Blog Archive

Saturday, 17 September 2016


There is the enjoyment and the being seen to be enjoying, they are like the use value and the exchange value of experiences. If these can be distinguished, and its not entirely certain that they can, then they certainly function within the same economy, they are at best Siamese twins. Enjoying something deeply, being deeply moved by a work of art, comes with a story, the account of our enjoyment which we put forth eagerly or enigmatically withhold, and what the word 'deep' here, or some equivalent term, signals, if it arises, is that this story will invoke the authentic self. It is much trickier than this because what is enjoyed is the story with its almost perfect approximation of that self - as at Mme Verdurin's for the Vinteuil Septet - or that the very nature of aesthetic enjoyment is mediation. One knows that the best story is the one of perfect authenticity, how you just came upon this thing and it spoke to you and knew immediately ...  And then it took over your life, it became a lifelong quest to go beyond any story to the thing itself, the artistic truth, or the truth of the will, as it glimmers behind the cherished experience. All of this distinguishes shades of depth and shallowness: if I feel my enjoyment is deep then I will think A's and B's is a case of merely being seen to enjoy and I will build my house on it, but if I meet C and am immediately impressed by his more immediate relation to the matter then my enjoyment is revealed as exchange value, something I just talked myself into and the house comes tumbling down - like Thomas Bernhard's poor pianist. One might think that the way out is to become the performer or the creator, but then the game just shifts. The creator can neither despise nor absolutely ignore their audience, although both have been tried, but they are also not called upon to be the embodiment of their art, they only need be its medium.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.