A Little Illumination

Sometimes a moment of ‘Dynamic Quality’ [1.] and an idea one is presented with in a more static or formalised fashion, seem to illuminate each other rather neatly, and with fortuitous coincidence.

The Hockley Arts Club, Hockley, Nottingham, December 2015.  (Photo: Lorel Manders)

The other night, as part of the pre-festive social round, I found myself with a handful of good friends in one of Nottingham’s more happening bars.  ‘The Hockley Arts Club’ is a recent addition to that city’s nightlife and, by all account, very much the place to go, (this month, at least).  If nothing else, that name feels like a considerable stroke of Post-Modernist savvy.

To be honest, being amongst the cool kids was never really paramount in my conception of a good night out, (although being at least on nodding acquaintance with them might have been a secret tangent to my ambitions to attend Art College, all those years ago).  Either way, just being out in convivial company at all, feels like achievement enough these days.

Not sure what happened here, but wine had been taken.  (Photo: Suzie Fletcher).

Over the years, I’ve tended to the view that the best hangouts or ‘scenes’ acquire their resonance through a kind of mysterious, indefinable chemistry, rather than by conscious design or fashion, and that such things are spontaneous, unpredictable and highly subjective, anyway.  Mostly, I was more than happy to just go somewhere new, following the flow of the evening, regardless of the supposed attendant cache.

The Hockley Arts Club, Hockley, Nottingham, December 2015.  (Photo: Lorel Manders).

In the event, I was impressed by the way that, whilst attending to various current ‘Hipster’ tropes, the chosen venue’s designers had managed to create an enjoyable and genuinely comfortable ambience at the same time.  Entertainingly, the overall décor style was distinctly reminiscent of the diluted, mid-Twentieth Century, high street Modernism that characterised my own childhood, and I’d have to compliment whoever was responsible for their stylish deployment of G-Plan furniture, kitsch, chain-store paintings and spider plants - suspended in macramé. (They are a specific historical signifier that takes me right back to where I started).  One particularly impressive aspect of the overall effect was the carefully considered ambient illumination, emanating, in part, from domestic light fittings that might have graced any of the living rooms in which I found myself during the early-to-mid 1970s.

Davis Bowie, 'Young Americans', (Including The Single, 'Fame').

Amongst the unidentified (but perfectly acceptable), Funk and Hip Hop with which we were regaled, was a familiar record that brought home equally my formative years, - namely, David Bowie’s ‘Fame’ [2.].  I don’t actually own any Bowie records these days, but it would be foolish to pretend he wasn’t a significant feature of the Pop-cultural landscape back then, as a shaper of some of the period’s most memorable songs.  His general approach, as rather more of a knowing Bricollagist, than a natural, organic musician, also felt appropriate in the context in which we were currently hearing it.

Even so, as I discussed how cleverly the record’s Cubist Funk elements had been consciously assembled, with my friend Suzie, I couldn’t deny that much of the actual magic just came from hearing it afresh, unexpectedly ‘in the moment’, after years of probably taking much of Bowie’s output relatively for granted.  It is, if you like, the difference between what you know about a record objectively, and how it makes you feel subjectively in a particular situation. (Duh! - that’s the whole point of Pop music, I hear you cry).

I thought about this again the following morning, whilst reading ‘Lila’ [3.], - Robert M. Persig’s sequel to the more famous, (and really rather splendid), ‘Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance’ [4.].  These two books constitute a form of pop-philosophical investigation into the idea of ‘Quality’ and are, essentially, Persig’s attempt to constitute some form of Value-based Metaphysics.  Persig sees this as being in opposition to the binary subject/object concepts of ‘Reality’ that have, (in his view), plagued our understanding since classical times.

That might sound a little daunting, were both books not written in a very approachable, quasi-novel form, and if they didn’t also include large elements of personal history, psychological insight and some useful stuff on constructive approaches to practical tasks, such as - indeed, repairing a motorcycle.  Appropriately, each is also an account of a specific journey.  Conversely, it might be easy enough to dismiss Persig’s thinking, (and slightly hokey world view), as just another product of the 60s and 70s counter-culture.  However, it appears that, whilst not exactly on the syllabus of many serious Philosophy courses, neither is it actually derided by many specialists in the field.  There exist quite serious examinations of ‘ZAMM’ by people far more thoroughly versed in the subject than I [5].

Robert Persig, (With His Son, Chris), Aboard The Very Motorcycle.  (Photographer Unknown).

Anyway, this isn’t the place for an in-depth discussion on either work.  Suffice it to say, whilst I certainly won’t be donning saffron robes anytime soon, (or, I suspect, ever), there’s a lot of stuff in ‘ZAMM’ that I find fascinating, philosophically, and it’s a book I’ve turned to repeatedly over the years.  I’m only halfway through ‘Lila’, so can’t comment too meaningfully on it here, although it does appear to develop Persig’s original idea of the Value underpinning his perception of, well - everything, in terms of a distinction between ‘Dynamic’ and ‘Static Quality’. If nothing else, the following passage, (read with a mild hangover the morning after), does seem to relate, in part, to some of my earlier observations re. Bowie’s ‘Fame’…

"...imagine that you walk down a street past, say, a car where someone has the radio on and it plays a tune you've never heard before but which is so good it just stops you in your tracks.  You listen until it's done.  Days later, you remember exactly what the street looked like when you heard that music.  You remember what was in the store window you stood in front of.  You remember what the colours of the cars in the street were, where the clouds were in the sky above the buildings across the street, and it all comes back so vividly you wonder what song they were playing, and so you wait until you hear it again.  If it's that good you'll hear it again because other people will have heard it too and have had the same feelings and that will make it popular.

"One day it comes on the radio again and you get the same feeling again and you catch the name and you rush down the street to the record store and buy it, and can hardly wait until you can get it home and play it.

'You get home.  You play it.  It's really good.  It doesn't quite transform the whole room into something different but it's really good.  You play it again.  Really good.  You play it another time.  Still good, but you're not so sure you want to play it again.  But you play it again.  It's okay but now you definitely don't want to hear it again.  You put it away.

"The next day you play it again, and it's okay, but something is gone.  You still like it, and always will, you say.  You play it again.  Yeah, that's sure a good record.  But you file it away and once in a while play it again for a friend and maybe months or years later bring it out as a memory of something you were once crazy about.

"Now, what has happened?  You can say you've gotten tired of the song but what does that mean?  Has the song lost its quality?  If it has, why do you still say it's a good record?  Either it's good or it's not good.  If it's good, why don't you play it?  If it's not good, why do you tell your friend it's good?

If you think about this question long enough, you will come to see that the same kind of division between Dynamic Quality and static quality that exists in the field of morals also exists in the field of art.  The first good, that made you want to buy the record, was Dynamic Quality.  Dynamic Quality comes as a sort of surprise.  What the record did was weaken for a moment your existing static  patterns in such a way that the Dynamic Quality all round you shone through.  It was free, without static forms.  The second good, the kind that made you want to recommend it to a friend, even when you lost your own enthusiasm  for it, is static quality.  Static Quality is what you normally expect."  [6].

Pleasingly, it seems that the process can work the other way round, and that the Dynamic Quality of a record may be restored given the right conditions.

I'm also led to reflect that, often, the serendipitous connections between apparently unrelated events are more than enough to be going on with, being a form of Dynamic Quality in themselves.

The Hockley Arts Club, Hockley, Nottingham, December 2015.  (Photo: Suzie Fletcher).

Postscript:

It amuses me that everyone else's photos from the evening feature the members of our little party cavorting merrily, and will probably end up on Facebook.  Meanwhile, those I've chosen to illustrate events focus on neon signage and retro light fittings, and may go no further than this.  Images of my own face have been pretty few and far between on here over four years, suggesting my own relationship with internet 'fame' may be ambivalent, to say the least.  

[1.], [3.] & [6.]:  Robert M. Persig, 'Lila: An Enquiry Into Morals', New York, Bantam Publishing, 1991

[2.]:  David Bowie, 'Fame', (D.Bowie / J. Lennon), RCA, 1975.  (It's surprisingly easy to forget that Bowie co-wrote the song with John Lennon, with whom he also shares vocals on the original recording).

[4.]:  Robert M. Persig, 'Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry Into Values', New York, William Morrow & Co., 1974.

[5.]:  Those keen to explore different perspectives on Persig's work and philosophical world view are directed to  http://www.moq.org .