To choose the high life, the low life, or somewhere respectable in between? Helen Nianias pontificates.
Music blogs! The home of music and opinion on the internet - a global force for people's listening tastes and something we dip our toes into every Wednesday. This week it's the sublime and the ridiculous (although not necessarily in that order) with Pop Justice and Music Is Art.
Music! Blog! An very old word and a fairly new one. What happens when old meets new? Find out in our weekly look at two of the internet's receptacles for music and opinion.<br />
This week's foray into the grimy world of music blogs turns up London-based '2ManyScenes' and an American view of British indie from 'In Search of Arcadia.'
Sometimes it’s very easy to see why students are viewed with such violent hatred. Vomiting in taxis, spending student loans irresponsibly and chatting crap are just a few of the crimes that students commit on a daily basis.
I expect if I wasn’t a student, or rather, when I’m freed from the shackles of my library-centric existence, I will make it my business to hate students.
Obviously, all of the above crimes do not apply to every student, but they are excessively common. I once vomited into my handbag in the back of a taxi, and chat crap on a daily basis. This is normal. I am certainly not alone, or a particularly outlandish example of the stupidity that comes with the belief that you are somehow an intellectual. I know one guy who spent his entire student loan on drinks, drugs, a bespoke suit and a prostitute found in a Tudor themed brothel. And he has a degree and thus, supposedly, intellectually capable. This should strike fear into the hearts of all who have bothered reading this far.
All standard, you may think. Who hasn’t tried to discuss Freud in the same sentence as how many shots they did last night? It’s when this playful arrogance is institutionalised that I think we should all start to worry. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Tracey Chevalier-curated exhibition at the York Gallery. Since I wrote about it and a taxi driver said he really liked it, I thought I might as well pop along. As a History of Art student I usually studiously avoid general cultural stuff and that kind of thing; you’re always obliged to talk about it ‘intelligently’ and have something ‘interesting’ to say and look at the canvases with an unutterably smug expression on your ‘learned’ face. Of course, this is a very personal response to ‘discussing art’, I often don’t like doing it. It’s work, not play.
The basic concept of the exhibition was the idea that stories can be found in every painting and that by using your own ideas you can bring a story to anything, even a still life. There was a box of chalks at the entrance and blackboards ran right around the gallery underneath the paintings, and sometimes the paintings were even mounted on the blackboards themselves. Some people had written jokey things underneath (not very funny jokes, but it’s something different) and it was clearly great for kids because they had written stuff as well. This was a very different exhibition from those I remember as a child; watching your ex-student parents chat crap and not getting what the big deal was about and wondering if you could go to the gift shop now please.
This encouraging environment was utterly shattered by some idiot, presumably a student, who had written the following in the guest book: ‘This is a really bad idea. People should be encouraged or educated, to respond to paintings in an adult, intelligent way – not to write silly, juvenile things about them. Also, many paintings here are not about ‘stories’ but about colour, texture, space, etc.’ Well. This is why I hate guest books. This idea that there is ‘one way’ of viewing a painting struck me as deeply arrogant. I thought there was a great deal to take away from the exhibition. Maybe it wasn’t particularly intellectual, but most people don’t pretend to be. I guess you just get what you can out of what’s in front of you.
I think it would be a great pity if this student-ish behaviour stopped; I love it. Genuinely, it’s endlessly entertaining and usually quite self-conscious, so for the love of God, don’t stop me from talking about Proust while I roll my cigarette. Just don’t pretend it actually means anything and that you know ‘more’ than other people; we’ve all been to Reflex. Perhaps when we start actually believing our own studenty crap, things fall apart.
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