All-Consuming Hate Kills the Artist’s Creativity

Anon La Ply said:
As you know, Todd, life isn't always pretty. I'd rather not dwell on that side of life but I acknowledge it like I acknowledge other entropic forces like disease and natural disasters.

The subcultures exist, and their musicians serve more of less the same function for the subcultures as forum members do in broader society, or within their own subcultures.

Within the context of their subcultures, I'd be surprised if all fascist musos would fail to be creative, although you'd expect despite the hate rather than through it. Still, hate can provide an energy source just as other strong emotions do that are found everywhere in music like love, lust, disaffection, happiness, sadness, passion, determination, fear, trust, jealousy, relief, disappointment, etc.
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You and I differ sharply here. Including virulent, primitive racists, and participants in genocide as just other partners of the community of man is highly strange-- I'm not sure whether we call that liberal nihilism or nihilist liberalism.

gdmoore28 said:
When that day comes (and it will), would you rather be in the foxhole with Ted Nugent or Bruce Springsteen?
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PERFECT. I hereby award you The Most Ridiculous Thing Ever Said On The Internet Ever And, Obviously, That Is REALLY Saying Something trophy. Wow.

Looks like Scott misjudged the popularity of all-consuming hate. Really looking forward to the mods closing this POS thread.
 
JustJames said:
That's quite an over-reaction you've got there.

I made a tongue in cheek comment based on a comment I remember BillRay making months ago.

My post was not a statement; it merely reflected BillRay's comment that he gets on better with people when politics is left out of the discussion.

And let's face it, with Ted Nugent being (according to Wikipedia) "noted for his conservative political views and advocacy of hunting and gun ownership rights. He is a board member of the National Rifle Association and a strong supporter of the Republican Party." There's a lot there that a person could argue with, without saying anything nasty about Ted Nugent.

Note: I am highlighting known aspects of Mr Nugent's public persona, not commenting on them.

And now, back to our scheduled programming...
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you got some agenda there, man. I know folks on the left sneek it in whenever they can and blame everyone else saying "your over reacting" no I'm pointing out your ignorance because that's what it is.
I guess I would be pissed if me and my countrymen let our government just rob us of our right to bear arms (Australia). must be a real BUMMER.
 
toddbishop said:
Hate as a creative emotion is a major tenet of fascism, so I'm wary of people defending it in the arts. If you want to talk about angst or political rage, fine, those are different things-- and it's still not easy to make good work where they are the main foreground thing. A few people have been able to do it. But actual hate is to me just skinhead music, or Hutu musicians writing songs encouraging people to go out and literally murder their Tutsi neighbors en masse with knives. It's ugly.
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Well, you are using a narrow definition of the word, but that is not the only meaning, nor the most common meaning. Here is the primary dictionary definition:

1. to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest:

That definition could apply to many people's feelings about many things, and certainly the word "hate" is bandied about just as much as the word "love." As in, 'I hate this,' 'I love that,' etc. That doesn't mean the user is expressing fascism or marital intentions.

toddbishop said:
Looks like Scott misjudged the popularity of all-consuming hate. Really looking forward to the mods closing this POS thread.
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Open hostility towards the free expression of ideas is a great way to kill creativity, and your eagerness to censor ideas you disagree with puts you in the company of the aforementioned fascists.
 
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Brian said:
True, Morello was definitely an anarchist at some point though. Either way, they're on the libertarian left side of the spectrum - maybe not "all the way". :) But my point stands - absolute freedom, equality, justice...aren't exactly hateful topics.
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No, those are not hateful topics, but how would you describe the band's feelings toward the "machine" they were raging against?
 
Anon La Ply said:
Still anything that's "all-consuming" and not positive wont help an artist, be it all-consuming hate, fear, depression, addiction, etc. By definition it consumes "all", so I guess that means it consumes creativity too, along with sex drive, happiness, etc.
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Sure, I guess an argument could be made that "all-consuming" anything will kill creativity, because you've limited yourself to exploring just one thing, but I don't see why "hate" should be singled out on that measure. Moreover, while an "all-consuming" approach may limit creativity, that doesn't mean it won't be successful. Such an approach is often referred to as a formula, and many bands have gotten a lot of traction out of this approach. Genres like Death Metal and Goth inhabit some dark places, but what might seem "all-consuming" could just as well be described as a formula, and they do find audiences. And where would Morrisey be as an artist if he were not free to wallow in his depression, and how would his fans react if he suddenly became super-positive and loving? I expect they would be horrified.
 
toddbishop said:
PERFECT. I hereby award you The Most Ridiculous Thing Ever Said On The Internet Ever And, Obviously, That Is REALLY Saying Something trophy. Wow.
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I humbly accept your award, and the choice of the academy. I would like to thank all of those who made this honor possible . . . . :)

GeeDeeEmm
 
boomstick said:
Well, you are using a narrow definition of the word, but that is not the only meaning, nor the most common meaning. Here is the primary dictionary definition:

1. to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest:

That definition could apply to many people's feelings about many things, and certainly the word "hate" is bandied about just as much as the word "love." As in, 'I hate this,' 'I love that,' etc..
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I thought the adjective "all-consuming" made it clear that we're not talking about it on the level of "I hate Tofurkey."

boomstick said:
while an "all-consuming" approach may limit creativity, that doesn't mean it won't be successful. Such an approach is often referred to as a formula,
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...and formula is often referred to, correctly, as the opposite of creativity...

and many bands have gotten a lot of traction out of this approach. Genres like Death Metal and Goth inhabit some dark places, but what might seem "all-consuming" could just as well be described as a formula, and they do find audiences.
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No doubt they find audiences, but that's not the point. There's an audience for web sites featuring nothing but pictures of dead human beings. That doesn't make it a good or healthy thing.

And where would Morrisey be as an artist if he were not free to wallow in his depression, and how would his fans react if he suddenly became super-positive and loving? I expect they would be horrified.
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The problem here is that you're calling anything this side of Up With People "hate", and that's not accurate. Hate is a specific, toxic emotion and mental state.
 
toddbishop said:
I thought the adjective "all-consuming" made it clear that we're not talking about it on the level of "I hate Tofurkey."
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I'm going by the most common defintion of the word 'hate,' and the full quote appears to adhere much closer to the definition I am using:

"'Everybody hates something!’ the angry child flings. Perhaps. Surely most men do. But the artist must love to create. He must bring love to his art if it is to live. He can hate, but if this becomes all-consuming, his creativity dies.”

Nobody was talking about fascism until you inserted it into the conversation, or is it your contention that DeMichael believed "most men" are fascists?

toddbishop said:
...and formula is often referred to, correctly, as the opposite of creativity...
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Yes, which was my point, but I don't see anything wrong with it if that's the path an artist wants to choose. Many people would agree that AC/DC uses a formula, but I don't think it diminishes them as a band.

toddbishop said:
No doubt they find audiences, but that's not the point. There's an audience for web sites featuring nothing but pictures of dead human beings. That doesn't make it a good or healthy thing.
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I never said anything was "healthy" or "good." I simply said that artists should be free to express whatever emotion they wish, and that placing limits on artistic expression kills creativity more than an all-consuming obsession does.

toddbishop said:
The problem here is that you're calling anything this side of Up With People "hate", and that's not accurate. Hate is a specific, toxic emotion and mental state.
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Again, you are assigning your own definition to the word. Hate can simply mean "to dislike intensely or passionately," like your feelings towards this thread, for example.
 
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drumngun said:
you got some agenda there, man. I know folks on the left sneek it in whenever they can and blame everyone else saying "your over reacting" no I'm pointing out your ignorance because that's what it is.
I guess I would be pissed if me and my countrymen let our government just rob us of our right to bear arms (Australia). must be a real BUMMER.
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Wow! GDM only got to keep his award for a very short time didn't he?
 
toddbishop said:
You're all over the place, man, and I'm not going to try to keep up. I dig that you are on fire for this topic, though. For some reason. Good luck with your crusade.
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I thought the reason was pretty clear. I don't like to see limits placed on artistic expression, however well-intentioned. I'm not advocating hate at all. Only free expression. I'll illustrate with some other quotes:

“An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.”
― J.D. Salinger

“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”
― Pablo Picasso

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
 
drumngun said:
you got some agenda there, man. I know folks on the left sneek it in whenever they can and blame everyone else saying "your over reacting" no I'm pointing out your ignorance because that's what it is.
I guess I would be pissed if me and my countrymen let our government just rob us of our right to bear arms (Australia). must be a real BUMMER.
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Hang about. You're claiming leftist invasion through a friggen' drum forum, yet somehow feel you still have the capacity to identify ignorance when you see it?

Wow!! Good old US of A. Where any jittery lunatic is encouraged to stock pile an arsenal, regardless of the mental capacity to distinguish an obvious joke from a threat.

At least I can live in the sound knowledge that my nutcase, gun-toting, overtly paranoid neighbour isn't going to blow my bloody head off because he hasn't got the maturity to identify the punchline.

Must be a real bummer.
 
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toddbishop said:
You and I differ sharply here. Including virulent, primitive racists, and participants in genocide as just other partners of the community of man is highly strange-- I'm not sure whether we call that liberal nihilism or nihilist liberalism.
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We call it realism. It is what it is. As I said before, "I acknowledge it like I acknowledge other entropic forces like disease and natural disasters", which I would not have thought such a ringing endorsement. I acknowledge the flu too - it happens, none of us like it, but que sera sera. Avoid someone with the flu. Avoid someone with the hate.

But I try to put myself in other people's shoes. What would it be like to be born into such families and subcultures? Aren't we lucky that we were raised in better families and more functional societies and subcultures?

Still, surely fascist types would dig music too. I guess they could be totalitarian and suppress artistic expression, like those execrable songs representing "the glorious [whom or whatever]". That kind of musical toadying is like like fingernails down a blackboard.
 
For the record, I never meant for this thread to veer off into a political debate. Neither did I imagine it would.

Let me go back to my original post. Let's look at what Don DeMichael wrote:

“’Everybody hates something!’ the angry child flings. Perhaps. Surely most men do. But the artist must love to create. He must bring love to his art if it is to live. He can hate, but if this becomes all-consuming, his creativity dies.” Source: Down Beat Publisher Don DeMichael, Love, Hate, and Jazz, DB 10/26/61

The title of Mr. DeMichael's piece is Love, Hate, and Jazz. It was written in 1961, a time when John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornate Coleman and some lesser known jazz musicians were playing what some prominent names in jazz - musicians and journalists - were calling "angry" jazz. The music remains a milestone in jazz history. Just as bebop alienated some people firmly rooted in swing music. Here's a classic 1962 Down Beat interview about "angry jazz" with Coltrane and Dolphy.

My recollection is, some jazz musicians said they were playing angry jazz. Others - including John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy - disagreed.

It's understandable that Mr. DeMichael, as publisher of the nation's - perhaps the world's - leading jazz magazine at the time, would be concerned about a style of jazz, believed by some to be anti-jazz. So DeMichael used his magazine to express some of his thoughts on the matter.

Here's another quote I saved from the same DeMichael piece that goes to my point. Perhaps I was wrong in not posting it along with DeMichael's other quote:

“Maybe yesterday and the day before, jazzmen got rid of their anger and hate through the music, not in the music.” It's plain that DeMichael was not saying music should be anger-free. He's telling us music, in his view, should be a musician's means of cleansing anger. ("You play the blues to get rid of the blues," is an old saying making the same point.) Finally, I think DeMichael is saying he doesn't like music that sounds like a screaming match. Fair enough.

So, I thank those Drummerworld forum participants for weighing in on this thread. But, as the thread author, I respectfully request the conversations move away from politics and back to music.

Thank you.

Scott K Fish
 
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