It's the Arts—with Cate Lunt
Sunday, October 14, 2007
By Cate Lunt
Oh, hey. I want to talk about art. I’ve been thinking about art a lot recently, and you know what I’ve discovered? Art’s cool, ya know? Just plain cool. Artists, too, are cool. You know what I like about them? They’re chill. Just totally the epitome of chill, and their coolness is an outgrowth of their chillness. Chillness effecting coolness: that sounds like the way the world ought to work—ya feel me?*
Clasp your hands in mine and say it with me: art is cool; art is rad; art is totally tip-top titanically sweet. Feel that ice scamper up your spine? Say it again. Whisper it to yourself when you’re drifting off to beddy-by. That sensation of alternating current in your fingers and toes is called subversiveness, children, and I can teach you how to feel it during your every waking moment. Hell, even my dreams nowadays are subversive. Last night I dreamt I was a Spanish cardinal herding thousands of fratboys and athletes to a gigantic auto-da-fé on the Green—waste-free, though, natch. Rocked my world.
We need more people yapping to each other about how cool art is. As a psychologist of human motivation who makes Marcel Proust look like Clive Cussler, my talents suggest that the “pay it forward” technique is the best way to proceed here. Here’s how it works. You’ve got an idea, viz. “Art is cool, fool.” Now you want the meme to reproduce. So, go ahead: accost a stranger, hopefully a normative-looking one, on the street, and give her or him the spiel in so many lapidary phrases. Then when they’re nodding and grinning like they’ve just inhaled like twenty cubic meters of cannabis-infused air, grab them quasi-dramatically by the shirt sleeve and sort of shriek into their ear, “Pay it forward.” Say it like that, italics and all, and then back away slowly, all the while making eye-contact, biting your lip, and nodding as if to convey, “Oh, yes. I just did that.” This should feel a bit like the scene towards the beginning of Les Misérableswhen the bishop tells Jean Valjean that he has bought his soul and given it to God, except here we are serving a less embarrassingly passé purpose.
So now the little corporate tool will tell two of his friends. And they, two of theirs. You don’t have to be Kurt Weill to figure out where this is going. According to my calculations, the notion that art is cool should saturate human consciousness within a month.
Which, I’m scrambling to say, is a boon for justice.
Because the great thing about art is you can control people’s minds with it. Importantly, they do not know they’re being controlled. Now, this is not the bad control exercised by corporations and the Republican Lie Machine. That’s the important thing to remember: mind-control per se is not undesirable, but it matters terribly who’s holding the reins. In this case, what if activists start using art to basically plant seeds in people’s minds that eventually grow into huge kudzu plants that strangle any normative or reactionary thoughts. That is what I mean when I say that art is cool.
Had this total power lunch with Wenda Gu with these thoughts in mind. In those brochure pictures, Wenda is this completely serene-looking visionary who’s just planning these massive projects to rub intolerance out of the carpet, right? But I must admit that sharing a meal with this man tried my patience. He’s one of those guys who just laughs at random things that make no sense. Like the waiter handed him the menu, and it was initially upside down—you know, it happens. Somehow we move on. But first, Wenda’s all confused; he says, “Huh? What?” in this drawn-out, over-sad way like he’d just been told he wasn’t invited him to your birthday party. Then, over the course of like five seconds, it dawns on him that the menu is upside down. And then it’s like this furnace of laughter is lit in his belly. He laughs like a hyena with a meth problem. The waiter’s freaked out; everyone in a twenty-foot radius is freaked out; I, normally extremely tolerant of subversive and/or out-there behavior, am freaked out. Free spiritedness has its limits.
Now, I was trying to pry the skinny from this madman about what his art was about. Like, what was the progressive message conveyed by “the green house”? Originally, I had planned to kind of lead him into this topic, but after a few other incidents reminiscent of the menu one, I just put it to him point blank. But all I get is another giggle fit. Seriously, I don’t know what sort of adhesive this man apparently holds proximate to his nostrils on a regular basis, but his failure to get with the program almost made me give up on art. But I’m still hopeful, you know? It’s art. Love the stuff.
*Activists, this is huge: lately, instead of saying “do it” or equivalent phrase, I say, “Ya feel me?” The muggles ruminate on this low-key interrogation, and, after some prodigious acts of thought, they discover that, yes, they do indeed feel me. Problem solved. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, and I’m already moving on to the next retard. n
|
