Ventiak - an island somewhere in the brain

Elitism

24 February 2007

Despite herself, Amanda's got interested in the discussion of yesterday. She is allergic to our sort of intellectualising but she couldn't help responding to Trevor's question about who it is that passes the judgement that makes something a work of art.

'This sounds awfully like an elitist theory,' she said, glaring at us.

'Yes,' I confessed. 'You might be right. But what's wrong with that?'

She just looked at me as if the answer was obvious but she had piqued Felix's interest now. Felix's view of art is distinctly populist.

His face was red, his eyes bulging. I could see what was coming.

'Wankers! Vainglorious toads! Think they know better than everyone else! Intellectual snobbery, pure and simple!'

'Is it?' I answered. 'I'm not so sure. Snobs are people who think they're superior. Elites are people who other people think are superior, usually outsiders who wish on some level they were insiders.'

'Meaning who?' Felix demanded.

Amanda laughed. 'Ah, well...'

'I think elites are probably natural,' Rupert said. 'They're just a function of status, which seems to play a part in all human societies.'

'One of those Pleistocene adaptations, eh?' Amanda said.

'Quite possibly.'

'And therefore unavoidable?'

'Well...'

'Tyranny of the rich and privileged? Long live the oligarchy?'

'Hang on a minute,' I said. I was following a line of thought that suddenly seemed interesting. 'I'm not sure that's exactly right. Not in a pluralistic society. I mean in eighteenth century France, fair enough. The court was the centre of everything - art, literature, fashion, political power - but I don't think elites are quite so monolithic these days.'

'Explain, fellow!' Felix demanded.

'Well, I think there are a number of groups involved in an artistic elite. There are the members themselves who just go about doing their thing and making their judgements. There are the admirers, who think the elite and their works are wonderful. There are the envious, who think that they should be the subject of the admiration and not the elite. And finally there are the great unwashed that couldn't give a stuff about any of it.'

'So?' Amanda said, as if this was no explanation at all.

'The point is that it's not the elite that is the rich and privileged group. Their status is bestowed on them by other people. They actually might be quite poor and egalitarian in their social and political attitudes. They certainly don't have to feel superior to anyone.'

'Ah, but that group are the creators, aren't they? And you said yesterday that the creators don't know which end is up when it comes to ascribing value. The people who do that are the admirers and you can bet your booties they include the rich and privileged or else what sort of elite is it going to be?'

'Hmm.' I didn't have an answer to that. 'I guess the members of the elite admire each other's work. That would give it some value.'

'But they might well all be deluded. You're not going to tell me there have not been some pretty silly art movements over the years.'

'One theory is that it's all about sex,' Trevor said.

'Not sex,' Felix told him, ' but Love! Passion! The Great Resonances of the Human Spirit!'

'Gin?'Trevor waved the bottle at us.

Trainspotting as Art

23 February 2007

'So', Trevor wants to know, ' if trainspotting is quintessentially useless and art is useless, as you previously maintained, does that make trainspotting the quintessential work of art?'

Rupert is quick to point out that he is the victim of an invalid syllogism here but, evens so, I don't think he's talking nonsense. We might put the question this way: If art is useless and trainspotting is useless, what stops trainspotting being a work of art?

Two things, I suppose. The first is the question of value. The trainspotters collection only matters to the person who made it. Another spotter's collection means nothing to me. The value of art is a public phenomenon. To think of it as purely an individual matter is to fall into the McGonagallian fallacy - the fact that my creation matters to me says nothing at all about its artistic value.

Out of this point arises a central paradox of the creative process. To be truly creative, I must produce work that is new and different. This means that I must believe in it despite what other people might think. Yet, if no one else values it, then it can't be art.

Trainspotting, of course, suffers from a second deficiency. It requires a considerable amount of persistence but very little skill. A work of art, on the other hand, involves a demonstration of a certain kind of ability - the ability to wield words or paint or sounds in an interesting, startling, amusing, profound or moving way.

I can see the question on Trevor's face even before he asks it. Who is to say what is 'interesting, startling, amusing, profound or moving'? Not the artist.

Art (and literature) is a social construct. It exist only within a social milieu. And yet, throughout history, or at least since the end of the 18th century, we have imagined the artist as a rebel or a prophet or a guru standing outside society and defying it or, at least, redefining it.

That's a cool notion from an audience's perspective but it isn't easy for the artist. How do I know I am not a McGonagall or a trainspotter?

Trainspotting

22 February 2007

I am cornered. They have me at bay. I must confess to my past absurdities.

What is trainspotting? they want to know. Well, my version of it, which I indulged in from 1951 to 1956, required me to stand on draughty railway platforms waiting for trains to come past so that I could write down the numbers of their engines in a notebook. Later, at home, I would look up these numbers in one of Ian Allen Ltd's series of publications, which, collectively, enumerated all the railway engines in Great Britain. Once I found a number, I would underline it in ballpoint pen (or biro as McEgg would have it), thus adding it to my collection.

Real enthusiasts, and I quickly became one, went to great lengths to collect their numbers. For me, any railway journey involved sitting (or standing in the corridor, if there was one) with my face pressed to the window peering up the line so that I could see any engine that came towards us and read the number on the front of its boiler (they were still almost all steam trains in 1951). This was an uncomfortable task and difficult, too, given that the combined speeds of the two trains might be a 150 mph so that the spotting opportunity only lasted a fraction of a second. It took vigilance, commitment and discipline - qualities that have often been wanting in other parts of my life.

Where does such madness come from? I guess it's an instinct, the instinct for collecting. This, I suspect, is common in nine-year-olds, especially boys, but it can also survive into adulthood. I’ve always enjoyed the story of the man who collected old tyres, a completely useless activity because they were of no value whatsoever. He had acres and acres of them, piled into pillars and ridges and mountains. His property was an eyesore that drew complaints from neighbours and bureaucratic fire from the local authorities. Then, one day, someone discovered a way of recycling rubber and he became a millionaire over night.

I like this story because it is about the triumph of folly. There is a lovely irony in madness being rewarded. It puts all the rationality in its place as something contingent on the arbitrariness at the heart of life. We do our best to make sense of things. We plan and we strive but then something comes along that blows all our rational constructs out of the water. It makes as much sense to collect old tyres as to strive for meaning in this chaos.

Of course, collecting tyres is not collecting in its purest form. That honour has to go to trainspotting. Nothing is more useless than a trainspotter’s list of numbers or his Ian Allen ABC of British Railway Locomotives: North-Eastern Region full of its scrupulous underlinings. Such a book can’t even be used by another trainspotter. It is no more than a record of experience, the most abstract form of intellectual property, of meaning and of value only to its creator. It's the silliest thing in the world. I have a sneaking suspicion though that it is one of the few things that makes ultimate sense, precisely for this reason.

The Security Breach

21 February 2007

I was right about how the others took control. I asked Rupert what happened.

'Well,' he said. 'I remembered that we had had a conversation on what constituted a good password and I thought you were probably smart enough to take notice of that. And then I thought that you probably weren't up to a random letter-number combination, though. You would want something that had meaning, in case you forgot it. So I tried a few things that didn't work. And then Trevor suggested trainspotting.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I figured he would have to be in there somewhere.'

'A stroke of genius really,' Rupert said. 'After that it was fairly easy. Just a matter of a bit of research. I did get distracted for a while trying to go for particular number-name combinations for various engines, '60007Gresley' for example, but then I thought, no, a more generalised scheme was more likely. '462Pacific'?

I felt humbled. And stupid. And in some small way violated as if they had really been reading my thoughts.

I should explain perhaps that the password comes from the Whyte system of classifying locomotives by the configuration of their wheels. 4-6-2 consists of four leading wheels, six driving wheels and two trailing wheels. The configuration, which was used for most passenger locomotives in the first half of the twentieth century, was called the Pacific class.

It is somewhat to my shame that I know about such things and was once passionately interested in them and equally to my shame that my esotericisms are so easily guessed.

I can see I won't escape this subject. They will all want to know about my trainspotting past now - if only to mock.

A Fine Review

20 February 2007

The highly discerning David Hill gave me an excellent review on the radio. It couldn't be faulted really. I especially liked the point he made about reading the book attentively. It tends to confirm what I'd often thought but could never bring myself to say because it sounded so much like sour grapes or pitiful self-justification - you can read my books in two ways: either as a straight out narrative with a few extras thrown in (a 'good read' in the AWW parlance) or you can engage with ideas more deeply and think things through a little. Both these responses work fine. The people who get themselves into trouble are those that pick up on the ideas but don't take the time or the effort to appreciate the relationships between them. Readers like that sometimes finish up projecting their own confusion onto the book. Does that sound like pitiful self-justification? Probably.

Felix tells me he is writing a eulogy to my success. Perish the thought. Such a move is absurdly premature (I have no success as yet and am a long way from it) and, in any case, I fear the ode will be at best otiose and at worst odious. I think I prefer Felix as a jealous rival than a fan. Having one fan in Janice is quite sufficient. Although, come to think of it, if there were two of them, they could get together and have a convention and leave me alone, although I suppose there would then be a danger that they would want me to turn up and address the gathering. What would one say to a fan club of two? Would I make a speech or just take questions from the floor? Felix, who has an obsession with detail, would probably want me to read, beginning with my first book Dreams of Pythagoras and working on through to the last - about half a million words. I feel tired already.

Previous page

Other pages

Reviews

Songs of Sysiphus

Ventiak - A Guide

Conundrum

What's it all about?

Copyright

pelican@ventiak.com