Beyond the Threshold It’s great, isn’t it, to r…
Beyond the Threshold
It's great, isn't it, to rediscover something shattering? In 1985, I bought the double LP Zen Arcade by H?sker D?.Listening to it this afternoon, with my PC refusing to allow me to damage my ears, I am struck by how vital it remains. If anyone?s surpassed the combination of angst-ridden, visceral vocals and compelling melodic drive, then I want to hear it. Nirvana are S Club Juniors in comparison. Amazon kindly provides samples: so listen to ?Somewhere? or ?Beyond the Threshold?, and compare it to ?Never Talking to You Again?. Scorching.
Still, no matter how much one is thrilled by Amazon?s resources, and indeed that of the entire World Wide InterWeb thingy, there remains a suspicion that the expansion of culture ? its glorious, overwhelming accessibility ? is in fact its contraction. This is not to repeat the ?more means worse? snobbery voiced in post-War years by, among others, (Kingsley) Amis and Philip Larkin, but the fear that in its very abundance Culture with a captial C counters any possibility of internal contestation. H?sker D? made an impact, I suppose, yet nothing compared to earlier artists. Amazon?s customers refer to ?Zen Arcade? as one of the great Punk records, but what is Punk if not the destruction of such plaudits? What we have now is innumerable bands, artists, writers, producing works that strive desparately for attention only to be swallowed up in the furious revolving doors of consumer culture. Hence the fascination with celebrity, subject matter and gossip rather than the work itself (who has time?), and commentators feeling compelled to discuss cultish works because it is what everyone is talking about. (And the BBC?s Cultural Commissar Mark Lawson denounces literary types for being self-reflexive!)
Art is radically distant from such chat and critical reception (i.e. dismissal). This is not, however, to advocate only Bob Mould?s tonsil-torturing violence. A wounding silence is as valid; think of Samuel Beckett. We must demand and desire works that exceed the constituency of a cult. So too those that ache to return, in some self-pitying, nostalgic swoon, to a more innocent time; think of modern-day Dickenses. Instead, art should be that which contests the eviscerating freedom we are being force-fed, and perhaps thereby open a space outside, beyond the threshold of understanding. Whatever that means.
