A typical distraction leading to Deep Thoughts

Here's a typical brief distraction from work that ends with a bloggable find. I'm listening to the launch.com station I've carefully constructed and "World Love" from the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs comes on. It's a tune I've dismissed before, but this time found it witty enough to listen to. So I searched to find the lyrics and found instead this discussion of the album's merits, centered on whether Merritt's wit precludes emotional authenticity and prevents any emotional impact on the listener. An eloquent writer named Nitsuh says this:

Suffice it to say that I feel like there's a whole complex underlying [Stephen Merritt's] aims, specific fallacies that he's valuable for refuting, and chief among them is this idea that it's more authentic or more emotional to watch people do than it is to watch them think -- a concept that's largely alien to me, because my primary joy in art and words comes from the fact that they alone can serve as a conduit of people's thoughts.

This gets back to my "insufficiency of language" problem in the face of an entire gestalt that comes with physical presence, a "scene". Great art evokes much more than itself. Let's talk about Sonic Youth, Rothko, the Mona Lisa. Better stop here -- this is becoming more than a distraction. But please carry on: Discuss

September 25, 2002 10:37 AM