Pretentious Manifesto on Criticism

“On Self Awareness”

My father, as a way of passing the elder torch, once advised me to take account of myself at all time while living. “Take a look in the mirror, reflect upon yourself, see who you are and what you’re doing.” He told me, basically, to stop living in the moment. He wanted me to be aware of myself.

Usually self-awareness is a crime in social settings. Not a felony but a misdemeanor. If you stop to observe your hand lifting a glass to your lips, or your friend’s observation of this moment, you risk disrupting the blissful ignorance of a moment lived. You yank it out from underneath itself, hold it up, and tell everyone conscious to look at it. It’s exposure, it’s naked, humiliating.

You can’t do this. You can skip around it, like so many do, covertly. Well-timed glances, peripheral vision (not necessarily of the kind employed by the lustful eye), and other forms of detection will allow you to catch life unawares. But what does that make you? Still aware, still stepped outside the moment.

The goal of self-awareness, as far as I can see, is reflection. If we can meditate upon a moment as it happens, we can sometimes draw up the insight one has when reading a book, watching a movie, even listening to an album. We can readily connect what we perceive with what we know from the past. This may not be polite form in social circles, but it is an important aspect of self-knowledge.

Certainly, we cannot be only focused on others and our environment. That would somehow turn a blind eye to ourselves. It would also encourage judgment far beyond what we could realistically and equitably eke out. It would also seem to ignore the strong possibility that others are sharing our aware moment, of their own perception no doubt, but just as aware. You cannot judge everything by its cover. Facial gestures and body language are only so revealing.

We should be primarily concerned with ourselves. That seems obvious enough on the face of the term “self-aware,” but, as I hope I showed above, it does not come without some perceptual boundary problems. Whenever we observe ourselves, we observe the world around us and all of its constituents. This makes it difficult to completely “zone” in on ourselves.

Perhaps the problem is not that we cannot zone in completely. Perhaps our observation of the world and its constituents is inherent in our observation of ourselves. To separate ourselves from that in which we inhabit seems flawed. A better approach is to accept that we cannot observe ourselves without observing our world – or, at least, perception of the world. The “world outside” and the “we inside” cannot be separated.

To be self-aware is to see the cracks in the foundation, the ugly side we like to hide. To be self-aware is to force oneself to be honest and not to look away. To be self-aware is to risk feeling hurt and exposed. To be self-aware takes courage.

What is the benefit of this? Critics, for example, deride what they see as self-aware art. If the artist shows his metaphorical hand, if those cards are placed face-up on the table, this takes away the aesthetic pleasure of experiencing art. It also defeats the learning process of art. In certain parlance, it tells and does not show.

But if the object of art were only to encourage living in the moment, then art would seem to encourage artists not to be aware of their own process. Is this the reason for the concept of a muse, a magical source of inspiration beyond the artist’s control, which simply seizes the artist’s brain and prompts him to create? Is it an intelligent designer, a greater artist than human minds can comprehend?

The point at which we claim not to have control may not be the point at which we actually acquiesce to powers greater than our own. It is one thing to believe you do not have control over your creative process and another to be actually swept into a moment of genius. But, whether the artist produces his art with a modicum of control or not, his observation of this process is possible and may yield greater self-reflection than to which one normally has access. If that reflection pours into his art and reveals something of the artist’s thoughts on his own art – indeed, his own self – then, so be it, from the angle of self-knowledge.

Criticism by its nature is too aware of the world and loses sight of the self. It is not surprising that a critic, though versed in theory he may very well be, would fall back on principles of distance from craft. A true critic should have nothing to do with the artistic process he is critiquing. A true artist should never be a critic of his own work. These are ideals – not fixed realities. If they were, we would not have produced many notable arts that have gone through multiple revisions before reaching the deemed final product. It’s not even obvious that the final product is without a degree of self-awareness. For example, an auteur of film is known for a readily identifiable and distinctive cinematic style or language that is used in most of his films. Certainly, Martin Scorsese is aware of his “rush pans,” imitated now by many directors. The director’s awareness of his technique that has successfully resonated with an audience does not undercut the art, though it may draw yawns of recognition from critics.

By losing sight of the self, and focusing “only” on the world, the critic operates under a flawed assumption of his point of observation. One cannot focus only on the world. Any focus on the world has a stowaway – the observer. So the critic aspires to what is commonly referred to as “objectivity” – namely, the ability to step outside yourself and your presence in the world and draw a conclusion informed only by the world. This is not only impossible; it is condescending. Some critics go so far as to tell the music listener which albums are the best of all time for everyone and which are only worth getting if you are a fan of the artist.

Our perceptions of the world are through our own nervous systems. Of course, we hope that the color red we perceive is the same as what is perceived by others. It would be interesting if one’s red is another’s blue and another’s blue is my yellow. But, whether our perception of the world is uniform or not, even assuming that it is (that our colors do not run), our nervous systems are probably unique. Biology has its variations, found in our fingerprints, straight down to our genes. The wear-and-tear of different lives, under respective pressures, has produced our different perspectives.

The most fascinating thing is when we do reach strongly unanimous opinions. Perhaps the media is to blame. Some critics, of the ivory tower variety, neatly forgetting the privilege of their own education (and however it was acquired), find little worth in the “lowest common denominator” of human experience. So, if the majority of people love the Beatles, it has less to do with the superior quality of the Beatles music, than with the effect of a highly successful marketing campaign and the fact that their songs are short, catchy, and unchallenging. Of course, one can apply this same definition of pop music – which it is – to Britney Spears, but many music fans and critics would find a significant gap in quality between the two artists. For an ivory tower critic, such as Piero Scaruffi, to find little difference suggests conscious blindness more than fair evaluation.

This does not mean to suggest that all music listeners, even the majority of them, must find something to like in the Beatles music. The point is not that people can’t dissent from the majority. The point is not even that, if the Beatles were not so popular, it would still be damning not to like them. The point is the approach, the underlying assumption. If we find fault in an artist because the work is “easy to like” or “unchallenging” then we need to examine why such attributes are less indicative of accomplishment or talent. We also need to understand if there are instances where popular art is not watered-down product. Most importantly, we have to challenge the notion of an attribute denominating good or bad by its very presence.

The example of the appeal of the Beatles is just a subset of the larger theme illustrated above. The bigger problem is that the critic attempts to rate the worth of art on behalf of others. And sometimes the critic goes so far as to presume what others should find valuable. It probably cannot be done. It can be attempted, though, and it does not slow down new contenders every year, some more perceptive and closer to the “feel” of the human condition than others. Perhaps the best in defending herself was Pauline Kael, whose film reviews were not so much matter-of-fact declarations, as they were well-reasoned and backed-up explanations why a film did or did not resonate with her. Indeed, by focusing on her own experience of the film, she more persuasively presented a case for agreement than if she had ignored her own bias in the matter.

Like people, every piece of art is good and bad. The only importance in judgment is degree: to what extent is something good or bad. But the most important consideration, beyond this critical necessity, is how we define what is good and what is bad. It is unlikely that certain attributes always point to something being good or bad. Certain attributes may tend to be good or bad, but that’s about as close to absolutes as we can get in judgment. Even innovation is not necessarily a positive trait in all instances. See “Balloon Music,” for example.

Hierarchy is not a friend of critical judgment. Genres, albums, songs, musicians – you name it – should not be listed in order of importance. Instead, the critic should offer favorites. Favorites can have their own degree of difference in the critic’s mind. Tiers are tenuous things really. Ask any music fan what their favorite albums are – they probably change yearly, if not monthly.

The fact that favorites are not constant should not cause worry or concern. People are disloyal. We never stop looking, so to speak. So we should not expect others not to keep looking themselves. Every once in a while, you may see what I see, but, in a nice twist, instead of competing with me for it (unless, of course, we’re vying for that one original LP of Faust), we share a moment of appreciation. The feeling that someone else enjoys what you enjoy, that communal euphoria, is an essential aspect of what makes art so enjoyable to its addicts.

For music to be enjoyed, to its fullest extent, one should devote their attention to it as much as possible. This is difficult to achieve in social parties. People want to chitchat or enjoy a meal. Maybe we compartmentalize too much in the West. Or, worse, you want to share that transcendent moment of bliss you achieved the night before with a colleague at work. You play the song on some web-streaming service, with crappy computer speakers, in the middle of the workday, during a really boring part of it at least. But you don’t quite get the reaction you were hoping for. There is too much distraction. And, if I could belabor my point, chances are your friend is too focused on “the world outside” – his supervisor, the work at hand, the eternal clock.

So, to fully appreciate art, you have to be aware of yourself. It is, after all, you who is enjoying the art. Have we gone off the deep end? Perhaps, this essay is about criticism. Perhaps it is about self-knowledge. Maybe, to be a good critic one has to be a self-aware person. But to be self-aware is the most trying of processes. Does it reach an endpoint? Probably not. The universe has no end, so why should we?

We have created two different categories: the self-realization of the artist and the self-realization of the critic.