Thanks... whew...
Emlyn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Technotranscendence" <neptune@mars.superlink.net>
To: "Extropy" <extropians@extropy.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2000 1:37 AM
Subject: ART: A Musical Odyssey, Issue Ten
> The following is from another list I'm on. I want to see what people on
> this list thought about this.
>
> Cheers!
>
> Daniel Ust
> http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
>
> From: Kurt Keefner kurt_keefner@yahoo.com
> To: art@wetheliving.com
> Sent: Monday, December 18, 2000 9:54 PM
> Subject: ART: A Musical Odyssey, Issue Ten
>
> A MUSICAL ODYSSEY
>
> Issue Ten:
>
> A long strange trip through the music collection of Dirk Douglas.
>
> Ayn Rand claimed that our philosophical premises,conscious and
subconscious,
> give rise to our aesthetic preferences. If anecdotal accounts are to be
> trusted, she went so far as to judge others on little more than artistic
> evidence: So-and-so likes Beethoven-therefore he has a malevolent sense
of
> life - therefore he is not my kind of person.
>
> I share Rand's moderate, "official" position, but not the extreme version
> she appears to have held in private. Against Rand's private view one thing
> that can be said is that Rand seems not to have considered the possibility
> that multiple premises might lead to the same taste, or that the same one
> premise might be expressed in multiple tastes. Instead of regarding
> artistic taste as an unequivocal symptom of an unambiguous spiritual
> condition, I regard it as more of a magnifying glass; it delivers no
occult
> knowledge, but it can help you see something you are already familiar with
a
> lot better.
>
> An opportunity recently arose for me to put the Randian theory to the
test.
> A few months ago I was given the entire CD collection of a man named Dirk
> Douglas, a musician of my acquaintance who died unexpectedly in June I
> don't think he'd mind if I spoke frankly, even bluntly, about the lessons
I
> have learned from studying his collection: I knew Dirk for many years,
and
> candor was one of his highest values.
>
> Dirk had surprisingly narrow affinities. At least 75% of his collection,
> which numbered 72 discs, came from the 1970s or from bands whose heyday
was
> in the 70s. He had five or six albums each by Kansas and Yes as well as
> greatest hits albums by Foreigner, Starship and the like. He also had a
few
> greatest hits discs from early 80s performers like Mr Mister and Kenny
> Loggins who were essentially holdovers from the 70s. He had almost no
> classic 60s rock - an album of Blood, Sweat and Tears from his own
> brass-band days was about it. He did have a few more recent discs: one
by
> Tori Amos, one by Joan Osborne. He also had several upbeat white gospel
> albums of recent vintage, presumably acquired during the last few years of
> his life when his health was poor and he once again turned to
Christianity.
>
> There were a few classical and jazz items. Dirk's mother, I know, was a
big
> fan of Chopin and encouraged Dirk's piano playing. (Dirk was a keyboard
> player, singer and arranger.) So there was a disc of Chopin performed by
> Vladimir Horowitz, a soundtrack from the movie "Shine" and one or two
cheesy
> "Great Classical Piano Works" compilations. The principle behind his jazz
> collection I cannot discern, but he did have the good taste to like
classic
> jazz like Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" and not modern anti-jazz like Kenny
G.
>
> It is obvious that Dirk favored keyboards, but he also favored vocal
> harmonies. He had a couple of CDs he'd burned himself featuring songs
with
> tight harmonies, including one song by the Carpenters, a group he would
have
> little to do with otherwise. He had greatest hits albums by Queen and
> Earth, Wind and Fire (among the rare black performers in Dirk's
catalogue).
> Dirk himself had a good, versatile voice, and was not only very proud of
his
> harmonizing but was also a connoisseur of other people's. I remember him
> almost 25 years ago explaining to me how the Wilson brothers of the Beach
> Boys and Freddie Mercury of Queen worked their miracles.
>
> It should be clear that Dirk's musical taste followed his professional
> interests with regard to the technical dimension. I suspect this is a
common
> correlation among musicians. But there are plenty of musical acts that
> employ keyboards and/or tight vocals. Why did Dirk pick the ones he did?
>
> Dirk started trying to make it as a pro when he was 17,in 1972. He only
> attended a community college and that only for a year or two. Despite his
> impressive intelligence, his formal education in music and everything else
> ended in the middle 70s. The 70s was Dirk's era: he liked the
questioning
> of authority, the sexual freedom, the flamboyance of attire and hairstyle
> and the drugs.
>
> It is my belief that Dirk was so at home in this era that he simply
stopped
> growing when it ended. It's common for a person's tastes (and beliefs)
stop
> developing once they surpass college age, especially if drugs are a part
of
> their life. Dirk ceased being of college age around 1977. To be sure, he
> did still follow trends after 1977, but not ones that *started* after
1977.
> And this means that he missed out on punk and new wave. Whatever you want
> to say about punk, it did clean out the system of its self-indulgent
> excesses and made it possible for something ironic and worldly-wise to
grow.
> But there was nothing like the Clash, Elvis Costello or even Squeeze in
> Dirk's collection.
>
> And Dirk's limited taste was reflected in the music he wrote and performed
> too. The boy was simply lost in the 70s and that fact along with his
> personality and health problems no doubt accounts for his failure to make
it
> as a musician.
>
> But even this biographical analysis does not peg Dirk and his tastes. If
he
> was so in love with the 70s why didn't he own any Eagles or ELO? Perhaps
> the technical criteria would knock out some of the great bands of the era,
> but not all. Here we need to appeal
> to Dirk's sense of life and psycho-epistemology. Let me try to weave an
> image of Dirk with the music he owned as the warp and my personal
> recollections as the woof.
>
> The groups most represented in his collection were Yes and Kansas. What
> they have in common, other than the obvious, is that both use keyboards as
> their foundation, both are "hyper" or strident in their pacing and
emotional
> tone, both have pretensions to the
> "lyrical." The main point of difference is that Yes is more impersonal
and
> arty where Kansas is more intimate and "sincere."
>
> Interestingly, if I had to pick a band that represented a synthesis of Yes
> and Kansas, I would choose Rush. Yet Dirk didn't own any Rush and never
said
> a word to me about them. Dirk was no Objectivist, and his libertarianism,
> if we may loosely call it that, was purely of the "Defy authority - do
> drugs" variety. More importantly, Rush stylistically as well as
> philosophically dedicated itself to reason: they were always crystal
clear
> and they never encouraged self-indulgence of an emotionalistic kind. In
> this way, they were light-years away from Yes and Kansas. (And no, I do
not
> like Rush. But we can talk about that another time.)
>
> From knowing him, I would say that the decisive element shared by most of
> the bands in Dirk's collection was "sincerity." Dirk hit his teens in the
> late 60s and while he was not a "60s person," he was one of that era's
many
> heirs. Those of you old enough to remember the 70s or who have studied it
> have surely gleaned that one of its key concepts was "the natural." Partly
> this was due to the ecology movement, and partly it was due to the 1960s
> rejection of process in favor of immediate, "authentic" action, experience
> and emotion. Put these two influences together and you get a worship of
> human nature conceived of as bodily functions and spontaneous feelings.
> According to this "code of the natural," either you acknowledged those
> functions and feelings or you futilely tried to deny them. Dirk's
attitude
> towards what was "natural" ranged from the matter-of-fact to outright
> wallowing. In short, if Dirk had an itch he would scratch it -sometimes in
> public.
>
> Lest I sound one-sidedly critical of Dirk's "naturalism," let me say that
it
> made him a frank and open person, bolstered his sense of humor (because it
> helped him puncture people's pretensions) and contributed to his largely
> healthy pro-sex attitudes. That having been said, I hope it's obvious
that
> I do not take Dirk's beliefs at face value - and that I do not blame him
for
> the errors of an entire generation.
>
> The attitude of "sincerity" and "naturalness" are clearly reflected in
> Dirk's music. As I write, I am listening to his copy of "Starship:
> Greatest Hits (Ten Years and Change 1979-1991)." For those of you who
don't
> know, Starship was the successor group to Jefferson Starship, which was in
> turn the successor to Jefferson Airplane. Each successor represents a
> diminution of its predecessor. The original Airplane was a band of
> undisciplined geniuses fronted by two amazing vocalists, Grace Slick and
> Marty Balin. Starship was fronted by a third-generation clone of Marty
> Balin, an histrionic little man named Mickey Thomas, with Grace Slick as
> little more than a back-up vocalist.
>
> If Starship has one salient quality, it's a loudly-proclaimed earnestness.
> With his trademark wail, Thomas squeezes every ounce of feeling out of
songs
> like "Jane," "Sara" and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," the last of which,
> improbably, seems to be intended as a wedding anthem for the trailer set.
> Now I could see a completist fan of the Airplane in all its incarnations
> buying such a disc, but Dirk didn't own anything by Jefferson Airplane or
> Jefferson Starship. He headed straight for the trough of emotion that is
> just plain Starship. This album is a particularly clear magnifying glass
of
> Dirk's values.
>
> With the concept of "sincerity" we have a pretty good hold on Dirk's ethos
> (sense of life or metaphysical value judgments), but what about his
> psycho-epistemology? This is somewhat harder to identify, but again his
> music can be of assistance, especially a group like Yes.
>
> What distinguishes Yes is its motoric, almost impersonal drive and
> complexity. I don't think it's the impersonality as such that attracted
> Dirk, since most of his collection was anything but impersonal. Rather it
> would seem to be the machine-like drive and the complexity. (Think of the
> paradigmatic Yes song "Roundabout.") These qualities are shared by Kansas
> (think of the relentlessness and the Bach-like piano of "Carry On Our
Native
> Son"). Starship and some of Dirk's other discs also share them to a
lesser
> degree.
>
> There are three reasons why Dirk and the strident style were made for each
> other. First is that naturalism in the 70s frequently took an assertive,
> theatrical cast. (Dirk was largely indifferent to "mellow" groups like
> Bread.)
>
> Second is Dirk's personality. Dirk was clinically hyperactive and
> congenitally melodramatic. Truth be told, when Dirk was "up" it was
> difficult to share a room with him.
>
> Third and most relevant is a more specifically psycho-
> epistemological factor. Dirk loved fast, driving, complex,
prestidigitation
> in music. I call this esthetic complex "razzmatazz.:" I chose the
> colloquial name because it seems to capture exactly what Dirk loved about
> the music in question: its ability to impress by attracting the
listener's
> attention and then almost losing it along the way, like a game of
three-card
> monty. Razzmatazz represents the energy and enthusiasm Dirk loved and had
> in his own life. (And Dirk would have liked it that I chose a colloquial
> term, since he generally believed that a technical or orderly approach to
a
> subject was mere pomposity.)
>
> Razzmatazz may help explain why Dirk gravitated toward synthesizers and
the
> like when he was also proficient on piano, guitar, drums and brass
> instruments: the gee-whiz, high-tech factor appealed to the fast-talking
> showman in him.
>
> I suppose we could say that a composer like Bach displayed razzmatazz too,
> but that doesn't seem right, does it? Bach was reflecting his view of a
> complex, orderly universe. Razzmatazz, although it surely reflected
Dirk's
> ability quickly to take up information and to deal with multiple channels
at
> the same time, seems more to have been about Dirk than about a view of
> reality.
>
> In loving Yes or Kansas or Kenny Loggins, what Dirk loved was his own
> feeling that he could bop through the world getting by on his sense of
life.
> His love of complexity was not primarily about the adoration of some
> crystalline aspect of the world; it was always about asserting his own
> personality. He was trying to impress, and the person he sought most to
> impress was himself.
>
> The history of Dirk's belief structure confirms this analysis: Throughout
> his various ideological phases, whether he was a born-again Christian, a
> free-flowing mystic, or a semi-rational student of psychology (a la
> Meyers-Briggs), behind it all was always Dirk, the prodigy whose smarts
and
> intuition could discern the truth and deal with it, not by submission to
> something external (like reality or God), but by sheer panache.
>
> Now we are able to integrate what we know about Dirk's music with what we
> know about Dirk. The linchpin is an intelligent yet rigid subjectivism.
> Dirk had a concept of feelings as the ultimate authority and of conjuring
> the right "groove" as the proper method for success. For him style, or
what
> I call pseudo sense of life, was everything.
>
> And thus it was he failed. Not in a glorious battle with the forces of
> mediocrity and conformity that he loved to fight, but in sad loneliness.
> Botched back surgery and a low tolerance for pain (no doubt exacerbated by
> decades of drug abuse) led him to incapacity and to dependence on
> prescription medicine. The last and most pathetic in a long series of
> damaged women whom he both financially exploited and emotionally bolstered
> had died. His father, who had helped get him on public assistance and
> provided some emotional sustenance when he was crippled, had died. Most
> importantly, even Dirk could surely see that finally his
> dreams had died.
>
> One morning in June of 2000, the nurse who helped Dirk with his morphine
> patches found him dead. He had six of the patches on him and over 100
> barbiturate tablets in him. Whether as his friends believe, it was an
> accidental overdose with pill after pill being taken in a daze, or, as his
> family believes, it was a suicide, will never be determined with
certainty.
> There was no note.
>
> I don't admire subjectivism, and I know it doesn't work. But I do have to
> respect Dirk, subjectivism and all. Misguided and crazy as he was his
whole
> life, he did have a dream and he did pursue it. I am reminded of a song
> from Dirk's collection, perhaps not so atypical as it first may appear to
> be: "Deacon Blues" by Steely Dan. The song tells the mythic tale of a
> young man who goes from being a "nobody" to being a jazz musician, very
much
> a part of "the life." The refrain goes:
>
> Learned to work the saxophone.
> I play just what I feel.
> Drink scotch whiskey all night long
> and die behind the wheel.
> They got a name for the winners in the world.
> I want a name when I lose.
> They call Alabama the Crimson Tide.
> Call me Deacon Blues.
>
> I've always loved the twisted perseverance and authenticity of that song,
> and I guess that's how it was possible for me to love Dirk.
>
> So it appears that Ayn Rand was right, that your personality does
determine
> your musical choices, and one can use your musical tastes to get a handle
on
> your premises.
>
> But Ayn Rand was wrong on another subject: : not all values are chosen
> values and not all scars on one's view of existence can be avoided. Here
I
> am referring to myself. Dirk's life and death have a greater hold on me
> than I would ever choose to give them. For you see, "Dirk Douglas" was a
> stage name which Dirk took as his legal name a decade ago. His given name
> was Dirk Douglas Keefner, and he was my brother. Perhaps I understand his
> brilliance and his madness because they are partly mine as well. For the
> rest of my life Dirk will have the power to tear me in two, as I laud his
> intelligence, talent and decency, loathe his self-indulgence and blind
spots
> and lament his mental illness. No matter how I agonize over his memory,
> however, I will always be grateful to him for helping to kindle the love
of
> music in me. It is a gift which can never die.
>
> Now forgive me, gentle reader, for the deception of not revealing my true
> relation to Dirk sooner. The only way I could stand to write about him
and
> the only way I could trust others to think about what I had to say about
> him, was by making the subject seem impersonal. Dirk would have enjoyed
the
> gag.
>
>
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