Thoughts on Nick Cave's post on Morrissey: separating song from artist

Nick Cave has published his thoughts on Morrissey, or rather, his ability to separate Morrissey the person from his music.

I get what Cave is saying with his post; he thinks most people are able to separate what's good about a person from their bad, and postulates that when a song is published, it belongs to the public, not to its composer; the song is separate to its maker, somehow becoming an entity entirely of its own.

I've a few problems with this.

First, people are flawed. We make mistakes and fuck up constantly. We make our mistakes over and over, even. And we are capable of wondrous, magnificent, and sublime things that affect others in the most beautiful of ways. For sure, there are a lot of nuance between the "good" and the "bad".

Second, humans create songs. So, our work is often as flawed as we are, in spite of our best intentions, and with them, our songs bear our flaws with them.

Third, on a more subconscious level, it reminds me of Ted Bundy. Bear with me! When Bundy spoke about his victims, he did so by compartmentalising, i.e. he had no qualms about speaking of the matter as though someone else killed his victims. It's like being able to keep your job separate from your private life.

Cave believes that we should keep songs separate from their makers, and vice versa.

I believe this is possible if we can absolutely conclude that what an artist creates can be completely different from them. Philosophically, I haven't thought long and hard enough about this, but if I had a gun to my head and was forced to say yes or no on the matter without seeming quixotic, I would say it's impossible to completely separate a very emotive and emotional artist from their work.

Morrissey, while in The Smiths, created some of the most radiant lyrics that the music world has ever seen. As Cave says, I agree that Morrissey is "arguably the greatest lyricist of his generation". The songs of The Smiths entered my life at a point where I felt frail, vulnerable, lonely, and carried many fears, all wrapped up in very bad self-confidence; Morrissey instantly made me know there were more like myself out there. I made friends near-instantly by learning that they, too, loved The Smiths.

When Morrissey slid into his solo career, he started making scurrilous, yet surreptitious remarks. Listen to songs like Bengali In Platforms and National Front Disco, and you'll see what I mean; I defended those songs over and over back in the day. Oh, the National Front (a xenophobic and extreme right-wing party mainly located in Britain) don't disco, that's the joke on them, I said. The line "England for the English" is a rant on them. And the Bengali thing, where Morrissey sang "shelve your western plans/because life is hard enough when you belong here", that's a phrase from a xenophobic third-party person who we can laugh at. Ha-ha!

When writing this now, I realise how unintentionally correct I was with Bengali In Platforms, naturally without knowing it at the time.

Morrissey dressed in the union jack, constantly spoke of the good in the ur-English (e.g. kitchen-sink and Carry-On films, Albert Finney, etc.) and I thought nothing more of it. He didn't say anything that I interpreted as racist. The closest thing probably was "reggae is vile".

Spike Jonze of The Guardian has summed up much of Morrissey's hateful commentary from his solo years in this article, that I think all should read.

Morrissey sang of a light that never goes out, loafing oafs in all-night chemists, teachers who are afraid of pupils, prince Charles dressed in his mother's bridal veil, running around cemeteries with your best friend, Margaret Thatcher in a guillotine, of the importance of singing one's life... There was so much greatness in his lyrics, that he, and only he, could, and did create.

Then there's You're The One For Me, Fatty, a song that was thrown into the harsh light of Morrissey's autobiography in which he fat-shames women (and only women) throughout the entire book by derogatory referring to them as "fatties".

Today, Morrissey is a xenophobe who can't reach anybody's heart bar those who confuse one with misguided hate and rage.

When I discovered the philosophical branches that are phenomenology and existentialism, I discovered Heidegger, who enveloped me completely. He was a great thinker who was nearly clinical in his explorations, at least in comparison with other big philosophers, notably Nietzsche.

A few years ago, conclusive proof turned up and proved Heidegger was a whole-hearted nazi.

Martin Heidegger.

I struggled with this revelation, although it's fair to say that his nazism - just as with Morrissey's nationalism - has been contended for quite some time. How would I now feel about his philosophy?

I denounce nazism. Still, I am able to admire Heidegger's philosophical theories; they are not at all tied to nazism or any other ism. Rather, I can interpret them as opposed to nazism, but that's a different matter, but it does say a lot; Morrissey does not provide nuance any more. He recently stated that "people prefer their own race" and concluded that's not racist, which it naturally is.

So, why do I enjoy reading Heidegger and not Morrissey? If Morrissey wrote a new "Vauxhall and I" (his best solo album), would I listen to it?

I believe the answers are human emotions and no, respectively.

I've invested so much time and love in the world of Morrissey, that his current and hateful self seeps into what he makes. And that goes for everything in his solo career. I can listen to The Smiths, completely without error, as that back catalogue is filled with love. Morrissey doesn't produce music that is as good as before he came out as a full-blown xenophobic nationalist who loves "For Britain", a notably islamophobic political party. I must say I have only heard four songs from his next-to-latest album, and nothing from the latest one.

Varg Vikernes, a.k.a. Burzum.

I can't listen to Burzum, a black metal band, because their frontman is a bickering nazi; I won't give him a single stream to pay him in any way. Still, he was at some point part of Mayhem, and I really like some of their music. Note: Mayhem still exists, without Burzum, and with fervent anti-nazi opinions.

I've not liked myself at some points in my life. Most likely, I will, during the rest of my life, do things that I will dislike and even hate myself for, in spite of my best intentions to not do them. Even so, will I dislike myself if I do those things, as I now dislike Morrissey?

The answer is that, no, unless I become a xenophobic, nationalistic, hateful, and bitter person, I won't.

I think I've found a conclusion with how I feel about this, for now: if raw emotion is in the game, I won't be able to separate the "work" from the "worker". Nazis often had a choice, at least before Hitler completely took power - and actually often during his power; I recommend that you see some Laurence Rees documentaries on Auschwitz/WW2 or read his seminal books on Auschwitz and The Holocaust for more on the matter of nazism, voluntary and involuntary - and what they did reflects on themselves, not only their ideals.

Hate the player, don't hate the game, is a phrase I've heard. I think we need to look just as closely into both the player and the game, see where the trickle(s) of hate is from, and think hard on what we think about the matter.

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://niklasblog.com/?p=23306

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