September 2009 – Page 3

Beatles-Revolver

In Beckett’s Endgame, the character Hamm says: “The end is in the beginning, and yet you go on.” The beginning, however always seems to emerge from the middle. The release of the remastered Beatles Catalog has caused me to replay memories of listening to their music as it was originally released. And as I listen to the new releases (at this point, I only have Rubber Soul), the music isn’t heard directly, but through the lens of the intervening years. The music travels backwards and forwards through time connecting to a thousand threads, its sound resonant with reverie.

From this distance, I see the arc of the band beginning with Rubber Soul, continuing with Revolver and ending with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The time period spans 1965 to 1967. Of course, they performed and recorded before and after those dates, but this is the period where they seemed to really come into their own. The times were tumultuous, culture and technology were changing rapidly and the Beatles provided much of the soundtrack. The distance from Rubber Soul to Sgt. Pepper seems like it could only be measured in light years.

In the film Help, they presented an image of what it was like to be in a successful rock and roll band. The lads were friends and collaborators, they lived together, worked together, and enjoyed each other’s company. They serve as an extended family to each other; they inhabit a world without parents, wives or children. On Rubber Soul, you can begin to hear each member of the band start out on a path that will ultimately end in a parting of ways. I’m going to focus on the work of John Lennon and George Harrison. (You can do this same exercise for Paul and Ringo). By this time, they’d met Dylan, psychedelia was emerging and the idea of a rock band as a social unit was beginning to feel a little hokey. The band’s popularity had started to cut them off from both the world and their identity as performing musicians.

John Lennon had a tragic relationship with his mother, and it colored his relationship with women all his life. The line I’d like to trace here is from the song “Run For Your Life” with it’s violent lyrics about jealously and fidelity to a later, solo effort, called “Jealous Guy.” The movement within Lennon reflected the movement and growth of our culture. A similar arc can be traced from the song “Girl” to the song “Woman.”

The idealized relationship of the band as a kind of endless post-adolescence was beginning break up, as each of the members had to struggle with their own inner demons and find an individual path (the path to adulthood).

George Harrison’s contribution to Rubber Soul was a song called “Think For Yourself.” In the lyrics of this song you can see the seeds of Harrison’s future direction:

Although your mind’s opaque
Try thinking more if just for your own sake
The future still looks good
And you’ve got time to rectify all the things that you should

One can trace an arc from that song to Harrison’s solo work, specifically songs like “Isn’t it a Pity” and “Beware of Darkness.”

Watch out now, take care
Beware of soft shoe shufflers
Dancing down the sidewalks
As each unconscious sufferer
Wanders aimlessly
Beware of maya

As with the beginning, the end, too, emerges from the middle. The Sgt. Pepper album marked the end of the Beatles as a performing group and the beginning a new era of recording artistry. The asynchronous process of recording the album put additional stress on their unit cohesion. Ringo remembers those recording sessions as the time when he learned to play chess. The recording studio had become the dominant instrument, and the producer’s role central to the creative process. The resulting album marked the pinnacle of their success.

Around this time in Woodstock, New York, Bob Dylan’s backing band was creating an album that would be known as Music from Big Pink. It was the polar opposite of Sgt. Pepper. The group would eventually be called “The Band,” and they presented a new idea of what it meant to be in a performing rock and roll band. Their sound was firmly, and visibly, rooted in the sounds of American country music, early rock and roll and the Stax/Motown sound. After Sgt. Pepper, each member of the Beatles tried to move the group back toward being a performing unit. But the music was now Paul with a backing band, John with a backing band and so on. The Beatles were over.

The release of the remastered Beatles catalog provides an opportunity to really listen to the music, and the quality of the sound they created. I’m retracing my footsteps, starting with Rubber Soul. It may take 20 or 30 listens for me to truly hear it. Then I’ll move on to Revolver, and finally to Sgt. Pepper. Over 36 months, The Beatles’ music changed radically, it traces an unexpected and expansive route. As they used to say, “it blows my mind.”

I paid less attention to the work George Harrison the first time around. Over the years, I’ve grown to appreciate him more and more. One of the things that brought me back around to Harrison was this cover of his song Isn’t it a Pity by the Cowboy Junkies:

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The boundary line separates this from that. National boundaries are called borders, they indicate the line of demarcation between this country and that. By crossing such a line, the set of laws, the cultural practices and often the spoken language will change. Of course, one imagines a flock of migrating birds crossing a border completely unaware of any significant change in the environment. We think of the line between countries as being stable, the power of a sovereign nation is used to defend its borders. But if we zoom out and select a larger increment of time, we would see that even national borders are fluid—they move with a specific viscosity, velocity and trajectory.

The line also connects this and that. Wittgenstein discussed thinking as a process of seeing connections, discovering connections and making connections. Lines can converge, cross or run in parallel. (and if we admit the visions of the string, super-string and M (membrane) theorists – each line may exist in parallel universes where all their permutations are expressed.)

The line of inquiry, tends, in its character, to gravitate toward the one or the many. We can think of these methods as the “either/or” and the “both/and.” The line of inquiry that models the one seeks to purify and clarify itself, it cuts off connections to things that it sees as outside of its concept. A boundary line is enforced, an outline of a shape is drawn, an ideal template is generated through which the world can be sorted and filtered in a binary action (fits, doesn’t fit). The ideas of internal coherence, self-consistency, and conceptual integrity emerge from this approach to thinking as the elimination and reduction of the multiplicity of meaning. This is the process of clarification and the removal of the non-germane. The power of this kind of inquiry is measured by its ability to defend its borders. Its sovereignty and its identity depend of the continued existence of a bright line of demarcation.

When this mode of the line of inquiry begins to unwind, its identity, the central image/concept begins to blur. The borders are breached, foreign connections are established and begin to gain purchase. The viscosity, trajectory and velocity of the line are now in play, the inquisitor has lost exclusivity of editorial control. Here we connect to another kind of line. As lines of inquiry unravel and are overcome, they disperse into a sedimentary layer making up part of the next line of inquiry.

If we take a step back, we can see that every line of inquiry is composed of layers of sediment. At the height of its power, it’s able to cover over these historical sources and present itself as a simple, coherent, consistent identity. Its origin is either proclaimed to be ex-nihilo or a new history of its birth is created.

In the opening section of Deleuze and Guattari’s essay “Rhizome,” it says:

We wrote ‘Anti-Oedipus’ together. As each of us was several, that already made quite a few people. Here we have used all that drew near to hand, both the closest and the furthest away.

Deleuze sees the starting point, not as identity, but as a set of lines. Although it should be noted that the boundaries of this set are fluid. A person, or a line of inquiry, is always already composed of many threads, at whatever moment we choose to call ‘the start.’ These threads are spun into a yarn, braided into rope, disassembled and remade over and over again. They are spread out like a spider’s web, or wound into a ball.

As individuals and groups we are made of lines, lines that are very diverse in nature. The first type of line (there are many of this type) that forms us is segmentary, or rigidly segmented: family/profession; work/vacation; family/then school/then army/then factory/then retirement.

What of the line of inquiry that begins as many and seeks to connect to many? Is there a thinking that asks after multiplicity from the first moment? This mode, from the perspective of its polar opposite, can only be described as disruptive, anarchic, incoherent, gibberish, illogical, unrealistic, unfocused. What can one say about a line of inquiry that doesn’t defend its borders? A line that exposes its mixed origin of birth— from sources both ‘closest and furthest away.’ What kind of line doesn’t drive toward clarity and sharp, bright lines; but rather makes connections as they emerge. How are we to find meaning in such a swirl of chaotic crossed lines. Can meaning emerge from such a maelstrom?

The task seems impossible if we remain ensnared in the logic of identity. If we believe that each intersection of lines must establish identity and dominance or be defeated and ground into a sedimentary layer of its betters. (The logic of identity is also tightly tied to the economics of value through scarcity.)

It’s inevitable that the whirl-pool of electronic information movement will toss us all about like corks on a stormy sea, but if we keep our cool during the descent into the maelstrom, studying the process as it happens… we can get through . (McLuhan 1995)

For a line of inquiry that consists of seeing, discovering and making connections, meaning and value emerge from the swarming and clustering of connections in the unfolding of real-time. Meaning and value have the potential to be very fluid. The sorts and filters aren’t permanent exclusions, they’re qualities of a view. What is important to us one day may seem unimportant the next. This is not to say that meaning a value must always move at a high velocity. These lines have different qualities of viscosity, some move very slowly, some quite quickly. Meaning emerges at the point at which we engage the interface.

The electronically induced technological extensions of our central nervous systems… are immersing us in a whirlpool of information… the aloof and dislocated role of the literate man of the Western world is succumbing to the new intense depth participation… decentralising – rather than enlarging – the family of man into a new state of multitudinous tribal existences. (McLuhan 1995)

These lines, these borders, are surfacing with more visibility in our everyday lives. The borderline between work, family and friends used to be a physical line defined by the boundaries of a workplace. The telephone began the disruption of that space, and thus, the personal phone call was prohibited or limited. This same policy has transferred to a personal connection to the Network. Control of a corporate image means that employees must be silent. The brand must speak with a clear and pure voice— all signal, noise absent.

The iPhone expanded the disruption by overlaying a powerful personal Network connection over the limited connection of the workplace. An inversion of the relative power of technologies has amplified the rupture. If the Network is the computer, the personal connection has access to the computer; while the corporate connection wears blinders. Access to multiplicity provides more access to power, value and meaning, than the narrow scope of the corporate machine.

Women were the first to have to deal with the reality of multiple (social) networks overlaying the workplace. They have the potential to be simultaneously workers, mothers, daughters, wives and more. Men were only too happy to leave their role as ‘father’ at home— and exist solely as a worker in the workplace. The ability of a worker to be all the people she can be may ultimately surface as a civil rights issue.

The boundaries of the Network and the Nation State begin to cross and struggle for power when the US State department asks Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance because of real-time events in the Middle East. This is the beginning of a moment where the Nation state will inscribe its sovereignty within the outlines of the Network. The borders of a territory are surfacing as both physical and virtual.

Borders will continue to try to control lines of connection; the question that emerges is whether the locus of power, meaning and value is moving toward the line of connection, and away from the boundary line that excludes.

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Month: September 2009

Tracing The Arc of The Beatles

The Line: Boundary, Connection, Outline, Inquiry