That’s the problem. It’s garbage in, garbage out. People don’t have the perspective or the vision to aim higher. I think also that there’s an embarrassment about egotism, whereas my generation was very egotistical. This new generation is more collaborative, and they’re ashamed of the big, assertive, strong, flamboyant statement. I myself love the idea, which is a high-romantic one, but when was the last time we had it? Axl Rose in Guns N’ Roses? Eddie Vedder was right on the edge there; you could see Kurt Cobain critiquing it before his suicide. Contemporary bands tend to be really PC; you know, none of us is really the star; no one is really showcased up front. It was very important when women took centre stage in rock; now it’s all about the collective.
What no one’s saying, perhaps, is that it’s hard to make good art. It requires dedication, craft.
Also, who are you speaking to? I think people have lost that sense entirely. It’s almost like you’re supposed to speak to your peers, and in the art world that’s bad. It’s a loss of the awareness that you’re creating for a general audience. There was once a sense that the statement you were making was directed to that general audience, whether to entertain or to attack them. But now, the art world has become overpopulated with “artistes,” who are very afraid to make the large gesture, because they don’t want to look uncool in the eyes of their fellow artists. The large gesture is message-heavy, which is perceived as Victorian.
The opportunities are enormous for somebody to come into this vacuum, but how? What do they want to say? You either have to be rebelling against something strong, or be a spokesperson for something strong. It’s the strength that gives you something to push off from, like a diver from a podium in a race. When everything is possible, things get dim and weak. That’s where we are in the arts.
There’s also no dominant culture anymore. Everything has been split up and diversified. When you were growing up, there was the movie palace, which was like the West’s secular-humanist church. Now, that’s faded.
Everything is about niche tastes. There’s no coherence to the arts, no shared generational experience, because everyone has their individual little area. In my era, yes, we had those big movies, and, when I was in college, very few rock albums came out, so when one did, it was an event. Everyone gathered. In my dorm in college, when The Doors came out, I remember standing in a room with other students, listening to “Light my Fire” for the first time. It was the whole thing, the long version. Everyone was just staring at the record moving on the record player. And we were eager to have that experience again; we knew we were into something revolutionary. Same thing with Revolver, when it came out, and Blonde on Blonde. This wasn’t a private experience. The generation was all in the same rhythm. With young people today, everything is fragmented, insular. They don’t know who they’re talking to anymore.
