Weekend Concert 35: Promiscuity -- Art's Prerogative
2007/4/29 12:08:17
Everyone has the right to promiscuity -- of course, whether every act of promiscuity can actually close the deal depends on both parties' valuations and bids. From a purely economic standpoint, the desire for promiscuity is the number one productive force. That tedious claim about technology being the number one productive force is nothing but a fig-leaf platitude. Everyone knows that behind even technology lies humanity's unceasing desire -- no different from the desire that drives promiscuity.
But this isn't a general discussion of human desire and the promiscuity it leads to -- rather, it's about the relationship between promiscuity and art. Of all endeavors related to creation, art's relationship with promiscuity is the most intimate. Of course, a scientific fraud like Einstein who plagiarized his ex-wife was no moral exemplar either, but at least in the public eye, art and promiscuity are excessively intertwined.
One has reason to suspect: if Schubert hadn't died of syphilis, Beethoven hadn't continuously committed incest, Brahms hadn't devoted his life to patronizing humanity's oldest profession, Tchaikovsky hadn't participated in collective orgies till death, and Mozart, Liszt, Chopin, and the rest hadn't scattered their love across the human world -- would we have heard so many great works? Sexual energy is of course not equivalent to artistic energy, but art without sexual energy is destined to have no energy. Some might counter with Bach, but in a sense, religious celibacy born of God is merely a more debauched form of promiscuity. The result of daily fornication with a phantom doesn't necessarily produce a Bach, but without such fornication, Bach would not have become Bach.
But great art, even if it sprouts entirely from an act of promiscuity, must necessarily have nothing to do with promiscuity -- like the lotus rising from the mud. Today, art is dead. There is no lotus, only mud; only promiscuity, no art. In an age of nothing but promiscuity, art can only be discussed as promiscuously as everything else.
This time the program features a set of male-female duets from operas -- music born of hormones, expressing hormones, stirring hormones. But beyond all that, the light of art that has nothing to do with hormones glimmers faintly and eternally.
Chán Zhōng Shuō Chán 2007/4/29 12:12:39
Hello everyone, for the sake of Monday's tedious trading hours, I can only continue to stew in the smoggy gloom of Beijing.
Promiscuity, at its core, is born of frustration.
Heading out first, goodbye.