I am probably going to be the least educated person to comment in this thread, but here goes:

I have played in an orchestra, and I have played in a rock band performing songs I wrote (like the overwhelming majority of people who post here - only mine were ummm, not so good). I would definitely consider myself more passionately engaged in "art" in the latter - it's me expressing how I feel through music. Jesus, this is plainly obvious. Leaving the classical music question aside, man/woman expresses how he/she feels through music = art. The results may range from crap to the sublime. It's still art.

I finally just listened to Burial (on the MySpace) and I have to vote CRAP.

It's cheezy, oversimplistic, and cliched, and it seems to be trying to do several incompatible things at the same time.

The dark mood initially established by the background bassline/keyboard chords is spoiled by the clunky, poorly-processed and badly manipulated samples overlaid on top. The rhythm is dull and uninspired, sounding like a rejected Sade drum pattern played on the wrong speed. The pitch-altered vocals are really silly, like an Alvin & the Chipmunks record being flanged with the thumb while it's playing.

The thing is, I can hear what it is he's trying to do, it just sounds like he doesn't have the finesse or technical skill to pull it off well. Artists like Phil Hartnoll and Amon Tobin do this kind of thing with much more style.

Man, if tocharian keeps going, she'll take over my spot as the most hated member of the forum.

I have a gut feeling Matthew will come back in 2008.

tocharian wrote:

El Protoolio wrote:We differ from you in acknowledging that there are exceptions to what we have generally experienced. That's how maturity and humility fits in with us. I hope you can find them for yourself someday.

Let's see Federico Moreno Torroba get up on stage and play the Jesus Lizard. Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahaha.

That might actually be really awesome.

I agree with you both. Humility is a sorely underdeveloped personal trait among the race (humans).

I would love to hear highly trained musicians arrange and play, in all their black-tie-affair penguin-ness, Blockbuster or Nub. Of course, I have no need to see a string quartet pull the tight and shiny, but, with the proper introduction, even that could be endured (I will admit that seeing the wee man crush his scrotum out of his sweaty fist was at times a need).

This whole question of art or no art, low or high art, etc., is a bore. It is indeed something I do not want to talk about at length because it is not an important question for me. Knock yourself out. I trust my tastes enough to let them stand alone in the maelstrom. I know what I like when I like it (often that is not until long after a first listen or viewing), and I am fully capable of defending those tastes with yak from media studies, art history, lit crit, or film theory backgrounds. Still, as time goes on and I experience more and more, including drunken tirades, fantastic sex, and bottomless awe for the beauty of life, all punctuated by music or film or graphic imagery or well placed words, the idea of parsing those moments with the aforementioned yak seems pitiable. Best left to someone who does not know how to drink, fuck, or cry a little.

If I may, I'm a pretty active artist myself -- that's what I consider myself, first and foremost, a fine artist -- and still, for better or worse, I'm concerned with these issues. Not to an unhealthy extent but defintiely on a fairly regular basis.

I had a philosophy class once. I was taking it as an elective. The teacher, a very agreeable and intelligent man, once said something. He sez to me, he sez to me, he sez to me, he sez, he sez, he sez, he sez, "In philosophy, if you really understand an idea, the test of your comprehension of that idea is being able to explain it to someone who lacks the sort of background knowledge you do."

I feel like it's to my benefit to mull over some of these issues. I don't want to have gone through various projects throughout the years not having considered where whatever I'm doing is located in other people's terms. Besides I feel like my convictions could withstand just about anybody else's, anyway, so what's the harm?

I've devoted a hell of a lot of thought toward making and appreciating art, and life in general. I'm pretty serious about it all. But making art and puting it out there is kind of like taunting the world with your presence. I like being somewhat diplomatic toward people while doing this. Sometimes that entails talking about things in oversimplified terms. And I'm not always against this, since, if pressed, I can back up my statements (why the heck else would I make them if I didn't believe them to be sound).

Plus, sometimes the premise of an argument can be lame but good observations come out of it.


Really stowned now. Gonna stope.

Rick Reuben wrote:

tocharian wrote:I'm not gonna say anymore after this because I seem to disagree with just about everyone here about talking about art... which is fine.

How racism and classism and elitism all slip into the everyday language of Rich Kids...

tocharian wrote:By the afternoon, I was a bit peevish.
So I get to the mail store with very specific packaging needs.

Packaging tape, bubble wrap, small bubbles.

“Customers aren’t allowed to handle the packaging tape” the blond doofus behind the counter tells me.

Fine. Could I have some bubble wrap please?

The smarmy jerk fishes out a handful of styrofoam peanuts.

“This is better.”

No, look, I’ve had a very trying day. My van broke down. Could this please just be the one simple task I accomplish today? Please, can I have the bubble wrap with the small bubbles?

The twat starts cutting a huge swath of the bubble wrap with the very large bubbles.

I object, at which point he tells to Stop Telling Him How To Do His Job.

I lose it and call him an obsessive compulsive fucktard.

At which point an enormous black lady who had been harmlessly sitting at a table nearby, starts bellowing “Excuuuuse Me!!! EXCUUUUUUSE ME!!”

Hard to figure out why the one person in this whole story who has her race used as an adjective is the 'black' person? A 'black' person who had been doing what black people are supposed to do in Tocharian's presence, 'sitting harmlessly', until she started in with the Black Person Ghetto Talk, "Excuuuuuse Me!!!" . The outrageous impudence of that woman, after her coworker was called a 'fucktard'.

Continuing:

tocharian wrote:I yell “fucktard”, I think, and storm out.
This behemoth of a female then proceeds to chase me through the parking lot, yelling, “YOU TRASH!! DON’T YOU EVER COME BACK TO THIS STORE AGAIN!! YOU TRASH!!! YOU TRASH!!”

Luckily, she was slow and a Kinkos was two blocks away.

Thankfully, peacefulness and the rightful social order later returned to the privileged person's world:

tocharian wrote:The sky is full of snow. Yippee! Ima get my skis and go to Santa Fe.

Yayyy!! Hope no black behemoths hassled you unnecessarily at the airport check-ins.

Wow. And, yes.

I like the album. So there.

blah

Rick Reuben--

It is you, more than anyone, who drives away the most decent, reasonable people on the forum. Real-life people who I talk to think you are an insensitive moron.

To call tocharian a racist and a "Rich Kid" is incredibly inaccurate and horrible. She gave an account of something that happened. You are the one who decided "EXCUSEEEE ME" was a uniquely "black" trait.

Your reasons for fucking with me and tocharian are childish and transparent.

(And WWI was NOT caused by Germany...WWII was a WORLD war. It's typical that you would quote me with NO context).