A month or so back, whilst killing my brain cells in a data entry temp job, I wrote in my moleskin,
“Thought of the week: they didn’t have data entry in the 1900s when things were good and pure. Listen to erik satie.”
I am now working again for the same company before, and so decided to ramble along with this thought as a starting point.
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When I call myself a Modernist (with all the appropriate levels of irony and facetiousness) I am never quite sure if my interest should be manifest as a desire to have lived in the early twentieth century, to recreate the values and hopes of that era (be it in writing or in method), or simply an appreciation of /SLASH/ kinship with a purer time. Probably somewhere in the middle of all of these. Recently, I have experienced a notable slowing down in my life – some might call it growing up – and my current way of thinking is underpinned by the aforementioned appreciation of, and kinship with, a purer time. That is, a slower, less hectic, less demanding, less box-ticking-orientated approach to life. i want out.
There is something about modernism which seemed to grasp and celebrated the death knell of simplicity, reveling both in the new excitement of a globalizING, technologizING world, and an inseperable appreciation of reality through eyes opened by the new order. Before a success- and commerce-driven experience of the every day kicked into gear, Picasso’s analytical still lives and Kandinsky’s exuberant portrayals of the Russian landscape briefly saw the world as it could have been.
Something tried to destroy that in the 1940s.
These works remain for me mementos of a non-day-glo, no-instant-gratification, non-merchandised and, most of all, artisanal rather than theoretical approach to art (let’s just stick with the arts for now, or this subject will get out of hand!). Even the most existential, searing portrayal of life such a Soutine’s poultry, or Giacometti’s Orange on a sideboard are rooted in representation… without wanting to sound old fashioned, I like that. The end of representation seems to me parallel to the end of reality as a lived experience.. Theory’s dominance came in tandem with the rolling out of vicarious living: tv, computer games, internet etc.
I want out.
But when I consider the purity of day-to-day life back then, before the internet, pandemic advertising and 24-hour customer service, I feel pangs of jealousy and longing. Currently caught up in the trappings of customer service, a 21st century buzz-word for Joe-Job aimed at the temporarily unemployed, I continue to ponder the original question. If they didn’t have data entry in the 1900s, what did the multitudes do… well for a start, the world population was significantly smaller, and social stratification was clearer (I won’t touch the ramifications of current population levels here…too big and way out of my point of reference). Now, we are encouraged to pursue our dreams only to find at too late a stage we have gone too far without thinking about the openings available to us. Here I am, a postgraduate from the Courtauld Institute of Art, working in a call centre.
Erik Satie’s piano works remove me from 2009. They place me squarely in the Lapin Agile, or some other such Parisian drinking den crowded with delirium tremens of the highest order. Even Tom Wait’s piano ballads of the 70s feel soothing, sitting me squarely amongst imaginary boho savants and drunken revelers in the Troubadour, LA, CA. Debauchery in both of these cases as a removal from life. What I seem to be desiring is pure removal: pure escapism. This is certainly better than this electric-lit, chalk infused, pinboard- partitioned, break-prohibited cell, alone with my thoughts and my telesale prompts.
I WANT OUT.
More recently, a few wonderful bands have sprung up from American backwaters, desperate to escape all of these trappings. Bon iver and Bowerbirds are only the most notable, existing for themselves self-sufficiently as life once was. We’re probably going back further than Modernism now. My point remains intact. I was born at the wrong end of the 20th century.
Two works that I have seen in the last few years stand out for me as exemplifications of artistic purity. Monet’s Les Nymphéas at Paris’ Orangerie, and James Turrell’s Deer Shelter at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park… The latter proves that all is not lost, and that conceptual works can still stand up to scrutiny and resemble a real human experience: one looks through a skylight in absentia towards the shifting sky… that’s it. Abstracted reality. Pure form. Pure experience.
Deer Shelter, James Turrell
Les Nymphéas, Claude Monet
This is how Erik Satie’s music makes me feel, as do such bands/ composers as Susuma Yokota, Christian Fennesz, and the unimpeachable Stars of the Lid. These pure feelings having nothing to do with data entry. They also probably having nothing to do with Modernism… I just want out.
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