Francis Raven is a graduate student in philosophy at Temple University.  His books include Provisions (Interbirth, 2009), 5-Haifun: Of Being Divisible (Blue Lion Books, 2008), Shifting the Question More Complicated (Otoliths, 2007), Taste: Gastronomic Poems (Blazevox 2005) and the novel, Inverted Curvatures (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005).  Francis lives in Washington DC; you can check out more of his work at his website: http://www.ravensaesthetica.com/.

Aesthetic Rejection (February 20, 2009. Issue 15.)

I like things, I really do. In fact, I’ve never thought I was critical enough. When I was growing up my mother would always say, that’s too negative, don’t be so negative. So, I stopped being negative. I can like things in different ways, obviously, but I pretty much always start out by liking things. I like 24 and I like Mahler. Well, I don’t really like Mahler, but it’s an example, and I needed something to contrast.

Prioritizing is sometimes hard, but if you start out liking things then it’s just one thing first and then the other or the other and then another. Except, I’ve been told, the soul is large, it can contain the high and the low except for the fact that we die. I know that we die. Therefore, I’m a scarce resource. But not dying, that’s really the thing, not currently dying. Therefore, each decision is still placed separately in front of the infinite: one foot in front of the other. 24 tonight, 24 tomorrow night, addiction, blessed addiction, cool waves of it over my body. I have a friend who, when you ask him whether a movie was good or not he’ll say, well, it depends on how much you like movies. I like movies a lot. It’s kind of like I like most things a lot, so for me it’s it depends on how much you like painting and it depends on how much you like wine (some people think they do but are merely covering up deep feelings of inadequacy).

But, of course, I’m not here to tell you about the things I like. Mostly, it’s not those things that get you into trouble, save for one’s prurient interests straying far from society’s norms. But I’ll say it with another, our kinks are us; they are here to stay: preferences to find another wanting. The horrible events begin when you look inside and you know something’s wrong, when there’s some kind of discord and it just feels wrong to say I really like that, I really do; it tenses the wrong muscles in your mouth, induces a shit-eating grin and grinning’s not even really the point of art.

Let’s see, like I said, I was raised to care about the world, every part of it, not just some of it. I was raised to say, if there was some geology, here is what this geology means. This columnar joining, a quick freeze; this glass, irregular. If there were plants, let’s say they were cherry trees, just for the literary allusion, then I was to know that they were a member of the rose family. If there were twigs I was at least supposed to be able to guess where they belonged. That’s right, I knew families. I knew how one set of music led into another. This was the basis of everything: families and the basis of progression. These were the facts—a system of human life and its place within nature—and to never be negative was at the bottom of this system. That was the attitude that I was supposed to have. Very little else occurred to me. That is, I knew where I belonged. I knew what things were called and, of course, I was using another’s language. It’s always another’s language, they’ve said, because you didn’t make it up, is that the point? Because there are structures of powers that force us to use the language, is that the point? Yeah, okay, it is somebody else’s language, but it’s also mine and yours for that matter. I can talk and make up new ways of taking and I can still say that you’re wrong when you say things in the wrong way. That’s the way it is, I’m sorry, but we’re not going to get any better than that; that’s language where we live. But, of course, my situation calls to mind the fact that language isn’t just something to be tossed around without regard to its consequences.

I always thought the point of a proper education, going to school with rich people etc., was to like the right things, not to avoid disliking the wrong things. So, I liked the right things, many of the right things. I’d say at least nine tenths. I’d wager 99/100ths. I always thought that I was free when I was looking at a work of art. I swear I felt like I could do anything I wanted, but I knew, I must have known, that the consequences of my words would one day haunt me. I felt like I could be a hero or a crone, but my freedom was also beheld by my looking. That freedom tied me to the work. Is freedom really so coupled with what we do? I am not free when I am acting my life out in real time, I am only able to express one set of possibilities, and in my looking I can explore every set of possibilities (That’s such bullshit! If you could do that you would have to violate every rule of grammar.) It’s strange to have our freedom so tied down to the object of our freedom. I am given the choice of whether I wish to participate in a higher battle or whether I wish to serendipitously wander through life. Is there a beautiful way to believe in wandering? Is there a way to pull yourself out of the absurd water with that cycle of doubt and dynamic? Is there a way to realize the absurdity of life but still attempt to believe in meaning? That is the existential way; that is the warrior's way, face to face, placing no judgment on experience, only traveling with the inactivity of water. Wu Wei. Not striving, but receiving day by day, this day. Well, I received it and I hated it.

I’ll tell you just once, a description, not of it, but of what happened. I was there, we were all there, but we could have been each perceiving the work separately. And I won’t tell you what piece of art I’m talking about because I signed a nondisclosure agreement upon my release and besides there is the rhetorical point that whatever I say will just end up being an example to you. It will either look quaint and like who would even care about that or it will look like a funny idea someone had of the future, a funny idea that got dirty, like the Centre Pompidou. Naming is so not what I came to do. I won’t name names, not because it wouldn’t be fun, because it would be, but because it’s beside the point. The piece is whatever the piece is whenever it could have been like that. It is a possibility of human experience. You know what I mean? I’m not saying something retarded like it’s the piece for you and it’s the piece for me, but that knowing which piece of art I’m talking about, or even what genre or medium I’m talking about will totally obscure the meaning of what I’m trying to say. Maybe even saying that I’m talking about art is too much information for you. But I have to talk about some thing, at least one thing specifically, or I won’t be talking about anything at all and then I’d just be standing here. That would be the purest way to get my point across, but it would, unfortunately, fail to get my point across at all. That is, my point would be pure but it wouldn’t have any way of leaving my head, so it’s just going to have to be impure to the extent that I have to talk about something, such as art, but I’ll leave it pure to the extent that I’m not going to tell you exactly what I’m talking about. It’ll be sort of pure. I think that’s a good medium, a good balance to start with.

But here’s what happened (and once I tell you you’ll probably have to say “ohh, that’s all”): all it was was that I didn’t like the artwork. I didn’t even say the words “I hate this piece.” No, everyone must have known via my supreme usage of body language. I didn’t want the piece to evaporate or anything. I didn’t want to annihilate it. I didn’t hate art because of it. That wasn’t my claim. I wasn’t even really making a claim. I didn’t even really say anything. They just saw that my grin wasn’t quite broad enough. Sometimes you can fake it, but sometimes, obviously, you can’t. This was one of those later times.

I didn’t like it. It wasn’t that the critics said something about it before I saw it, just that I reacted negatively towards it, or, if not negatively, with indifference, and that, in art, is a negative reaction. Did it mean something? Yes. Was it saying something? Of course. Was it political? But, then, if it was political, at least in that way, did it force me to act? No one would say that it could. It will remain a badge. Look, it’s like this, we have to save the hungry, to be against oppression, what kind of artist are you?

It wasn’t the type of look that I could throw away or take back, kind of a slightly disgusted grimace. But anyway I wanted to keep it, at least, to myself, for it was my own feeling; that was the point of all this discussion: my own feeling, not something I thrust upon the world. I could have lifted my hand to my mouth in order to hide my lips and teeth. I’m not really sure if you could see the look by merely glancing at my eyes. Could you? Or, what of my mouth without my eyes? Perhaps it would have looked like I was chewing, chewing’s fine, isn’t it? Yes, chewing’s still fine. But I didn’t want to do that, not entirely.

If only someone could have explained it to me first, explained how I was supposed to react, then maybe I could have gone to the bathroom, washed my mouth out, tied on different shoes…you know, looked in my wallet, thought about movies I love and had the correct expression, but there was no warning, absolutely no warning. As far as I could tell I was just supposed to know how I felt. Where was this other knowledge supposed to come from? It obviously didn’t come from within since you’ll have to admit that reasonable people can feel differently about artworks. But, on the other hand, it had to come from somewhere, perhaps from the very structure of society with its buildings and galleries and the Internet and its lattes and its inability to rid itself of trash.

If it were out with the trash I wouldn’t have picked it up, but I would have known that somebody would. That’s why my opinion is mixed. I can feel somebody else’s feelings within me. Their hair is blond. They’ve had a long day at work. Their alarm went off too early, etc. etc. They’re late on their car payments and yet, they like the artwork. They wouldn’t trade it in. That is, if they owned it. I’m not saying they could afford it because they couldn’t, but if they could, that’s what I’m feeling inside myself, does that absolve me?

The whole thing kind of made me angry, I mean, here was this work that didn’t engage me at all and I’m the exact audience for which it was intended, but I guess intentions aren’t everything; there’s always ample room for spillage between the spoon and the mouth as they say. There are so many sayings I don’t get, but that’s not one of them, I get the one about the spoon and the mouth and the soup on the floor. But I couldn’t just file that feeling the piece gave me away, separate it from what I was, for it latched onto me as soon as I saw. It became part of all the other things I would see, all of my future seeings, and so, even though my negative reaction to it was mild, since it colored all of my future sight I came to hate it, hated it in excess of what it was.

And perhaps I merely saw it in the wrong order; if I’d only seen that other one first before that one, perhaps, but you don’t choose, do you? I mean, I knew what it was to live a little, to have a glass of wine, to see a crappy Picasso, to walk in Matisse’s house, to caress a palm frond. These and other pleasures were mine. I mean, I sought them out, some, but after some were given and the seeking made more seeking and the given made more seeking and showed me more of what was given then I finally felt whole enough to see more. And that’s the point at which I saw the piece as part of the given, a gift; I know the old Christian saw: all is gift; well, I believe it, even the crap, even this crap artwork. So I felt or thought I was looking like I felt thankful for it, but I must not have. I must have gone wrong. Did I go wrong, I must have gone to the wrong street, huh? And yet the painting was supposed to serve as my memory. Paintings can’t really be my memory because they’re somebody else’s memory to begin with and we just don’t overlap in what we think about things. That’s really what I have to say about the artist. We just don’t overlap. I mean, basically we’re not the same person. We don’t have the same dreams. We don’t wear the same shoes. We don’t even like the same jeans. How can I tell that? I can smell that directly from the work. If you can’t immediately tell if you’re going to like the artist’s jeans or not you’re going to need to find a new line of work. That is, if your line of work is being an art critic.

It’s the artist’s personality you feel when you attend to the work. I know how someone standing over your shoulder changes how you react to a piece of art, the author, that is, not just some random person, but a random person can also change the affair as well. I mean, for instance, if he looks like he wouldn’t like it. So, sometimes when I’m at, you know, a rather avant-garde dance performance and I’ve brought a rather uptight individual to the performance I’m embarrassed about how much I’m enjoying myself and sometimes after such an experience I don’t like it anymore even though I would have liked it if I had been by myself or in the right company. And then I have to explain myself; I am forced to ask myself, do I like it because I know things or because I feel things? And it’s usually because I feel things, because I’m connected to it, but it seems to the rather uptight businesstype that I like it because I know things, however I’m just straight feeling things, usually. But, the experience is completely different when the author is there breathing down your collar and you’re supposed to like it or react to it because he’s there. Now, in the case that’s got me into so much hot espresso, I didn’t know who the author was. I didn’t have that piece of information, but I knew that someone was standing behind me while I was looking and I knew that the person who was standing behind me could have been the artist, this was not beyond the realm of possibility that the artist was behind me, not that they were necessarily, but could have been, and I think that this colored my reaction to the work. I mean, how could it have been otherwise, it was more information.

Alright, I’ll come clean, I thought I had the idea first, but I’m willing to admit that I often think that I have ideas first and sometimes, perhaps, this belief is admittedly false. Sometimes somebody else has ideas before I do and sometimes they even execute those ideas better then I ever could. And I know that even if I had wanted to do this before once it was finished and in front of people I couldn’t do it and this really pissed me off because I wasn’t even really sure if I had wanted to do it before. But once it was actually there I knew exactly all of the ways that I would have done it better, they fogged my mind, couldn’t even really see it after all because I was just thinking about how I would have sketched the characters in a different mode, etc. even though I was not equipped (and am not equipped now) to have done it that way (or to do it that way now). So, I won’t be doing it that way in the future. There won’t be a second one of these lurking around society that is simply a little bit better (better to my mind at least). But, this reaction has left me uneasy, unable to think about anything else then the idea of me doing it at a different time, me completing it, not him completing it. That is, I can’t stop thinking about what it would be like if it weren’t yet completed, if it were still in my mind, still a procedure waiting to be executed. But all of this waiting means that it might never have existed.

And what would have happened had I never seen it? All of these other things would have seemed so wonderful and yet I wouldn’t have really felt that way, things wouldn’t have really been that way, because with just another feeling or another piece of information, I’m not sure which, I would have felt differently; just one more thing and everything would have been totally different, which means that none of it was real in the first place, which means that none of the ways that I feel now are real in the first place, which is intolerable, completely intolerable.

Take this painting, for instance (pointing), do you see this line here? This is a hideous line, it is, in essence, the flourish that ruins the entire painting. After such a blemish, like a pockmark or something oozing or a moral deficiency such as an inability to stop murdering people, there is almost nothing that could save the painting, nothing; not even gold lacquer that could be melted off for the viewer’s pocketbook. If you aren’t catching my drift here, let me spell it out, this blue rot here (pointing) could not symbolize the rot of humanity because the artist isn’t really that competent. Unfortunately, we know too much about the painter’s works from his other shoddy renderings—do you see how everything is cramped into the left-hand corner? It’s supposed to give the viewer the feeling of abruptness, something sexy for the road, but it merely leaves the viewer feeling as if he’s being manipulated by an outdated and condescending formulation of outsider art, as if being crazy weren’t enough, you have to allow your tics to be copied by supposedly sane and preposterously wealthy artists.

Here’s a thought experiment we might contemplate for a few moments: what if somebody stole the work in question before anyone else had the chance to look at it again? My fate might be undone, back to the fields of the aesthete. All I needed was a known robber to masquerade as himself for myself. I really wish it didn’t exist. That’s so different than saying it wouldn’t be art, for we have to leave room in our definitions for bad art, but I just wish that the object went poof no matter whether you call it art or not, which leaves the whole matter open for a qualitative inversion.

It’s like in the Moviegoer when Binx says, “What are generally considered to be the best times are for me the worst times, and that worst of times was one of the best.” It’s all a matter of definition. Sometimes we need really bad art to find out who we are. It’s only in contrasts that we find ourselves, something does, in fact come from nothing, rationality comes from irrationality. Maybe society needs that artwork to hold up over my head, lording it with the law, just so it can call itself good. Does that make sense? The thing is that a society needs to explain itself. It will do so at almost any cost, up to the point of allowing itself to be erased. Perhaps the piece is just what society needed to legitimate itself; a piece of art as a noble lie. No matter how you feel you have to admit that it’s a pretty appealing idea. Of course, you can’t criticize what the society is based upon, that’s just obvious; but what’s not always so clear is what that thing, that shibboleth, that society uses to legitimize itself, will be from era to another. It could be as simple as a shoe, or a boat, or a painting or a novel. Do you remember when it was a few oranges? Do you remember when society was simple enough that a few pieces of fruit could get us by? Those days are, of course, long passed now. We are so much more complicated. So infinitely much more advanced, but we still have to have that thing that gets us through on our way as a country from year to year, from President to President.

What happened, to make a long story short, was that they took me away. It turned out that it was illegal not to like what you were supposed to like. I know that that’s ridiculous, not at all the way we live now, but fortunately things have changed with the new administration.

I heard one of the guards say it, “If one person can dislike one thing then everyone can dislike everything. It’s that simple, society will absolutely fall apart. It’s really that simple. Society, well, our society at least, is based upon tolerance, tolerance of liking things, liking equality, liking freedom, liking the pursuit of happiness. It is not, and no one will tell you that it is, based upon disliking things.” That’s what really sealed my key in a locked high-performance Ziploc bag, I was ruining society, wasn’t I?

There was a short conversation and then I was locked up:

A: I don’t know what we’re going to do about it, he didn’t like it. I mean, there was no mistaking that—did you see his body language? It was like he was vomiting, but being polite about it.

B: I think we’re going to have to put him away.

A: Like jail? That’s too obvious. All these authors always want everyone to believe that art is dangerous, dangerous they say. Don’t you see, if we lock him up, art really will be dangerous, but not even for the artist, who I don’t know maybe it should be dangerous for, but for the person who’s looking at the art. I mean, I would never let on, or say anything to this, or even shrug my shoulders the wrong way, but I just don’t get a lot of it. (Whispering) In my opinion, and I want this to stay here, DADA really brought things down. I place the blame firmly on those folks. Of course, I’d never say it, but that stuff just doesn’t seem to do what art is supposed to do. I’m also just not quite sure we even remember how the locks work anymore. We haven’t put anyone away for so long. Usually everyone just goes along and likes what they’re supposed to like and acts how they’re supposed to act.

B: But we don’t really know what they’re thinking, not what they’re really thinking, do we?

A: No, I suppose we don’t. Maybe we never really know what anyone’s really thinking.

B: We just have to rely on what we see and what I saw was a direct assault on the decrees of the state that each subject like the artworks and styles outlined by the reigning power.

And then came the real kicker, they were scared themselves. I turned my head away so I didn’t know which one said it, but whichever one it was said, “We have a job and we can either lock that man up or we can let him free. If we let him free, sure it’ll be quite a metaphor, but two things, first we’ll be arrested ourselves and I really don’t want to be locked up just for not locking somebody else up and second, how are we to know that we’re right? I barely know the first thing about art, maybe it is universally beautiful and we just don’t get it, have you ever thought about that possibility?” I could tell that I had thrown the two poor guards into an existential crisis, but I’m really not here to apologize.

Look, it’s not as if I was caught unawares. I knew what I was going to see, what sort of thing it was, how people generally felt about that sort of thing. I won’t lie, saying anything else is just pure stubbornness, stubbornness unto death. Did I feel I was supposed to like it? Yeah, maybe a little bit. But that feeling made me not like it even more, when they tell you to like it. When you’re supposed to like it, it’s almost impossible. The bind of enjoyment.

But I’ve come to the realization that if you can’t hate you’re not a man because only men are in jail and the only reason you land in jail is because you hate. Catch the logic, the logic of hatred. Pretty clever, but it doesn’t end there. You don’t have to be in jail to hate, that’s for sure. The President, he’s a hater, because to win is to hate. I say they all hate. But there are huge incentives to stay quiet about our hatreds. Let’s say the President hates black people, does he want to alienate them and ruin his party’s chances for winning the White House again? No, of course not. The person who wins is the person who covers up his hate the best, because nobody likes an honest man, don’t you know Plato’s cave doesn’t really concern the nature of ultimate reality so much as it concerns our tolerance for our own humanity, that is, our tolerance for our own hatred. If we are devoted we are devoted to the shelter of our hatred, to never letting it be exposed, but excuse me I’m not a Freudian. I don’t think it will all blow up in our faces. I don’t believe in repression. I am committed to two beliefs in this area, one, that everyone has sex more or less the same amount, and two, that our kinks own us, own our asses to the bone. But whatever is is hated, spat upon, hated again and finally left to be. The real solution is not to begin by letting everything be, but if you want something to remain in the end, then you must begin by hating it with infinite virulence. What is left, this residue of humanity’s hatred, will be what will forever after stand for art. It is what will guide humanity forward, forward through the negativity of hatred, peeling off, ripping off, what came before, peeling even itself, until all is merely an objectified version of itself waiting for a subject to attach itself to.

In prison, yes I went to prison, I got really comfortable with my hatreds, really in touch with my inner hatred. I know that some of you out there feel like you have to like everything in order to be a good person. But I’m here to tell you that hating things is just as good. Behind bars, it was odd, incredibly odd, I just starting hating everything. It was as if my taste, my preferences, went haywire with society. I’m really just getting used to people thinking of me a critical, thinking of me as a hater. Before I went in for my stretch I was just the guy who said look at this, look at that, but now one thing can change me in their eyes, one thing before the law, am I only one thing? And I do hate, that’s the thing. I’m not very comfortable with it, but I hate, for God sakes, I hate. At first, I can say, I don’t understand it etc. etc. but when it comes down to it I hate, I really ended up being the hater.

Anyway, I really fucking hate sandwiches, they’re so stupid if you think about it, two pieces of bread pretending to be a meal. And windows, I hate them too, if you want to look outside, why don’t you just go outside. I’m going to smash every window in this whole fucking city. But windows aren’t enough, houses are another problem, an entirely separate problem, just advertising campaigns for the people who live inside (failed advertising campaigns, if you ask me, who wants granite countertops? And those shit-eating grins in those pathetic snapshots are enough to make you smash someone’s head in). It’s great to hate. I hate it when people hate when people go to McDonald’s. It’s completely classist. We should’ve gotten beyond that, but I guess some people are just routinely left behind by liberalism, like Christians. Along those same lines, I hate it when people look down on people who drink Coke for breakfast, it’s no more calories or sugar than a Caramel Macchiato. But I think it’s just a stand in for class and, maybe more to the point, for race. And I hate classism. I hate so much I no longer know what I’m talking about, I just know that I hate. I just know my hate.

The regime was miraculously toppled, however, when an earthquake rippled across the country and the populace blamed the government for a slow response to the disaster. In that situation, relief was not on the way. And it just so happened that the most effected were the poorest of the poor. This predicament left the regime in a politically disadvantageous state. I was finally released but my hatreds are intact.