve themselves in due course (e.g. "you can rock this joint" paralleling "the time is out of joint" in Hamlet/"Levee" which popped unannounced into my brain two days ago, but merely another smidgen in the evidence-heap and very little by itself).

And ultimately this whole mess of correlations, while fascinating, proves not much except that Dylan is a most playful lover of Shakespeare, and fails to stay away from pranks. I can almost hear Dylan responding with dry sarcasm, "Yeah, so I used some Shakespeare. So what?"

Unlike Alan J. Weberman, I find no program or agenda, artistic or political, in the sneaky source-usage. Unlike Shakespeare, Dylan does not employ stealth-allusions as a cohesive structure of meaning (unless you expand "structure of meaning" to include impressionistic goofs), which makes Shakespeare's coy references to the Bible, and to medieval mystery and morality plays far more important.

Ergo: back to the big Shakespeare job for the moment.

(Sept. 8-9) Easier said than done!--my brain just lingers on this, as you can tell from my Twitter feed. Yes, preliminary indications do link "You Ain't Going Nowhere" with The Winter's Tale. "Tomorrow's the day my bride's gonna come" sure seems to hint of Hermione's return, eh?

Aaaand, spent most of the 8th doing a quick scan of the entire play (jeez, really CAN'T afford all that time) to find matches with the official Dylan lyrics. Found LOTS:
-The blustery weather that starts the song matches the weather when baby Perdita is abandoned. (Act III scene iii)
-No frozen railings in Shakespeare, but the abandonment follows the scene (Act III scene ii) where Leontes finally (a bit late) stops railing about Hermione's alleged adultery, and repents. Who loves puns more? Bob or Will? I ask you!
-"Get your mind off wintertime..." Hope THAT needs no explanation...
-"I don't care how many letters they sent"--Leontes's refusal to believe the oracle's letter (same scene as when his railing finally freezes).
-"Pick up your money"--Autolycus pick-pocketing (IV, ii)
-"...a gun that shoots/ Tailgates and substitutes"--Leontes jealousy and rage at Polixenes for, um, tailgating his wife (allegedly) as a "substitute" husband.
-"Strap yourself to the tree with roots"--"The root of his opinion, which is rotten/ As ever oak or stone was sound." (II, iii, 88-9)
-"Genghis Khan/ He could not keep/ All his kings/ Supplied with sleep"--Hermione is daughter of the King of Russia. Add Polixenes and Leontes and that is three kings, possibly all subject to the great Khan in the romance-world of Shakespeare and/or the scramble-y brain of Dylan. A stretch? Maybe. But consider that The Winter's Tale starts with Polixenes proposing curious "sleepy drinks" (I, i, 14) to Leontes as a substitute for returning Leontes's extravagent hospitality (which Polixenes can't afford to equal). Consider also "It is required/ You do awake your faith" in the climactic scene where the "statue" of Hermione comes to life.
-"Oo-ee, ride me high" suggests both the  pastoral dancing, where the three peasant dancers "by their own report, sir, hath danced before the king; and not the worst of the three but jumps twelve foot and a half by th' squire" (IV, iv, 330-2)--but also the play's constant contrast between low-class and high-class society, innocent enough on the surface, although this critic has been trained to keep a sharp eye on Shakespeare's deadpan.

The alternative, I suppose is that Dylan is just conjuring up his song out of pure-poetic wackiness (and possibly chemical assistance) but I prefer a little method in Dylan's's madness. He is more educated than he lets on, and the coincidences seem a little to numerous to be mere accidents. Still, there are a few remaining lyrics that seem determinedly inexplicable. But only a few--despite all the music and instruments in the play I STILL haven't located a darn flute. Ditto an "easy chair" although that might just be a throne, eh?

Productivity, Efficiency and Dreaming in Technicolor

The morning dog-walk is a refreshing exercise--getting away from the stuffy house and chores, abandoning (briefly) the mind-boggling backlog of reading-material, flushing out the lungs, recalibrating the brain, and doing nothing newsworthy or contributory to the GDP. Beyond the primal pleasure of the act of walking, and giving the frisky mutt a bathroom break (scoop!) and letting her lunge at cats and sniff at anything and everything and God knows what, we have no agenda or obligation at all.
   But the city, of course, impinges on aforesaid brain. I idly recheck familiar houses, note old paint and new vinyl siding, survey the degree of rust on cars, scan weed-to-grass ratio, scout irregularities in the sidewalk and pavement, estimate the droppings of litterbuggor canadensis (vast), gauge the possibility that a passing female may be a hooker (and contributing to the GDP, unlike my lackadaisical self) assessing that possibility with an almost-unconscious set of criteria ranging from skinniness to motility...
   The morning I began this essay, I was spurred by a jarring disconnect between my easygoing routine (and a familiar sight on the stroll; more on that in a moment) and an earlier radio-report of someone, possibly Prime Minister Harper or Finance Minister Flaherty, urging Canadians to be more productive so we can be competitive in the global marketplace (stop them if you've heard this one).
   So, um, not that we should go back to building log-cabins, trading furs and eating pemmican, but... exactly HOW productive do we need to be? $3,000 per capita more? $10,000 per capita? Maybe 2.3% more productive than the Chinese in their less-suicidal factories??
   Increased productivity always SOUNDS good, in an abstract, editorial sort of way, which is why our beloved suits chant the mantra, I suppose. And if you add the imploring faces of some Third World... sorry, developing-world victims (or local street-people) to kick-start the mantra, you may even feel some of the urgency that our ever-alarmist politicians and business-suits strive to promote.
   But let me flip the mantra around, for a little Nietzschean perspectivism: if we (and by "we" I mean residents of the industrialized West) are so productive and efficient that we need maybe only 7% of our workforce to produce our basic food, clothing and shelter needs, what do we do with the remaining 93% of the, um, loiterers?
   A few, of course will be needed for "management"...

    *    *    *
in progress (allegedly)

I Don't Know Anything About Art, but I Know What Is Sufficiently Wacko. Ch. 1 - "Striped Socks"

Does the American auto industry need a government bailout, like the financial sector? Is Victoria Beckham's new "poxie" hairdo better of worse than her 2007 platinum brushover?

Push aside all such piddling questions and meditate, instead on our City of Edmonton's decision to erect a 20-foot-high sculpture, a whimsical pair of brick clogs and striped socks, at the new Southgate Light Rail station, scheduled to open in 2010.

The story, with artist's conception (in color) graced (if that is the right word) the cover of today's Edmonton Journal, praised by their culture critic Todd Babiak along with the city's new downtown winter-lights program. Well, hell, Todd is an old classmate of mine whom I owe at least one favor (hi Todd) and God knows I am not averse to whimsy.

Did I not once imagine, in print, in detail (occasionally phallic), a male "Poker Party" to rival Judy Chicago's feminist "Dinner Party"? Would not a sombrero of 100-metre radius be a fine umbrella to place over Churchill Square and all its summerfests?? C'mon people, trip the light fantastical!

All the same, I have the uneasy suspicion that Sandy Public is going to holler this whopper down, as a lump of Clownishness Unparalleled, perhaps unaware that CU is currently the dominant movement in the 3D arts. Acres of forest will be reduced to cheap newsprint in the churning debate, and radio and TV announcers will exhale vast amounts of CO2 doing the same. And part of my schizo self (possibly the section of my genome containing the neoclassical alleles) will sympathize with Sandy Public too.

I dunno. In any case I am enough of a veteran of public debates to predict that they will settle nothing, and enough of an arts critic to disbelieve Todd's optimism that public art is going to transform Edmonton into something unique and wonderful. We homo borealis hereabouts will still be the same mix of stodgy businessmen, sturdy working stiffs and flailing anarchists that we always were. Has our already sizeable scattering of public art (much of it better than decent) changed Redmontonians even one whit? I ask you!

Maybe it is the art racket that needs a bailout. Of the ideology.

In the interests thereof, let me offer City Hall some privatized help, in the form of a quote from Will Cuppy's The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, on the subject of all that iconic (sorry for the buzzword) Greek art:

...Pericles was able to make Athens the City Beautiful by building the Parthenon and other things on the Acropolis and adorning them with a great deal of art. The average Athenian citizen, if he so desired, could daily contemplate the most magnificent specimens of architecture, painting and sculpture the world has ever seen. The effect of this upon the citizens was the same as the effect of art upon citizens today.

Hahaha ouch! Cuppy particularly cites the Greeks' looting problem (nothing on grafitti, which probably didn't survive; the looting reminds me that someone in Edmonton once stole a huge sculpture containing four giant steel cylinders, and first nobody noticed it missing, and then when it was rediscovered years later with only three cylinders, nobody noticed the fourth, wonderfully horizontally-extended fourth cylinder missing either).

There is a moral there somewhere. Anyway, sic semper civic sophistecture.