dogslife

All too often Ginny and I have had occasion to deepen our relationship through the bond that exists only between two people who find themselves to be the only two people in the entire room who recognize the much-lauded work of drama just concluded for the gilt dogturd that it is. We depend on one another to get out fast and silently.

Here's where people who don't know me call me an elitist, and people who do nod in agreement.

Most people are so fucking stupid--and the educated ones are stupid in the same proportion as the rabble. Take the play we saw last night. (Not the brilliant, rambling, heartfelt one I'll remember for years.
The other one.)

I've seen a bunch of plays like this, costume plays, historical fictions rife with postmodern conceits. Some are good. Most are hideously awful. Here's what I know about the latter kind. There are a few key elements a work of art needs to possess to make these booklearned halfwits feel that they're smart for liking it, and that therefore the piece itself is smart or doing something intelligently. A couple of acidic barbs early on, ideally about sexual performance, usually gets most of them on board. Then you break a couple of taboos, but not before boiling the resolve out of them so they give like half-cooked pasta--makes the audience feel "progressive" without the discomfort of having to hold unconventional convictions. Finally, nestle in a twist in the tale somewhere and pepper the whole piece with clues about it--nothing too obscure, mind you--the point is to let them figure it out before it's revealed, but to do so in a way that convinces each one that they did some real intellectual heavy-lifting to get the lid off that cookie jar.

They'll give a standing ovation because you really spoke to them, their values, their intellect. This was really intellectual fare. It made you think. It challenged you. Like that book, The Da Vinci Code...

Is there anything more exhausting than explaining to someone why you hated the thing they found entrancing and moving while you're still sore about the money you spent and they're still fucking high on the fumes? I've seen good art. I know what it is, and I can tell when it's happening in front of me because I feel myself being changed by it, in the sense that it makes me aware of myself as I am. I am changed into myself by it. It does not make me feel clever. Instead, it shows me something I recognize and confuses me with it. It makes me uneasy with the familiar, and shows me beauty where I'm not inclined to find it. It lasts. I measure myself, not other art, against it. Good art stands uncomfortably close to the spirit. Bad art, on the other hand, calls the spirit over. It doesn't show you anything you haven't seen before, and it's always showing you how clever you are. It wouldn't dare confuse or startle you, not without ample warning. So to answer my question, no there is nothing more exhausting than that.

Last night we politely applauded, silently waited for the aisle to clear, made our way through the belly of the theatre out into the evening air, strode through the courtyard and hit the sidewalk before tearing into the travesty that we just witnessed. It was bad. We felt it was bad for different reasons, and disagreed on several points, but neither of us believed it actually achieved any of the things it was being praised for. This was not good art. So for the ride home we discussed tragedy, comedy, stagecraft, and poetics.

And because I'd rather be reading Martin Amis than expanding this polemic any further, allow me conclude bathetically by stating that the ride home last night is why I'll take my smart, hot girlfriend over any other woman any day.