The Cultural Revolution Starts Here!

It's time to put a stop to the high priests of musicology, the arts and academic world in general from trying to put a straitjacket on people's creativity and thinking. In this video I look at the way the Emperors Clothing Syndrome has dominated the arts and humanities over the past half century, with the help of academic practitioners looking for theories to build on, trying to carve out some academic territory for themselves and becoming the high priests or priestesses of their chosen domains. In music, it ended with meaningless and very irritating noise. (The ECS is a tendency to pretend to see or believe something out of fear of being thought of out of step with others, or out of fear that you might be attacked or ridiculed if you show your true feelings). Now I make some sweeping generalizations in this video, and may be overstating my case for effect, but that does not necessarily dilute the reality of what I am saying.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Culture
• arts
• pretentiousness
• John-Cage
• John-Adams
• Olivier-Messeian
• 4.33

[cdelya3]

Is the part with John Cage for real??? I mean come on. 4 minutes of not doing anything? Well by that logic I'm the greatest composer in the world, I can have the most interesting and intelligent conversation just because I can do it so much better at not talking or doing anything else. And the part with the museums...priceless. What do people consider art to be? a pile of bricks? By 2030 a stick will be considered the greatest piece of art.

[OldGrumpyGuy]

@cdelya3 Yes it's for real. Sticks as a work of art? The Tate Gallery has already presented a pile of bricks as art.

[cheatsatmonopoly]

I don't think this gentleman exercises anything remotely reflecting "gayness." I think we all are better off leaving such things to fools like you.

[CaptainAhab789]

Thank God we live in a free land. What would we listen to without the free thinkers?

[OldGrumpyGuy]

@makingofasoul That's a cop-out.

[makingofasoul]

@OldGrumpyGuy I'll leave that for you to discover, though I doubt you will. You need to give Reich and other modern classical composers a chance; just as I gave Mozart and Beethoven, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and John Coltrane and Miles Davis a chance (though I found them all incredibly boring in contrast to what I prefer to listen to).

[cdelya3]

We all need to go back in time and learn what is real art and real music and what manners are, because we're all heading in a very wrong direction. Thank goodness for videos like these to remind us what is real and what's original

[EllensDegenerates]

This man confronts Pitchfork with a quite powerful argument. May the spirit of Goethe and Nietzsche live on. Cheers!

[ErnilEnNaur]

Bravo! And I do mean BRAVO! It truly is sad how in all of art, nowadays style is preferred to substance, obscurantism is preferred to subtlety and literal nothing is preferred to a meaningful something. In the art of film, I would give 2001: A Space Odyssey as the prime example of this. It is a "film" devoid of content or coherence and yet it is every critics darling. But should a truly great film with a strong narrative be made, then it will be accused of being crowd-pleasing and shallow.

[OldGrumpyGuy]

@makingofasoul What point am I missing?

[makingofasoul]

@OldGrumpyGuy Sure, you can dismiss Reich as clapping and banging, but then I think you're missing the point. By the way, I'm listening to an album of Olivier Messiaen's; it's one of the most enjoyable classical albums I've heard. So if being pretentious means enjoying something other than what you deem to be appropriate, then I suppose I'm just pretentious. Thought I'd rather be pretentious than a stubborn bigot.