“There are things which bind us all, a common humanity which transcends the doctrinal or ideological,” argues seminary graduate N.C. Harrison.
It never fails. It usually happens on the rare occasions that I am working out with someone else, when they have been invited into my iron inner sanctum, and we are right in the middle of hard set of kettlebell long-cycle, renegade rows, or front squats (which feel like, as Dan John so eloquently put it, wrestling an anaconda) and I have one of my compilation cds, usually the one featuring bands like Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy, Excuse 17, the Julie Ruin and Sleater-Kinney. It has the rather simple title “RIOT GRRRL JUNK” scrawled across it in my arthritic, former lineman’s handwriting and two of those three words seem terribly evocative, for some reason, to the average weight lifting bro-man.
“Dude,” he’ll say, while I’m trying to successfully operate two enormous hunks of iron with a will of their own and a terrible affinity for gravity, “why do you, like, listen to those freakin’ man-haters instead of something cool?”
I don’t even make much of an effort to respond to the question anymore. I don’t point out that most of the Riot Grrrl bands, far from being man-haters, include male members (like Billy Karren of Bikini Kill or CJ Phillips of Excuse 17) and that both Corin Tucker and Kathleen Hanna, at the very least, are married to men (the latter’s husband being the equally awesome Adam Horovitz of The Beastie Boys). I don’t feel like justifying my love of this music with any of this—especially since they are meaningless justifications to defend against attacks leveled at Straw Feminists instead of the real women, with whom I do agree about at least some things—and instead just shrug, saying, “It’s rock n’ roll and it rips my shit up. That’s what rock n’ roll is supposed to do.”
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These little exchanges always leave me thinking, though, about political agreement and art. Is such congruence with the artists a necessary condition for enjoying the artifacts that they produce? It hasn’t been for me, at least not in the past. I considered Ted Nugent to be fundamentally wrong about, well, almost everything ,and feel that “a few coals short of a cookout” doesn’t really cover his wild, erratic nature. To say, “the Nuge is like shooting a flame thrower at a live warthog and calling the end result barbecue” might come a little closer, but only due to the sheer noisiness that the two would share. An yet, in spite of my distaste for his politics and reservations about his state of mind, I think that ol’ Uncle Ted is one of the best guitar players that has ever been and can listen to “Stranglehold” almost non-stop, discovering some new idiosyncrasy of his technique and sheer passion each time. Courtney Love likewise seems to be a fundamentally unpleasant woman—a real hot mess, to borrow one of my sister’s phrases—but that doesn’t stop Pretty on the Inside from being one of my absolute favorite noise rock albums.
If I had shied away from Tori Amos’ music because of points of political or spiritual disagreement, I might have been robbed of some of the most valuable and growth inspiring weeks of writing that I have ever experienced.
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This attitude of mine extends to people who seem otherwise lovely but with whom I disagree on some point or the other. Tori Amos is one of my favorite singers in the world and possesses unsurpassed songwriting skill. She seems like a genuinely kind and thoughtful person for whom the artistic process is a healing one, as well, not just for her but for those of us who are her “Ears With Feet,” too. She also, however, lists one of her aspirations as “shocking the Christians.” I am a devout Christian and couldn’t care less about this—which could mean that either she or I are failing on one level or another, but I do not think that this is the case. Perhaps it is because I’m hard to shock (I listened to a lot of Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth back in high school) and she is really quite gentle in her attempts to shock. Or maybe it could be because those of us who love her are conditioned to roll our eyes and sort of just say, “Our Tori!” when she does or says something delightfully eccentric. This was the woman, after all, who has been photographed as riding a giant purple snail. I like to think, though, that my attitude of, “Live and let live but make music that moves me” has a little more to do with it.
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I mean, I wouldn’t call myself an expert Hegelian or anything—I leave that to one of my friends, a brilliant young woman and underrated philosopher if there ever was one—but I do believe in his dialectic. Synthesis, the development of new, interesting and important ideas, can only come about as the result of an interaction between thesis and antithesis. It was while listening to ”Winter,” by the aforementioned Tori Amos, after all, that I was struck with the inspiration for one of my not-yet-published-but-maybe-soon novellas. If I had shied away from her music because of points of political or spiritual disagreement, I might have been robbed of some of the most valuable and growth inspiring weeks of writing that I have ever experienced. I would certainly be a poorer person for that!
I think that the main thing, though, is my naïve belief (or maybe hope would be a better word) that there are things which bind us all, a common humanity which transcends the doctrinal or ideological. I have always prayed that art (although not aesthetics and the analysis of art, which are inherently ideological) was one of those things. Thus far, I have been rewarded with a richer life for holding this position.
Photo–Flickr/Pascal
N.C. Isn’t flyover country great? (Our motto: “Keep flying, our airport’s broken.”)
I like being able to hear bullfrogs, crickets and the occasional owl, bobcat or coyote at night, myself, and the country is all about that.
I wish there were some more conservative voices! I mean, I’m not liberal on everything myself–nor am I conservative on everything, believing that ideological consistency is a terrible idea. I guess I’d probably count as a centrist on most things, or a “small c” conservative, maybe. There needs to be a healthy exchange from everyone, which I do see in the comments here more than any place else–I love the way that so many different types of folks are represented on the bottom half, here… and am glad to be an at least somewhat eloquent radio signal from out here… Read more »
That’s actually a thoughtful and interesting essay.
If only the GMP editors agreed with it, we’d have a much more eclectic mix of blogs here – representing a whole lot more of the socio-political spectrum, rather than the same old stuff over and over again.
Where are the robust and responsible centrist and conservative voices? They’re certainly not welcome here.
That’s why the “Reviews and Commentary: MCOFA” section runs NCH’s weekly columns: he’s a true outsider who writes about numerous issues rarely discussed elsewhere in any part of the blogosphere (not just here). Time allowing, you ought to read through some of his older pieces. “Baptism and New Beginnings,” “Depression and the Old Testament,” and “Equality and the Torah” are all particularly good.