hallo alle miteinander, back from ny having exhausted all relevant avant
garde gasps and goaded myself onto new feats of wholly repetitive minor
brain damage, there's a lot to respond to here particularly (for me at
least) re: Adorno's 1 or 2 peg relegation but also concerning the
bubbling brooks of Soares spite, in which what respite rather than I mean
mere abandonment, I would say this: I was criticised in that review, in a
manner I find quite plausible and suggestive, I have to agree with Ian
that it's just not so bad; the substance of what served to criticise in so
plausible a manner I find far less suggestive, in fact pretty stultified -
Ira you mention "the sexism", deferring to some notably evident and
allotted common knowledge, I would like to know what this sexism is
exactly.  I missed several of the readings and so cannot comment on the
review with entire attention, but its remarks on those readings I did see
are interested and completely explicable, I'd say.  In many cases, I would
agree with them.  I do not think that Frank Sinatra is 'as good' as
Mozart, nor can I imagine that he could be, other than in argued
circumstances deriving either from a practiced dismissiveness or a rather
stubbornly equilibratory surmise that aesthetic judgement need necessarily
be expressive of democratic tendency (rather than existing as such a
tendency).  Of course, ignorance'd do the trick also.  Not that I am
suggesting this is the reason for any views expressed by people here.
It's a fairly aggressive territorialism, argumentatively to confer the
possibility of free range values upon a field of artistic and
commercial productivity in which you are not principally engaged, whilst
reserving the right to exert polemic dismissals in your own field: which
of us here ever said, during the Hughes/Heaney thread for instance, Why
shouldn't H/H be just as good as Wordsworth?  Or Shakespeare?  And why
didn't we?  Because such a default collapse of our edifices of arranged
value is something of which we'd rather see the pretty dust clouds at a
distance, than be so blindingly amid them that our own sense of careerist
importance becomes lost as any other.  I guess (I may be completely wrong)
that if we asked a person who had committed their life's effort and
interest to musical composition exclusively, that person would find our
invitations to a free for all quite pointedly offensive.  Even among pop
stars, there's a procreative antagonism, a distribution of discriminatory
and motivating counteropinions, be they however exceptional or money-made.
Capitulation is an important concept, one which can be abandoned of
course, in a resurrectional act of capitulation.  I just don't find
anything seriously egalitarian in proclaiming, as derivative spokesperson
of the historic class of people by whom 'high' art (so defined) was for
the most part obtained, that in fact high art can afford to do away with
its highness and that a new kind of tolerance will ensue: can 'low' art
make this self-sacrifice?  Can it be so masterfully entailed in the
process of levelling?  Does it take what it gets?  Since we're not
talking about food, money, clothes, medical aid or shelter here, taking
what it gets is not an assigned privilege: it is the evidence of a
retained evaluative dichotomy.  And so what.  I think Mozart is BETTER
than Frank Sinatra; if this is crassness or small-minded, how has the
applicability of the politically pejorative counterclaim come to be
asserted?  Just as I think that your work, Ira, and yours, cris, is better
than Simon Armitage's.  Don't you?       


                          



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