Terence Hegarty, Guest Blogger
There’s been an argument for a century or two about whether what we’ve come to call socioeconomic issues are “fit subject” for art. Most formal academic criticism of the twentieth century has suggested that introducing such quotidian matters into any artistic performance dilutes the power of the work to move us; it both excises a part of its audience (the part that might not agree with the political attitude), and supplants the fundamental human response in favor of a mere agenda. Yet in the teeth of these critics (and some would say such critics are the facilitators, the coordinators, the academic handmaidens of corporate and military-industrial capitalism), much of our most-loved art flagrantly emphasizes exactly these issues. Think The Grapes of Wrath, the Beats, much science fiction since the sixties, Phil Ochs, early Dylan, hip-hop of the non-exploitative variety, lots of current cinema. As this list shows, it is notable that when political or economic concerns appear in art they more often than not come from the left; that is, from the position of “those professing views usu. characterized by desire to overthrow the established order esp. in politics and usu. advocating change in the name of the greater freedom or well-being of the common man” (Webster’s). It must be said, though, that exceptions can be notable: much US science fiction of the fifties is Cold War allegory, with saintly but tough square-jawed American heroes outmaneuvering cunning malignant aliens who represent communism; the best-selling US hit single of the sixties, era of the Beatles and antiwar protests, was “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” an unapologetic glorification of elite US commandos in Vietnam; and there is the perennial popularity of Ayn Rand’s books to be taken into account. But is this material “art”? Does that question matter? Is “art” merely the kind of pretentious gravity to be expected from the starry-eyed “left”? Is the “right” actually content to produce “propaganda”?
There have always been those who feel that (e.g.) The Grapes of Wrath is mere propaganda, although the consensus is against them. At the other end of the political attitude spectrum, it’s easy with historical hindsight to detect distasteful reactionary elements lurking in the work of revered writers. Many complex issues arise, and critics are often guilty of foregrounding evidence supporting their point of view and eliding or even hiding evidence that might weaken their argument. There’s always the consideration too that political conservatism implies that all is well with the world, that change or even critical thinking is dangerously disruptive (“it’s all right to talk about changing the system, but what do you have to offer in its place?”), an attitude that seems astonishingly naïve when one looks at the world we live in. The current US right, however, is not conservative in this properly-defined way, but radically right, using the rhetoric of tradition to mask its actual single-minded desire for the massive undoing of the great wave of social awareness that swept the world during the Great Depression and more forcefully after the atrocities of WWII came into focus. Under pressure to come up with alternatives to the status quo, the left is forced to generate a plethora of agendas, and thus becomes fragmented and trapped in conflicting manifestations of its own desire, while the current right, with its one fixed idea—dismantling the welfare state—organizes itself readily (with lots of corporate funding) and moves triumphantly from strength to strength.
And this is where art—or I will now come home, and say songwriting—comes in. Because songwriters are not required to articulate goals, we are free to use language and music to present the world as we see and feel it. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with committed single-issue writing: if the abolition of the Social Security system is important to you, and you think you can write a great song advocating your point of view, go ahead and write that song. Or if you feel passionately about the horror of slaughterhouse practices, show us your passion. But—here’s the inevitable “but”—even if we’re only vaguely “left,” we’re the only ones who can cover all aspects of the “big issue” and project a unified front that still might save the earth and the life upon it. The big world is a complicated mess, and singing about how to make it a better place, if we’re so inclined, presents an enormous challenge.
Fortunately, we have inherited from several generations of artists in every field an appropriate method which goes under many names and exists in numerous variations. I’ll use the term “symbolism,” not in its narrow literary-history meaning but generally as a mode of proceeding that uses correspondences, echoes, overtones, harmonics, and such in the realm of language, ostensibly engaging basic symbolic structures in our cognitive apparatus (something right-wing propaganda—US flags, etc.—does most effectively). This method allows us to compress huge slabs of perception into brief, powerful communications. I say “method,” but actually it’s a process that comes naturally to the “modern” mind (although this may be controversial, especially if you’re busy writing that Social Security song). In fact it’s everywhere in the music we relate to. What I’m advocating is more awareness that we do actually use this method. At the risk of stating the obvious (because some of us are well aware of what I am about to say), I’ll suggest that, as we choose our words, we should consider and weigh all their overtones, everything they might imply beyond their literal meaning. Many of these echoes come without our seeking; the subtle connections are already there. Others require patient, deliberate teasing out. A full spectrum of potential audience reaction emerges, depending on what we’re singing about, from “duh” to “incomprehensible”—a spectrum that presents itself in advance to us, as we write, like an ocean we must navigate in search of the shore that promises to communicate the fullness of what we really mean to say. What I’m trying to emphasize is a sort of consciousness-raising, an intense concentration on our language that, far from obscuring the “message,” imbues it with enormous authority that reaches deep into the knowledge-making capability of the audience, though none of us may at first be able to articulate what it is we have learned. New awareness has to come from somewhere; if it was in plain view, we’d never learn anything, never mind make the world a better place.
