Most of the time I’m a man of the people. Friendly, agreeable— a sip of lukewarm chamomile on a humid summer day.
But these three opinions, each more objectively true than the last, always seem to rub folks the wrong way.
Anywho, here are the three most transgressive and nauseating things I believe:
3. The Dry-Brush
Teeth should be brushed, at least preliminarily, dry. That means you put the toothpaste onto the toothbrush and go a solid minute brushing before turning to the sink and sudsing it all up. This is the mark of a psychopath, I’m told. This is a deeply unnerving human experience, it is said. But I disagree. Teeth are naturally lubricated, first of all. It’s not like rubbing a bone-dry bar of Dove onto a plank of wood— there is natural moisture in there, people. The dry-brush assures complete contact between brush and tooth. It also verifies that you’re not missing anything, since a sloppy wet brush will fill the mouth so completely with suds, that it’d be hard to say which areas you have and have not hit yet. Also baked in here is a sub-opinion, also quite controversial:
3b: soap is more effective pre-sud. Because what is sudsiness but hydrated soap. Those pleasant white bubbles are really just watered down cleaning solution. When you drench your toothpaste before scrubbing, you’re effectively removing all of the chemicals that do the cleaning, aka, you’re being nasty. Whereas I am clean. And just to double down on this whole experience, here are two even more infuriating caveats:
3c: it’s not a full brushing experience without mouthwash, and
3d: when you finally add water to finish up the brushing experience, the water should be warm, if not hot. That’s right— an arguably even more infuriating and psychopathic take, but what else would you ever clean using cold water? Nothing, that’s what. Warm = Clean.
2. Photography is Not Art
Ooh boy. I already feel bad about this one, at the thought of all my wonderfully talented and creative friends who are also great photographers. This is not a personal attack. Allow me to defend myself:
Okay so this guy Stanley Cavell writes an article in 1965 called Music Decomposed. It asks about the philosophical justification for the creation of modernist art, and the ways in which that justification has become inseparable from an understanding of the art itself. He criticizes the practice in modern aesthetics to leave the artist’s remarks regarding their own work to “psychologists or sociologists, confining philosophy’s attention to the ‘object itself,’” and rejects that an “artist’s intention is always irrelevant.” Cavell insists that when he has a direct experience with a piece of art, it matters that he was meant to have it— that these things have purpose, a purpose which ought to be regarded. Dismissing the straw man proposal that an artist can be consulted and asked about her intentions, Cavell believes that the role of a critic is to ask (at the right time) why something in a piece of art is how it is, and to provide an answer which is justified within the work and its context. This is Cavell’s concept of intention— the recognition of art as a celebration of the ability to intend life at all; an object willed into existence with aspects which can be investigated by the thoughtful perceiver.
But then these guys come along, Monroe C. Beardsley’s and W.K. Wimsatt (B&W), and write The Intentional Fallacy, arguing that the “design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of art.” Basically, that it doesn’t matter what the artist meant or didn’t mean. It doesn’t even matter if the artist can’t understand a critical take about her own work, or if she’s a chicken with Runting and Stunting Syndrome. These guys ask how a true intention, this “design,” can ever be figured out. They believe art has the ability to communicate itself adequately, and they believe in the Tolstoyan idea that “if it was possible to explain in words what he wished to convey, the artist would have expressed himself in words.”
So Cavell thinks intention matters, B&W think art is “detached from the [creator] at birth, and goes about the world beyond his power to intend or control it.” Here’s the thing though— Cavell’s ‘intention’ is completely misguided as a mechanism for forging a meaningful connection with a piece of art. And questions of purpose usurp art’s inherently ‘suspended’ place in the world— that is, the way it exists in a vacuum, within which is only the art and the perceiver’s soul.
So what happens once art leaves the studio, and comes into contact with the world? And how should the critic and the public stand in relation to the artist? It’s notable that both Cavell and B&W accept that questions directed towards the artist regarding the meaning in a work are more accurately directed “to the dramatic speaker,” as in, maybe, the character or the narrator, or the sculpture or the subject of a painting, rather than to the artist. As Cavell puts it: “to the object itself, not to Shakespeare or Beethoven.” Think of Johann Winckelmann’s practice of “listening” to a sculpture.
The B&W caveat to this is that, if any answers are to be sought in the life of the artist themselves, it may be in their biography. That is, we may consider the lived experiences of the artist, but only in the context that we can relate them back away from the artist, to a larger, more universal community. If an artist’s mother was addicted to grape soda, and the art she creates is a distillation of the emotional experience of watching her mother’s teeth turn purple, we may interpret this in the shared terms between that experience and ours: the feeling one gets watching their parents deteriorate, perhaps.
This supports the idea from Rene Welleck that “a piece of art is not a singular, distilled experience, but ‘a system of norms extracted from every individual experience.’" If the art has any relevancy in the world beyond the instant of its creation, it is because it has spoken from and to a collective human experience— and ought to be acknowledged by the thread which it weaves between us and others. “The poem belongs to the public,” say B&W. “It is embodied in language (the peculiar possession of the public), and it is about the human being (an object of public knowledge).” As Tolstoy put it, “art is a means of communion among people. Every work of art results in the one who receives it entering into a communion with the one who produced or is producing the art, and with all those who, simultaneously with him, before him, or after him, have received or will receive the same artistic impression.”
Now, okay, you might say that Tolstoy was on the verge of insanity when he wrote this. That he was in the process of being excommunicated, of giving his land away, of becoming a radical pacifist… and if you think that’s insane, then that’s fine. You’re a victim of capitalism, and so are we all. But also, isn’t it not insane? Isn’t Property Law kinda insane, and war? So maybe the avoidance of an author’s intention, the belief that a piece of art exists in no relation to the artist, is the anarchy of the art-world.
How are we even to find out what the poet tried to do? If the poet succeeded in doing it, say B&W, then the poem itself shows what he was trying to do. And if the poet did not succeed, then fuck that poem. (Also, fuck most poems). And fuck photography. It’s like cooking, in that it is not a willed creation but an arrangement of ingredients. It is a capturing of a moment (as Schjeldahl once put it, the murder of a moment), and any interpretation of a photo or a meal is merely the perceiver’s reflection on those ingredients. It is a craft, and one which requires a strong eye to be any good.
One of the best photographers and best artists I’ve ever known, the author of BeamsWorld, once explained to me why his photos were so incredible. “Because I only take photos of what I love.” This comment reminds me of passions, crafts, trades, but not art. If asked the same thing about his music, I don’t think Beams would ever say it was good because he only writes about what he loves. That sounds like the words of a musician none of us want to listen to. He’s drawn by curiosity, truth, hatred, obsession, malaise, and a thousand other things alongside Love.
Photographers are, perhaps, notable perceiver’s. They notice, just how the poet notices, a certain portion of the world which deserves further attention. They then seize it, “kill” it, in order to show it to others. But the poet then lives with that reflection, works it through their own worldview, experiences, rhythms, and then wills a new thing into the world. Where there work begins is exactly where the photographer’s ends.
1. Hawaii is not a state
Self-explanatory.