Life Imitates Tentacles

[ecosophia]

Now and again, writers have the odd experience of seeing the world imitate their fictional creations in some unexpected way. I've worried from time to time that my novels Twilight's Last Gleaming and Retrotopia, with their portrayals (one on the scene, one retrospective) of the collapse of the United States, might fall into that category.  The thought that any of my tentacle novels would do so, on the other hand, was never something I considered. 

Guess what. 

In the fictive world of my tentacle novels, the latest thing in the arts is a Neoclassical revival -- a movement back toward traditional forms and traditional standards of craftsmanship, and away from the deliberage ugliness and pointlessness of the last century or so of modern art and music.  That surfaced in a minor way in The Weird of Hali: Kingsport -- I needed to make it plausible that Jenny Parrish would know her way around the Chaudronnier family art collection, and so had the Neoclassical movement reach Miskatonic University a few years previously, and spark new interest in the old masters. It moved to center stage in The Shoggoth Concerto and The Nyogtha Variations, where I took the hackneyed old trope of a young creative talent embracing the avant-garde and rebelling against the pressure to conform to the dead weight of fossilized tradition, and made my protagonist Brecken Kendall a young creative talent embracing tradition and rebelling against the pressure to conform to the dead weight of a fossilized avant-garde. 

And so what should a reader forward me but a good lively article about Jacob Collins, a New York painter who has rejected the standards of avant-garde art. He's painting beautiful, technically capable portraits, nudes, still lifes, and landscapes, and teaching scores of students how to do the same thing, using the methods of instruction that were standard a century and a half ago. Of course the art establishment has stonewalled him; as Morley Safer of Sixty Minutes fame, one of Collins' fans, pointed out cogently, "The current art establishment, the so-called gatekeepers, hate the kind of skill and craft and vision that an artist like Collins has." 

Another echo of the tentacular, even closer to my fictive creation, is the career of English musical prodigy Alma Deutscher, currently fifteen years old, a violinist, pianist, and composer who is already setting the musical world on edge by composing beautiful classical music using the traditional toolkit of harmony and tonality. Inevitably, she has been attacked for this by the gatekeepers of the musical establishment, and her response is much the same as Collins': "I think that these people just got a little bit confused. If the world is so ugly, then what's the point of making it even uglier with ugly music?" Yes, she's composed operas -- a short opera, The Sweeper of Dreams, based on a Neil Gaiman short story, and a full-length opera, Cinderella, which opened in Vienna to rave reviews and a standing ovation from the audience. While she hasn't yet composed any operas based on Lovecraftian themes, here's hoping.  ;-)

One way or another, though, if Great Cthulhu rises from the sea sometime soon, you know, I'll be a little less surprised...

Comments

We are all doomed now...

[(Anonymous)]

Resurgences in tonal music and representational art? You mean, fine arts which do not make the common person either cringe at or feel violently ill? Oh, the horror! The horror!!! Good gods – what have you let loose upon this world, JMG? 😊

Re: We are all doomed now...

[ecosophia]

Bwahahahahaha!

Wonderful!

[(Anonymous)]

Alma Deutscher is delightful. Thank you for bringing her to my attention.

I have a friend who did two years in art school in the US, only to conclude everyone was melting their brains with acid and other drugs to try to be original. He dropped out of college, worked part-time while continuing honing his skills in ceramics, and now has a teaching position in an art department at a university, without a degree.

Re: Wonderful!

[ecosophia]

That's very good to hear.

More timelines

[degringolade]

Since I like your fiction (even Salsha, just not as much), I was always curious about the timeline from Twilight to Retro to Stars Reach.

Are these histories connected? Where are we on the timeline (roughly) if you would be so kind

Inquiring minds want to know?

Since you seem to be pretty good at this prophecy thing of late, might as well get an idea of the spaciotemporal so we can factor it into decisions (or lack of same).

Be well....hope things are going well at the Greer residence.

Re: More timelines

[ecosophia]

They're not in the same timeline. In Twilight's Last Gleaming, the breakup of the US is peaceful, as a result of a runaway constitutional convention. In Retrotopia, it comes after four years of civil war. In Star's Reach, it follows the Second Civil War, but that's much later, and the US ends up divided into three major pieces -- Meriga, Nuwinga, and the coastal allegiancies -- plus a vast wasteland west of the Suri river, beyond which is Neeonjin country and the northwestern end of the Empire of Meyco. So it's three different timelines, all shaped by the breakup of the United States but in different ways -- and we'ree not on any of them.

[(Anonymous)]

I have a strong Pluto in my chart, so I've given that planet a lot of thought, and came to the conclusion the cult of ugliness and pointlessness is one of the many Plutonic elements of the modern world, so I suspect that the neo-Classical Revival is part of Pluto waning. First, the timing is awfully suspicious: it got started during the warm up period while Pluto established itself, and the cult of ugliness and pointlessness was without any real precedence, and quickly became global, both of which suggest the influence of the new planet. Furthermore, Pluto is the planet of death: death is often called a consumer, and so the consumer economy is likely Plutonic. The interesting thing about the consumer economy is that it removes the role of skill from living, leaving behind an empty void; and the cult of ugliness and pointlessness would seem to be a mirror of the emptiness within.

This seems to suggest as well we’re due for a major revival of religion as a cultural force: the rejection of the spiritual and wallowing in the material, insisting it is all there is, seems to me to be another example of the emptiness that Pluto leaves behind. So, while I don’t think Cthulhu will rise again in a literal fashion, metaphorically I think the case could be made... ;)

[ecosophia]

That's my view -- Pluto is the planet of opposition to cosmos, the beautiful order and/or ordered beauty of things (which is what the Greek word kosmos literally means. (It comes from the same root as "cosmetic.") As Pluto completes its fall from planetary status, what I've called Uglicism will fall with it, the way Romanticism fell from fashion once Ceres stopped being considered a planet.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe we should pass the nemyss for WoH boxed sets to send to Ms. Deutscher and Mr. Collins?

[(Anonymous)]

Note that none of this is new. The “high” art world has always been a real minority activity even among artists themselves, something played up by (1) conservative cultural critics who like it as a punching bag, (2) the exorbitant fortunes sometimes invested in it, which mostly derive from its value as a mobile token (i.e., money laundering, tax evasion, etc.)

Now, I’m no art critic, so I’m not here to say high art is good or bad. Some people really like it (I’m not among them) and good for them as with most niche tastes. But as a matter of fact it is more niche than tentacle fiction and probably even more niche than tentacle porn, not a Key Indicator Of Our Wretched Modern Culture. IMO.

[ecosophia]

From my perspective you're quite mistaken. Go visit the modern galleries of art museums, look at who gets (and doesn't get) grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, etc., etc. High art (or, as it more often deserves to be called, high arf) may be a niche phenomenon now in terms of how many people are willing to hold their noses and view it, but it has a dominant role in the official culture and in educational institutions. The fact that Collins and Deutscher are beginning to get favorable attention in the press shows that that's finally beginning to break down.

I thought you would like it...

[jpc2]

Some one had a pointer to 'Wrath on Gnon' on Twitter a week or so ago. There have been a LOT of things touching on things talked about here if sometimes indirectly.
(A lot better content than 'Devin Nunes Cow' - most of my OMB news:-)
By the time I finished the first paragraph or so, I was ready to put 'Sea Princes' aside and pull out 'The Shoggoth Concerto' and figured you would find it worth a read.

John

Re: I thought you would like it...

[ecosophia]

Thank you for it!

[kylec]

This imitation is strongly preferred to the previous ones!

[ecosophia]

I ain't arguing.

[(Anonymous)]

Way cool!

[ecosophia]

I ain't arguing there either!

[(Anonymous)]

Not Cthulhu but one of his many offspring perhaps? .....

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/rare-giant-squid-washes-shores-south-african-beach-180975138/

Orange Tangential Tulip/JLfromNH

[ecosophia]

Yep. Tentacles, tentacles everywhere!

[(Anonymous)]

When I started art school a few years back at Gage Academy I also noticed about Grand Central Atelier. Gage has been getting some very talented young students on their traditional “atelier” programs. Traditional art forms does seem to be building up momentum. Mexico City also has been booming with art lately and even though I also like some non representational and abstract paintings and even better the mix of them that was already happening before “modern art” became a thing. I do not get the object rejection of basic drawing and painting skills of “modern art” though. I have always thought it is just an excuse people with poor skills grab on to. Javier Marin, a Mexican sculptor, does this fantastic figures frozen in motion. It was him who got me into wanting to become an artist. The Florence Academy of Art where a big chunk of the academic method has been taught also seems to be having a revival.

So when I read that in WoH, Innsmouth I was of course delighted that it match my own experience. I hope it picks momentum fast. When I saw that Spain’s chosen artist to represent to country at the Venice biennale a while back was a women whose “art piece” was her pissing on a bridge in NYC I had lost hope for a second.

[ecosophia]

Most of this is excellent news. As for the Spanish "artist," I know dogs who are happy to perform the same kind of artwork on the nearest hydrant...

[methylethyl]

How delightful!

Once, when I was a mere lass, I wanted to be an artist. My first two years of college, I took all the art classes on offer. I took art history from the execrable "airport-sculpture" artist Roland Hockett, who all but accused me of plagiarism when I turned in my end-of-semester woodcut project. And then I quit art, because I wanted to make beautiful art. Paint portraits. And nobody was teaching anything like that. I had no idea how to find someone who could teach it.

I expect lots of people have done likewise. Just having people like Jacob Collins in the news, on the internet, somewhere, means it is now possible to find a teacher! And he is teaching! That is the best news I've read all year! I'm too old for it, but this means younglings coming up now... if they have a little patience and a search engine, they can find a teacher! :)

[ecosophia]

It may be too late for you to become a professional artist, but have you considered taking up something simpler -- drawing, watercolor, etc. -- presuming you don't do something of the sort already? It used to be that a very large percentage of people did such things as a matter of course, and it would be good to get back to that.

[(Anonymous)]

I am SO glad to hear about Jacob and Alma! There’s enough ugliness that just happens without people being paid to produce more. I hope they are the first of many.

What spooks me is when I’m reading the news about the latest U.S. military misadventures and suddenly General Nuisance is reading over my shoulder and he says something like “Great [god of war], are they TRYING to destroy their own empire?” He may not be familiar [yet] with religious warfare—in his dimension of reality, they’ve always had other things to fight about—but he can sure as heck read a map. I wish our PMC overlords could do the same.

I have a suggestion. Post pictures from this year’s potluck, showing a good time being had by all. You can always blur the faces of those who don’t want to be identifiable.

—Lady CK

[ecosophia]

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the problem with our soi-disant betters is that they literally can't imagine that the world can do something other than what they tell it to do. That's why the fact that Hillary Clinton lost has reduced so many of them to gibbering terror.

[kimberlysteele]

I remember being in my final year of music school back in the mid-90s. My friend, a foreign student, "performed" his final project onstage. He pushed a button on a glorified boom box and it made a bunch of fart noises. Some people were straight up laughing. Others were shifting uncomfortably in their seats trying to pretend it was good.

I liked him very much, so I did not tell him my honest opinion of his music. My thoughts were, "This is why I will never go to grad school."

A salary class friend who I grew up with fancied herself as a fine artist. She hated me from the first moment we met at age five for plenty of reasons, but one of the main ones was my musical talent. She never had much of an eye for art, so of course her artistic output turned towards the inscrutable, edgy, and menacing sort of crap that glorifies dingy, urban lifestyles she's only half willing to take part in. To put it harshly, she did not have that much talent to work with: not in writing, not in music, and not in design. What little talent she possessed was poured into the meaningless garbage I describe above. The resentment of this sort of impotent, unskilled "artist" is palpable.

The problem with most orchestral music is that it has become museum music.

As for Alma Deutscher, I hope she has something akin to her own piano show one day like Marian McPartland (RIP) used to host on public radio. For those who don't know that show, it was called Piano Jazz. Marian would host guest artists and they would improvise piano music together.

Outside of the jazz world, improvisation isn't common. That's why orchestral music is dying, despite a bazillion pressure-cooked children of affluenza throwing themselves at being a Violin Performance Major. I'd like to see that change, but I'm not holding my breath.

[ecosophia]

I think you've put your finger on a core motive behind Uglicism. It's easy to make ugly, meaningless, technically inept crap. It's not easy to make real art. If an educational system wants to reduce art training to pure credential-issuing -- the secret definition of art today, after all, is anything someone with an MFA produces, including their bowel movements -- you have to embrace Uglicism, because then the only standard is who paid for the scrap of sheepskin from which big name art school. Embrace beauty, and credentials become meaningless -- which is anathema to the managerial class.

A career in beauty

[(Anonymous)]

Some people have never forsaken beauty and structure in new music composition. Examples:
https://soundcloud.com/richard-emmet/isle-beyond-my-way
https://soundcloud.com/richard-emmet/morning-flowers-in-a-twilight-field

Re: A career in beauty

[ecosophia]

Of course. As noted above, the issue here is that they're starting to get some serious traction despite the pressure of the establishment.

The power of the imagination as a means to transmute Uglicism into art

[open_space]

Wind is changing! , as you said last year, just a few days before this video of hers at Carnegie Hall Siren Sounds Waltz was posted. I found her opening statement inspiring so here is a transcript.

"So, I tell you a little about the waltz that is coming now because it starts in quite a strange way and I don't want you to get a shock. When I moved to Vienna one of the first things that struck me was the sounds of the police sirens there, they sound very different from the whaling sirens like here in America. And when I had this Viennese siren I tried in my mind to continue it, as a melody, and since Vienna is the city of waltzes I thought I should turn it into a waltz melody. Now, I've always wanted to write beautiful music, music that comes out of the heart and speaks directly to the heart, but some people have told me that now a days melodies and beautiful harmonies are no longer acceptable in serious classical music because in the twenty first century music must reflect the ugliness of the modern world. Well, in this waltz, instead of trying to make my music artificially ugly in order to reflect the modern world I went in exactly the opposite direction. I took some ugly sounds from the modern world and I tried to turn them into something more beautiful, through music. The introduction starts of with the sounds of a noisy street, you'll here the Austrian police siren, but also the whaling sirens like in America, and, cars hooting, so really a complete cacophony. But then, after a short while, the noise of the street dies down and the imagination takes over and in the imagination I take this ugly police sirens and try to turn them into something more beautiful, perhaps more in the direction of the sirens in the Odyssey."

I think she definitely took a hint from tentacled novels that came out of turning something on its head!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0xMpLXQNvM

Re: The power of the imagination as a means to transmute Uglicism into art

[ecosophia]

Nice! Thanks for this.

Beauty and kids

[(Anonymous)]

This is timely and I was so encouraged to see this! I have been wondering about the popular impulse to offer ugliness to children. I had an indignant encounter with a "Pete the Cat" bestseller and have never really recovered! I just don't understand the appeal.

For more life imitating art, the blogger Leila Lawler has been promoting groups that I think are similar to Circle in the Star's Reach series. (I may be off on the details because I read those parts of the book as blog posts years ago.)
She calls them St. Gregory's Pockets, and they are directed at mothers and focused on building community, including mutual support systems in cases like illness or having a new baby.
http://likemotherlikedaughter.org/st-gregory-pockets/

She is staunchly Roman Catholic so divergent in some views, but I think she has a long view about human culture that has some similarities. She even has a son-in-law that has trained in classical painting!

Re: Beauty and kids

[ecosophia]

I'm glad to hear this. When I wrote Star's Reach I thought it was likely that the mainstream religion in 25th-century Meriga would derive some of its cultural DNA from Wicca, thus the form Circle took in that book. Now I'm pretty sure Wicca's going the way of Spiritualism and Theosophy, so I'm glad Ms. Lawler is picking up the slack.

[kimberlysteele]

My salary class contemporaries became sealed in their resentment of me when I wrote my first novel, and then a second, a third, and a fourth. That's another thing I wasn't supposed to be able to do with zero formal training and parents who didn't come from money. All their lives they are told that art is the highest and most desirable of callings, so when they fail to produce art with any spark, it's yet another axe to grind on the wheel of entitlement.

Unfortunately, outside of the Austria-Germany bubble, orchestral music has it rough because it has become irrelevant to the way people live their lives. I explain this a bit better in this essay: https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/9917.html
People don't understand that Bach was famous for making up music on the spot and so was Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin. In a concerto -- I'm sure you know this because of The Shoggoth Concerto -- the Coda or Codetta was an often entirely improvised ending.

Personally, I would like to see the revival of folk music. I see a great many (typically) young people who do Youtube covers of pop songs -- that counts as folk music in my opinion and is a positive sign. The element I'd like to see brought back full force is improvisation because that is what has always kept music alive. The reason jazz hasn't stagnated like opera has is because improvisation is built in and the old songs are always being rearranged. Musical theater was a vital, opera-ish form and then COVID took that away. I don't know what the aftermath will be.

[ecosophia]

As I recall, Bach was able to improvise fugues on the spot on a theme somebody gave him right then and there, which is like playing four games of blindfold chess at once and winning them all. He was an astonishing guy. I'm sorry to say, though, that I've heard a lot of stagnant jazz -- as usual, the problem is that the players don't know the classic forms, and so they noodle around pointlessly.

[amonha]

This trend is refreshing and welcome. Frank Zappa used the rock band thing as a vehicle to provide money for his true love of composition for orchestra. Though not entirely neoclassical it was certainly not WAP. His influences were eclectic but he was a brilliant composer.
Of course the CIA's influence on the modern art scene is fairly well documented. Just more of Operation MindF***.
Trey Anastasia of Phish once stated that phans were so rabid that he could sh*t in their ears and they would think it was the greatest thing. I have known many and I would say he was right.
May the true arts return, may reeds and strings fill our ears, may craftsmen hew stone and wood to reap great architecture and functionality, may the great ones return in times of need.

[ecosophia]

Refreshing and welcome indeed. Thank you for this.

[amonha]

One of the most beautiful concerts I have ever experienced was in the Quetico Provincial Park on a canoeing trip.
Loons were calling in a most measured and melodious way. In the distance a wolf pack responded to them in kind. It was late at night and I had been asleep. I got up, climbed out of the tent and the Aurora Borealis was dancing in its etherical yellows and greens. The back and forth of the loons and wolves coupled with the sight before me left me in mesmerized.The call and response lasted for a good ten minutes. I was not sure if the loons and wolves were responding to the Aurora Borealis or if it was responding to them... It was hauntingly beautiful and earth shattering. One of those moments. They go on all the time around us begging for our attention. Calling us back.

[inavalon]

What a lovely moment! Thank you for the reminder to pay attention.

Synchronously, late this afternoon, I was cleaning windows on my front porch (the California plague of wildfires has deposited a fine black dusting of ash over everything). I suddenly became aware of the melodic twittering of an unusual convocation of small birds in a nearby tall, dying pine tree. I could not see the birds, only heard their voices, eerie and beautiful. Usually the tree is the favorite perch of crows, hawks, or owls. But today a group of passerines held an enchanting concert.

[booklover1973]

There is an interesting synchronity between Trump Derangement Syndrome and the reaction of the establishment against beautiful art; the cultural shifts bound up with that and the current pandemic promise profound change which we didn't realize even a few years back was coming.

[ecosophia]

That's an excellent point, and one I'll be brooding over. It may be the same reaction applied in two different fields...

I Wanted To Learn How To Do Real Art Since I Was A Kid...

[(Anonymous)]

About 15 years ago I stumbled onto Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art (https://laafa.edu/) via their table at San Diego Comic-Con, of all places. They teach the classical techniques of drawing and painting. They hold classes on the weekends as well as having full-time programs, so I was able to take several classes there.

My favorite teacher was Rey Bustos, the anatomist, who also teaches at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. If you ever take a class from Rey, bring your camera so that you can capture his gorgeous, evanescent chalk drawings of anatomy.

I'm not sure if LAAFA are still as solidly in the camp of classical art techniques these days, but if you are in any kind of radius of Van Nuys, California (just over the ridge to the north of LA), check them out.

Lovely waltz by Alma Deutscher. The opening bars reminded me of the time I heard a mockingbird singing the car alarm ditty. A police siren, or even a car horn, sounds better when played by a violin.

- Cicada Grove

Re: I Wanted To Learn How To Do Real Art Since I Was A Kid...

[ecosophia]

Hmm! Good to see this.

[(Anonymous)]

We will know this battle is over when it becomes the overwhelming social consensus that yes, Alfred Munnings produced better paintings than Pablo Picasso.

I was expecting this not to happen until towards the end of the 21st Century, but it looks like it may be sooner...

[ecosophia]

I expect it by 2050. Munnings had a limited visual repertoire but he was very, very good at what he did! Picasso, on the other hand, squandered his considerable talent on a series of mediagenic fads.

[(Anonymous)]

A comment from a non-blog-reader to whom I sent the good news about art links. She said about the first one, "...some of Florence’s best art came out of plague, fire, and political intrigue…" and "The Medicis would certainly recognize the setup!"

And about the other, "Well, I guess Mozart tried reincarnating as a girl this time…😊But wow!"

Relayed to you by The Grey Badger.

[ecosophia]

Good! I doubt it's Mozart, though -- just another soul who took the same route he did, through a whole bunch of lives.

Art Atelier in NE Minnesota

[(Anonymous)]

We have a similar type art academy here in Duluth, MN. I know the founder casually. He is a good, kind and serious teacher, turning out some good painters.

https://greatlakesacademyoffineart.com/

Re: Art Atelier in NE Minnesota

[ecosophia]

I'm delighted to hear this. That's the future of art -- not the pretentious nonentities being lauded by the art establishment these days, whose works are so incompetent they need artists' statements to explain them.