On the Grammys, Jethro Tull, and Those Freaking Canadians

"...no matter how dominant and predictable something might be in your world, it is still a weird, marginal thing to most everyone else."--Nitsuh Abebe, Vulture

A confession: I have trouble letting go of my cultural predilections. I will continue to watch a television show long after it has gone sour,* and I will continue to consume the discography of a decaying rock band if only to complete my collection**. That's the way I am, and I can do nothing to stop it: Once a piece of the culture belongs to me, it belongs to me, and I feel I have an obligation to follow it until the end. I've never understood how the ratings of a serialized show like Lost would ebb and flow: Either you watched it, or you didn't watch it, and there was no in-between. Consumption, in my mind, is a commitment, and I stick to my commitments, and if they fall outside my purview, then I tend to devalue them completely. For two years, I didn't watch Breaking Bad because Bryan Cranston was on Malcolm in the Middle and I never watched Malcolm in the Middle because that little kid always seemed like an obnoxious attempt to manufacture a real-life Bart Simpson. That*** was one of the more stupid decisions of my recent existence.

This, I suppose, is human nature. If it doesn't exist in my world, then it might as well not exist. If I haven't seen an award-winning movie that happens to win an award, then I have to imagine it is not as deserving as the movie I have seen.****And this explains the backlash to the Grammys, an awards show that has always done an unbelievably inept job of attempting to pander to everyone by pandering to no one. Remember when Jethro Tull defeated Metallica for best rock album? Given that my friends were hard-core metalheads, that was an event tantamount to Chernobyl. We were upset, even though it meant nothing, even though the Grammys had long ago marginalized themselves to the point that it was almost better, if you wanted credit as something more than a mainstream pop artist, to not be associated with them. In that way, I assume Metallica's loss was one of the greatest things to happen to that band.*****

Anyway, these are the two points of view that Nitsuh Abebe attempts to reconicle in his excellent piece on New York magazine's culture website, Vulture. It was a moment that pitted people like us--the self-aware Brooklyn hipsters who grew tired of the Arcade Fire hype in 2005--against the masses who tend toward pop music, who measure accomplishment in terms of mainstream fame and feel just as insulted as we do when their views are invalidated.

You might think this is a problem. You might find it bothersome that there are so many people who are angered by an unassuming Canadian rock band winning an award over a pedestrian pseudo-country band, a rapper who did his best work more than a decade ago, a woman who regularly dresses like breakfast and another woman who manages to dispense whipped topping from her cleavage. And maybe it is. Maybe these divergent paradigms explain why half the politicians in America appear to be speaking a completely different language. Maybe it explains why there is so much misunderstanding, and so much hatred. But it also proves that I live in a weird, marginal world, in a borough of a city where the percentage of people who have heard of the Arcade Fire is probably higher than anywhere else south of Windsor. And I happen to like that, just as I'm sure the people who dig Lady Antebellum's vibe happen to believe she (they? it?) got hosed on Sunday night. 

The larger problem, as Abebe notes, is not that we believe different things. It's that we have trouble imagining a world that exists beyond our cultural purview. It's a problem I'll admit I've had for years, and finding a solution doesn't mean I have to like your music, or that you have to like mine, or that you have to like my politics, or I have to like yours. It only means that we have to accept that these things exist.


*This explains why I continue to DVR Californication.
**This explains why I briefly had myself convinced that Oasis' Heathen Chemistry was actually not so bad.
***Neglecting Breaking Bad, not Malcolm. Though I've never seen Malcolm, so I have no idea. I know several intelligent people who insist The Big-Bang Theory is funny, too.
****Except in the case of Crash. And Million-Dollar Baby. I saw those movies. They just empirically sucked.
*****And perhaps even prefigured their own turn toward the mainstream.

On the Writer's Life

Not long ago, I won a book award. (In fact, this award is so prestigious that the year after I won it, the award itself ceased to exist.) Upon winning, I was told that these awards would be distributed at a nationally televised ceremony hosted by a jovial morning-show personality. Now, I should say that winning an award is always an honor and a shock, especially since the books I was up against were both well-written and well-received, but we all know there is nothing more exciting in the televised universe than an awards ceremony celebrating a medium that most Americans find antiquated and obsolete.* My guess is that the broadcast finished fourth in its time slot, behind an Access Hollywood re-run, a Shamwow commercial, and something hosted by Byron Allen. My guess is that most of the celebrities who had been coerced into presenting discussed the viability of their current representation on the way home.

Anyway, here is my point: In the midst of this awards ceremony, I found myself standing backstage, with no idea of where to go. I had accepted my award from an ex-football player and an ex-model, and I had walked off, and I had assumed someone would tell me how to get back to my seat. But no one did. So I stood there and I waited, and I watched a former network news anchor schmooze with an actress from a show about New Jersey mobsters, and then a soft-spoken, white-haired man approached me and shook my hand and congratulated me and asked if he could look at my award. I gave it to him, and I thought perhaps this man looked familiar, and then I thought, "Is this man going to steal my award?" But he gave it back to me, and eventually I wandered through a back hallway, past a janitor's closet, and wound up locked outside the auditorium with the ex-model (who was actually quite lovely) and the head of a major cable network, while we waited patiently for the next commercial break to arrive.

When I returned to my seat, that white-haired man was standing on the stage, presenting an award. And at that moment, I realized that this was Gay Talese, the man who wrote the greatest magazine profile in the history of magazines, the man whose work I had been studying (and occasionally imitating) since college. So now I was an award-winner who also felt incredibly worthless. In fact, if I am being honest, I probably would have traded the award** to spend an evening downing stiff vodka-based drinks with Gay Talese.

I would have asked to see this man's writing bunker. I would have asked him about the overwhelming and intimate complexities of his marriage to a prominent New York book editor, and about what it's been like to live the kind of extraordinary writing life--both personally and professionally--that could never be replicated in the modern age.

Fortunately, Jonathan Van Meter did all of that here, in an astounding piece for New York magazine.

*Which is every medium, of course, except blogs.
**Though I should say it is a very nice, very heavy award.

(Photo: Mary Ellen Mark/New York Magazine)