Cut And Paste (In The Key of G)

Now, more than ever, what the top-selling pop artist needs is looks. Sure, attractiveness has always been part of the equation, but with the growing dominance of the producer and sound engineer these days it seems like even the merest of talents can make it to the top if they're good looking enough and have the right kind of studio talent. I say that from the perspective of a listener not an insider, of course, but just look at the CD covers and listen to the music and tell me I'm wrong. It's abundantly clear that technology has finally completed it's triumph over art, and to prove my point all you have to do is look at the mashup.

Have you heard these things? They've been around for a while and just seem to be getting more and more popular every day, though lord knows why. Let me backup a bit. For all of you non-hipsters out there I should probably explain that a mashup is just this thing you get when a person takes different songs or pieces of songs or pieces or whatever and meshes them together into a sort of hybrid noise strung together with a loud, pulsing electronic beat. They're quite common on the internet and in podcasts and the beauty of the mashup is that you don't need an artist to create one - all you need is technology. Well, no, the engineers and technologists on the internet call them art, but I have my doubts.

To tell the truth, mashups remind me of those collages we used to make in junior high art class. If you remember, the collage was a wonderful thing because even the most hamhanded artistic wannabes, the supremely ungifted who couldn't draw a line or make the simplest gumby-like clay sculpture, could nevertheless make a collage. All you had to do was cut some pictures and things out of a magazine and paste them onto a piece of posterboard and voila- instant Rauschenberg!

That's the idea behind the mashup, anyways, and though there are technical skills involved, I can't bring myself to call it art. A folk art, maybe, like quilting, but not "art" art. Ok, maybe I'm just being condescending here. There is certainly nothing wrong with quilting or mashups and they certainly take more skill to produce than I have, and if millions of people enjoy them then more power to them. Still...

Maybe I should backup a bit. The only reason I'm even talking about this is because of an old Dan Hicks record I was listening to today. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. The old man's getting nostalgic on us. He's reminiscing about the good 'ol days and how they don't make 'em like they used to, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, so maybe I am.

That's what happens to you when you get older, you know. Somewhere along the line you pass a tipping point and the simple truths of the past start looking more attractive to you than the false hopes for the future. I don't know where the exact meridian is, but I'm sure has something to do with experience and the knowledge that far too often the gains aren't worth the losses. You'll get old someday and understand what I mean.

Anyways, I was listening to Dan Hicks and it just occured to me that this is something you'll never hear again; a popular music built on acoustic instruments, simple harmonies, tight musicianship and execution. Nope, you'll never hear the likes of that again. Technology has taken over, almost like it has become the antonym of art.

Which brings me to what I really want to talk about.

The difference between art and technology, you see, is a lot like the difference between fiction and nonfiction. Nonfiction gives you the facts and the details, and yet can be strangely ambiguous or inconclusive as to the actual truth. In most cases, I've found that fiction actually comes closer to the real, universal truths than nonfiction does. To know the facts you need the journalist or documentarian; to know the truth you need the imagery and imagination of the novelist or poet.

That's why I've always thought that computers (strictly nonfiction machines) have such a terrible time of showing any real intelligence. I mean, to perform even the simplest task a computer requires endless detail and instruction, each step carefully laid out, each contigency anticipated and responded to. Vary from the program even a little and the computer is lost. Why? Because it has no imagination. It only has the tools and materials it was given and it's list of appointed tasks.

So what is missing from the mashup? It's simple. The creative concept. Imagination. Truth.

But then, those are old-fashioned things, aren't they. All we ask for in these modern times are consumables, not truths. Technology we can buy to occupy our time and keep the silence and the boredom away. Ahhh, these modern times. I wonder if Beethoven were alive today if he would be composing or just sitting at a mixing board doing mashups?

Yeah I know - he'd be doing mashups.

Let's just be grateful he isn't alive today.