Blaming Us

The old adage is that you can't have great art without great audiences. Great audiences are ones that appreciate depth and sophistication in art.

I thought about this after re-watching the NFB documentary Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen. It follows the 30-year-old poet and debut novelist—it was 1964, the year I was born—shortly after his emergence as a wunderkind of Canadian letters. He was not yet a professional musician or songwriter.

In the film, Cohen is seen reading his poetry to large, attentive, receptive audiences. In one scene, the camera moves from face to face in the audience, and they are positively rapt, especially the thickly mascara'd young ladies.

The size and enthusiasm of the audience was one thing. For a poetry reading! But the age was another. They were mostly young people.

By the time I was working at the Jewish Public Library in the early 90s, where I organized dozens of poetry readings and book launches, the average age of the miniscule audience was in its mid-60s. They were probably the same people, now retired, who'd gone to hear Cohen back in the early 60s.

Leonard saw the writing on the wall, pun intended, and turned to songwriting as his ticket to fame and fortune. He understood that poetry had peaked in popular culture back in the mid-50s.

Poetry requires attention to be appreciated and enjoyed. The poet creates a certain kind of space and then invites the listener into that space as a type of communion. In the visual arts, the successful painter does a similar thing with his creation.

But the audience must be willing and able to go there to partake in that communion. It's not a passive engagement, like watching a television screen. It's more like a ritual—the priest presents the Eucharist, the bread and body of Christ, and the audience is an active participant, bringing to the process their understanding and belief in order for it to have spiritual resonance and meaning. Otherwise, it's just eating a wafer and sipping wine.

It's the audience that makes the difference, and that's why, for the last 60 years or so, in terms of art, we've been eating wafers and sipping wine.

The unsophisticated, shallow audience mistakes utility for quality, and superficiality for importance. If great art is being made, and it might be, it's unlikely anyone knows, because there's virtually no audience for it. Without an audience up to the task, greatness becomes indistinguishable from mediocrity, Leonard Cohen from Taylor Swift.

Screen culture is the very definition of 2-dimensionality. That's why every concert these days has a giant one, or rather a bank of giant screens. The audience needs to have the performance technologically shoved down its throat. And performers like Taylor Swift, in her bright shiny costumes and hair extensions, are tailor-made—pun intended—for the screen. Try to picture a crooning Leonard Cohen on a giant screen.

You get the picture.

But I'm not here to trash Swifties. I want to eulogize our culture, and point a finger not at the artists, but rather at the audiences, at us, for killing it. We're the ones who demanded and accepted drek for decades. We're the ones who've been burying our heads in devices and becoming trained out of our desire or ability to distinguish a real-life singer from AI-generated slop. We're the ones paying thousands of dollars to fly to Paris to watch Celine Dion bombastically lip-sync her way to a career comeback.

Well, not me anyway.

But maybe there's some hope. Maybe culture works like agriculture. After commercial farming saps all the nutrients out of the field with its pesticides and poisons, it will lay fallow for a time, the natural elements will take over, and eventually restore the land so that it can produce a rich harvest once again.

At least, I hope that's what happens, and not desertification.

Heaven

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Heaven

is a small room

in some forgotten, dilapidated

part of town,

where the buildings

are ramshackle,

and there's an old movie theatre

like out of 

The Last Picture Show,

a sprawling marquee

with a cryptic message 

of missing letters,

canopy necklaced 

in luminous pearls,

and next to that 

a folksy general store,

with brooms for sale 

in the window,

and hats

(everyone wears a hat in heaven)

and next to that a strip bar,

next to a wooden church

with bell tower 

and vaulted stained glass.

Main Street is dusty

because it never rains

in heaven,

and everyone is unemployed,

of course,

they sit around all day

collecting heavenly welfare

and spend it on

booze and smokes

or whatever they want,

which isn't much,

and they smile

all the time 

because they relish

having

nowhere to be

and nothing to do

except to remember

and talk;

And they talk

endlessly

about everything,

share memories

and opinions,

and nobody minds,

they just listen

and laugh,

and laugh and listen,

at all the silly

things being said, 

no one gets angry

or offended,

because after all

they're in heaven

and slowly getting high

and know 

they’re never

coming down.

Hendrix Opened For The Monkees

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I’ve dumpster dived and made love

On the same day

I’ve dumpster dived and made love

On the same day

Sometimes you get nothing 

Sometimes you get grace.

You can see continents

From thirty thousand feet

You can see continents

From thirty thousand feet

And never think about the people

Living on the street.

You might imagine the future

You might remember the past

You might imagine the future

You might remember the past

But one thing I know for sure 

The present doesn't last.  

The most valuable thing you have

Is always your attention

The most valuable thing you have

Is always your attention

Someone else is wanting it  

With their own intention.

The machine is not answering

And nobody's home

The machine is not answering

And nobody's home 

The house is furnished, the lawn is mowed, 

And everyone's gone.

Notification

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There are so many poems

and so few readers,

so many songs

and so few singers,

so many dances

and so few dancers,

so many dreams

and so few dreamers,

so much love

and so few lovers.

Dinner from the freezer

on the assembled table,

knife, fork, napkin—

IKEA instructions,

an unused screw;

phone,

waiting for notification.

Bibi the ‘no other choice’ candidate

Whatever you might say about Benjamin Netanyahu, and there’s plenty, he’s a brilliant political speaker. And his UN speech was one of his best. A masterclass.

It was constructed in such a way as to appear to be addressed to the gathered diplomats and dignitaries of the 81st UN General Assembly. The ones who hadn’t walked out in protest anyway. When in reality he couldn’t care less about them. He even said so, inviting more of them to leave at the outset of the speech. 

In reality, and effect, it was aimed at a domestic Israeli audience in the middle of an election campaign that will decide his immediate political fate and, for all intents and purposes, his lasting legacy.

The refrain that he repeated over and over, carried by media internationally, was “We have no other choice.” When I mentioned the speech to my wife, she said she hadn’t heard it, but then remarked that she’d heard something about, “no other choice.” I asked her what she thought it meant. She said, as Jews, we have no other choice but to fight to stay alive. 

She had only heard some reports about the speech. She did not even hear the context.

That’s how brilliant the speech was. From a simple, remembered phrase she gleaned a memorable, resonant message. One that was perfectly understood by, and appealed to, a diaspora Jew.

And she wasn’t even the main audience.

The main audience of “We have no other choice” was to voters in Israel. It was that he, Netanyahu, was their only choice in the coming election.

He told the story of his heroic older brother Yoni (Jonathan). Upon hearing that they were preparing for an imminent attack, Bibi went to see Yoni at his military base and asked him what was going to happen. Yoni answered: “We’re going to win. We have no other choice.”

If there was any doubt that the intended audience was actually domestic—a sales job to demonstrate his strength, defiance and competence as a leader who cares only for the security of his tiny country that is in constant mortal peril—it was put to rest when he said:

“Devastating Iran’s nuclear facilities was hard, but for me, it was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make as Prime Minister. Because if we hadn’t done it, we’d all be dead.”

But would we?

And speaking of peril, what about the peril created by the failures of his government that preceded the catastrophe of October 7? And what about the peril generated by the Gaza military quagmire that has resulted in a humanitarian crisis and left Israel facing unprecedented international condemnation? And what about the consequences of policies that critics argue have contributed to an increasingly dangerous environment for Jewish communities around the world, including the attacks in Australia and, just this week, in Ontario?

Netanyahu had an answer for all that: Lies. Jews have always been hated and will always be hated, through no fault of their own.

So, whatever we’ve been doing in Gaza, in Lebanon, against Iran, we had no other choice.

So vote Bibi, again. The “no other choice” candidate.

Ingenious.

To me, ‘no other choice’ is the motto of an autocrat.

From The Margins

Art has always come from the margins, at least the art that mattered.

The last time Jews had a major artistic impact was about the middle of the twentieth century. In the US, in literature, there were fiction writers like Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick and Grace Paley. Poets like Emma Lazarus, Allen Ginsberg, Delmore Schwartz, Adrienne Rich and Marge Piercy. In music, composers like the Gershwin brothers, Irving Berlin, Aaron Copland, Jerome Kern and Leonard Bernstein. In jazz, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Stan Getz. In popular music, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Carole King and Neil Diamond. In the visual arts, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, Jacques Lipchitz, Philip Guston and Louise Nevelson.

In Canada, the most influential Jewish mid-century cultural figures included A. M. Klein, Mordecai Richler, Irving Layton, Miriam Waddington, Adele Wiseman and Leonard Cohen.

It was the last time Jews weren't mainstream.

They were either immigrants themselves, usually born in another country and brought over as infants, or, more often, children of first-generation immigrants. They straddled a cultural divide between the New World and the Old World, between a new language and cultural tradition and the languages and traditions of their ancestors. In effect they were equi-distant from both.

It was that friction, that tension, that afforded them the perspective they needed to develop a new perspective on their adopted culture.

It was from that position, as outsiders, that they were able, to fight their way in, culturally speaking. To demand their place at the table, against a certain amount of resistance, and ultimately to gain acceptance by reinvigorating their adopted culture with what they could offer artistically.

That process of revitalization has played out over and over again. The outsider brings a fresh voice and perspective to a mainstream culture in need of re-invigoration. In Canada, in literature, we've seen it in recent years with African and South Asian voices, and then Asian voices, coming to the cultural fore.

But once they arrive, then what?

Their art becomes part of the mainstream. Part of the existing cultural soup. And like any ingredient in a recipe, blended-in and barely distinguishable from the entire dish.

It's why no one talks about 'the Jewish writers' anymore. They are just writers. 

I began to wonder: if it's art from the margins that re-invigorates the culture, where is the margin of the future? Where will we find the outsider-artists who are positioned to provide the perspective that helps us better understand who we are?

Perhaps, as culture in all forms becomes increasingly dominated by digitization, the margin will be found outside that realm. I don't mean people who simply don't use computers, or artists who insist on painting with oils on canvas rather than working digitally. I mean something more fundamental.

Digitization isn't simply changing the way we communicate. It is changing the way we understand the world.

More and more of human experience is being translated into something that can be recorded, measured, stored, searched, transmitted and reproduced. A photograph becomes an image file. A book becomes a collection of searchable words. A song becomes a stream. It's all data.

The digital world is extraordinarily good at representing things. But art is more than just representation. It's a record of human experience: love, grief, memory, physical presence, silence, loneliness, aging, death, desire, intuition, mystery. 

They can be represented digitally, of course. We can photograph a face, record a voice, write down a memory. But the representation is not the thing itself.

Perhaps this is where the next cultural margin will emerge.

For the immigrant artist, the distance came from living between two cultures. He could see his adopted culture from the inside and the outside at the same time. The future outsider may occupy a similar position between two worlds: the digital world and the world that exists beyond digital representation.

And this outsider need not reject technology. In fact, he may be completely fluent in it. He may use it more effectively than anyone else. But he will retain an awareness of what it cannot contain.

That awareness could become a new source of artistic perspective. Because, by definition, the artist's modus operandi was to see and express what everyone else has stopped seeing and expressing.

The Jewish immigrant saw the absurdities and assumptions of American culture because he hadn't grown up inside them. The immigrant writer could hear the language differently because it wasn't quite his first language. The child of immigrants could look at his parents' world and his adopted world simultaneously and see things that belonged to neither.

Perhaps the artist of the future will do something similar with the digital world. She will live inside it, but also outside it. She will understand the language of algorithms, platforms, screens and networks, but she will also be conscious of the things that cannot be expressed in that language.

She might discover that the unexplored territory isn't somewhere else. It's right here, found in everything that remains stubbornly human after we have translated almost everything else into information.

Perhaps that is where the next great art will come from. Not from a new ethnic group or a new immigrant culture necessarily, but from people who occupy the margin between what can be represented and what can only be experienced.

Every successful outsider eventually becomes part of the mainstream. That is how culture renews itself. The outsider enters, changes the culture, and eventually becomes indistinguishable from it.

Which means that the margins never disappear. They simply shift. For a long time, they were found at the borders between countries, languages, religions and ethnicities.

Perhaps the next border is between the digital and the undigitized.

And I don't mean that traditional art forms like poetry, stories, music and visual arts will be abandoned. In fact the opposite may happen. Digitization may be deemed an assault on the forms of art experience that we have cherished and enjoyed for millennia and that could spur an embrace of those forms with even more relish and vigor, in a protective way, as a mother protects its beloved child. 

But one thing is for sure. Somewhere along the border between the digital and the non-digital, or should I say the human, someone is already looking at the world in a way the rest of us haven't yet learned how to see.

Me And My Harmonica (reprise)

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for Adam Gussow

I learn to play harmonica,

To my wife's eternal dismay.

But play the harmonica I will,

Whatever she may say.

She hates the crying racket,

The piercing whiny whine.

But that's not how I hear it,

To me it sounds just fine.

She says she can't be near it,

Yells take it somewhere far.

Where nobody can hear it,

'Play it in your car'.

Me and my harmonica,

We're both made to roam.

The one place I can't play it,

Is when I'm in my home.

Me and my harmonica,

We both sing the blues.

Anything that you can have,

Is something you can lose.

I blow a tune in four-time,

Pressed up against my lips.

And when my tune is done,

Back in my pocket it slips.

I move on down the road,

A wanderer alone.

With nothing but a song to sing,

Far away from home.

Out and in, in and out,

My body and my breath. 

Shapes a sound into a song, 

From silence and from death.

  

Me and my harmonica, 

Go out for a long walk.

Try the door on my return,

But she done changed the lock.

Me and my harmonica,

We both sing the blues.

With every tune I learn to play,

I also pay my dues.