Blame It on the Black Star

Four angles on the question, what’s it all for?

What do an “academic” essay in the LA Review of Books; an announcement from one of my favorite newsletter writers, Noah Kalina, that he “needs to take a break;” a family visit to art studios on Camano Island; and Gillian Welch’s cover of a Radiohead song have in common?

Oddly enough, they all help me think through the question I never stop asking, namely: “What’s it all for?” 

“Cultural Dopes”

Adam Mastroianni, a postdoctoral research scholar at the Columbia Business School, recently wrote about the lack of originality in pop culture in his essay, “Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly” (on his excellent Substack called Experimental History).

He notes: “In every corner of pop culture—movies, TV, music, books, and video games—a smaller and smaller cartel of superstars is claiming a larger and larger share of the market.” Part of the problem is that so much of this content is distributed via just a few giants, and there’s so much damned content on these giants that we allow their algorithms to choose what we consume—and this favors their interests over our own, allowing them to monetize our attention and turn it into profit. 

So what happens when so few claim the attention of so many? Many of us turn into what GD Dess calls “cultural dopes,” in an essay in the LA Review of Books. Cultural dopes, writes Dess, are people like me and you who consume and create pop cultural artifacts (like songs, paintings, and this essay) “under the illusion that what they are creating or consuming … is new.” We’re wrong, implies Dess, because in our advanced capitalist culture there really is nothing substantially new, only recreations and echoes and pastiches of the past. We’re awash in content, but none of it matters, because all of it exists merely to feed the corporate content machine—and thus we’re at an impasse. Artists and creators are trapped inside this dynamic, and thus the best they can hope for is to “deliver the experience of a sense of freedom or pleasure. The freedom is of course nothing more than illusion, and the pleasure in any case is transitory. At least it’s something,” he concludes bleakly.

Mastroianni holds out more hope, suggesting that “there’s a cure for our cultural anemia.” Urging people to broaden their taste in content beyond the corporate-produced fare, he argues that “Every strange thing, wonderful and terrible, is available to you, but they’ll die out if you don’t nourish them with your attention.” He’s an advocate for looking around for the obscure and the undiscovered, and his advice echoed in my head over the last few weeks, as I paid attention to the complexities of creating and consuming original content—that mission that Dess warns us is so hopeless.

“I Need to Take a Break”

Part of the problem is that the mediums where we share content these days don’t value quality or originality; they value novelty and data—likes, views, comments, subscribers, copies sold, etc.—data that eventually equates to dollars. But what happens to creators who can’t yet (and may never) generate the numbers that the market prizes? Are they “cultural dopes”¹ (or Dess’s even darker suggestion, “useful idiots”?) If so, it’s no wonder that sometimes they simply throw up their hands in frustration or impatience or despair. But that’s a huge loss for us.

One of my favorite artists/creators is a guy named Noah Kalina. I ran across his newsletter, instantly subscribed (here’s the archive if you want to go look around), and was just blown away by the quality of his photographs but, even more so, by the way he understood and captured time in words and pictures. Without fail, his weekly newsletter has given me a lift—a glimpse of beauty and understanding.

One of Kalina’s specialties is photographing landscapes sequentially over long stretches of time, at different times of day and year. I could go on about what I like best, but you should just go check out his stuff yourself: www.noahkalina.com

#27 of 30 from The River, Noah Kalina

So imagine how I felt when I received Newsletter #130, a melancholy piece about visiting an Eagle Observation Area outside Barryville, NY, but only spotting a turkey. His essay concludes with the announcement that he needs to take a break and doesn’t know when he’s coming back. (There was no “poor me” about it, but I could sense the frustration. Kalina felt like a cultural dope and he didn’t like it. Who would?)

He’s not the only newsletter writer or artist who chafes at the loneliness and frustration and poverty involved in creating art in a world awash in corporate-owned and controlled content. Anybody can create a newsletter, anyone can publish a video on Youtube, anybody can share their art on Instagram–but who can make a living on them? Hell, who can even find an audience of appreciative readers/viewers? The act of finding enough people to render your art a commercial success is grinding and demoralizing, and very different from the joy of creating. (For just a taste of how another Substack creator who I admire expresses this dilemma, check out Amy Yuki Vicker’s recent post from her Substack, which I really enjoy.)

These two people (and many more, I trust you’ll grant me) seem to think that what they’re doing isn’t enough to make it worth it. They very much feel the sting of being a “cultural dope,” a sucker in a game they can’t win. But why do we have to define winning this way? 

The 2022 Camano Island Studio Tour

Through a happy coincidence (my mom and the kid’s partners were all out of town), our nuclear family gathered on Mother’s Day, and after eating a delicious breakfast the kids made, we all hopped in the Volvo to go visit five art studios that were part of the Camano Island Studio Tour.

We saw some art. Some of it was mediocre, some of it was very well executed (Barbara Noonan’s pastels and Amanda Pearson’s work with embroidery floss), and one of these artists (Jack Gunter) possessed a really unique perspective on the world. I love to see how other people view the world! But what I also see when I look at art these days is the labor that artists put into their work; how bloody hard it is to be truly original; and just how difficult it is to price and sell the fruit of your labors. That is, I see the art, but I can’t help but see the agony of engaging with the market.

Kalakala, Jack Gunter

My views are surely a product of watching my wife, Sara, who committed herself to being a full-time artist over a year ago (after a lifetime of yearning). Like these artists, Sara devotes hours and hours to her work, and when she is not painting she’s reading or watching videos about how to paint. So I know what it takes to create art. I know what it takes in the cost of materials and I know what it costs in labor.

And then I look at the price tags and I compare it to the work involved and I realize that these talented people might be making $10 to $20 an hour for their work, if they are making any money at all. And not just that, many of them are opening their studio homes to strangers for seven hours a day over two weekends, watching strangers trudge through and look at their art and then walk out without buying a single thing. I doubt they’d describe it as “humiliating”—I’m sure they are getting compliments and having some nice conversations—but I suspect it’s galling to realize that they’ve poured their hearts and souls into creating art and this is the result. Is this the feeling of being a “cultural dope”?

I came away from the tour realizing how many people create good work and how few create great or original work, and also how difficult it is to make money creating visual art. If “greatness” or recognition or riches are what artists are after, it’s a long hard ride. (No wonder so many people decide to sell their labor for the highest dollar and forsake the idea of deep engagement with their work.)

But if you’re able to create simply for the intrinsic satisfaction of the work, and if you’re satisfied with the occasional pleasure of having someone tell you that you helped them see the world differently or brought beauty to their life, you may find what you’re after. You just have to harden yourself to it. As Gillian Welch put it in her song “Everything Is Free”: “We’re gonna do it anyway / even if it doesn’t pay.” 

“Blame It on the Black Star”

While I’ve been entertaining these thoughts, there’s been a song bouncing around in the back of my mind. It’s not your typical ear worm. Usually, when I get an ear worm, it’s poppy and upbeat, something like “Adore You” (Harry Styles) or “Happy” (Pharrell Williams) or hell, let’s go way back, “Beat It” (Michael Jackson). I play the song and it goes away.

But not “Black Star.” “Black Star”—the version I like best, by Gillian Welch—is slow, a little mournful, and good god, listen to the lyrics: it’s about loving a depressed person, trying to figure them out, and eventually losing them. You should give it a listen on Spotify:

or on YouTube:

Now, I’m a fan of sad songs. Sara will tell you (hell, she may even complain) that despite my generally sunny disposition, I listen to the saddest, most mournful songs, often in a minor key, and this one is no exception. I don’t deny it—but I think it’s because I can handle sadness in a song better than I can in other media.

So partly I’m digging this song’s poignant way of expressing sadness—but that’s not all of it. It’s also vexingly difficult to sing, and I find that really intriguing. The way Gillian Welch sings the song (and her bandmate Dave Rawlings plays it) defies my expectations about pacing, especially the way she sings this one lyric: “Blame it on the falling sky,” and most importantly, the word “falling.” It should be a two-syllable word—and yet in her singing it stretches out to three, maybe four syllables, spanning 1:10 to 1:14 in the version I linked above. Her phrasing captures yet another layer of feeling, because the falling goes on and on. (The best thing I’ve found about her recording of “Black Star” is in this article, and if you like it, you ought to also go read her description of writing “Everything Is Free” in Rolling Stone.)

The original of “Black Star” appears on Radiohead’s 1995 album The Bends. I do like the version that’s on the album,

but even more I like this live acoustic version that songwriter and lead singer Thom Yorke recorded in Stockholm, Sweden, which feels closer to the emotional complexity caught in Gillian Welch’s version.

(There are a bunch of other covers, which I chased down to see if there’s anyone else who did a version that opened the song further. I won’t belabor this: there’s not. The version by Jade Bird is pretty good, as a cover of the Gillian Welch version. It’s solid but not as emotionally complex. Good god, covers fascinate me!)

So here I am, two weeks later, still singing this song in my head and out loud, again and again. It’s gone beyond an ear worm—it’s a song that captures something deeply complex and emotional that I don’t know how to render to myself in any way other than a song.

And isn’t that the beauty of music, indeed of art in general, that it can express our deepest human emotions and insights, even when it’s not about us, not about our experience? Art—the art we create and the art we consume—can give us a glimpse of the divine. Creating and seeking such art does not make us, or anyone, “cultural dopes.” It makes us better humans. 

Isn’t that “what it’s all for”?

1. I am over-simplifying the term “cultural dopes” here, for the purposes of my argument, but I’d strongly urge you to go check out Dess’s essay—I think it’s quite interesting and provocative.