Justin Erik Halldór Smith

From the Mailbag

I don't mean to boast, but there's also no reason to hide from the fact that I am read by some very important people. Since I began this blog in 2005, I have been contacted by dozens of editors, producers, and other movers and shakers in the entertainment and literary worlds. Take this, for example:

Dear Justin Smith,

With your permission, I would very much like to reprint your article [on mushrooms and literature] in the newsletter of the Long Island Mycological Club, the LI Sporeprint, of which I am editor. Full authorial credit would be given, and you would be furnished with both hard copy and pdf. The article may have to be  shortened somewhat due to space restraints, and if so, your approval would be sought, if you so desired.

Thanks for any consideration you can give this request.

Best,

H.

For a long time I thought it could not get any better than this, but just the other day I was proven wrong, when I received a message with the subject heading: 'Animal Planet Show'. Though I had long been of interest principally to literary types, it looked like I was finally going to make the move into television! I opened the e-mail without delay, stars shimmering before my eyes. "Hello Mister Smith," it read,

I apologize immediately for contacting you out of the blue for something you might find silly and mundane.  However, I have to ask (as it is my job), and I'm hoping you might have some insight. 

I work on a show for Animal Planet called "Bad Dog" and my job is to find "cute" and "funny" animal clips to license and air on our show.  I came across a video where a 'Dove Annoys A House Cat' (you can see it on Youtube) and the owner of the clip is named "Shlarl".  Or, it's his handle.

Either way, I've been trying to track down this "Shlarl" (so far with no luck).  I know he has commented on your articles (which I have read briefly, and find interesting).  I am wondering if you know this person and/or have any way to contact him.  I just want to ask if he would be interested in talking to me about licensing the clip.  I believe he's French Canadian, and unfortunately I only understand half of his commentary.

Again, I hope I am not disturbing you.  If you wouldn't mind letting me know your thoughts, I would greatly appreciate it.

I hope to hear from you.  And thank you for your time and your blogging insights.

K.

K.'s message filled me with questions. Like, how on earth could there be a show on the air, in 2012, such as this 'Bad Dog'? Isn't this precisely the sort of thing the Internet has obviated? What was America's Funniest Home Videos, after all, but a YouTube avant la lettre, like a shadow play, circa 1890, just before the dawn of cinema? What is the point of 'licensing' a video and showing it once on television, when you can just 'share' the video on your website and show it as many times as your audience wishes to see it?

But these were trivial matters. The important thing was that I was going to be on TV! Or at least that, as a result of my behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, a video of a dove annoying a cat was going to be on TV! Maybe I could cut a deal with this 'Shlarl' and we could co-license the video, or whatever it is people do to derive money and fame from the cultural effluvia they cast off. This was going to be the start of something big.

But then I started to have second thoughts. Maybe I should just accept my fate as a blogger and share the dove-annoying-a-cat video here, for you to watch, for free and at your leisure. It really is delightful, by the way. See for yourself:

 

[P.S. I would like to extend a sincere thanks to K. at 'Bad Dog', a consummate professional who gamely agreed to allow me to cite our correspondence here. May his career in television, or whatever replaces it, go far.]

YouTube and the Ontology of the Pop-Musical Work

Some popular songs (and under 'popular music' I include everything from Mississippi John Hurt to Justin Bieber) truly are, or even can be, performed by only one artist. But for the most part pop songs are iterations, or at least variations, of standards. This is a fact of which one could remain fairly ignorant, unless one was a true connoisseur, for most of the history of recorded music.

But the newly emerging way of experiencing a song, thanks to nothing more intentional than YouTube search algorithms, is to be presented with a mechanically generated list of iterations, from different decades and in different styles, offered up as if for comparison. I believe this changes the experience of popular music, returning to it a more fundamental, pre-recording-era aesthetic quality, one that reconncts it to other popular forms such as the folk tale, forms that we all know to have potentially infinite iterations. Pop songs are no longer signature works (even if there might be exemplary performances of them), but are rather authorless, beginingless folk reference points (or at least that is how we can now experience them).

When I was a teenager I believed that 'Muleskinner Blues' was, simply, a song by The Cramps. One late night, recently, I spent some time on YouTube, and watched at least a dozen iterations of the same song. To my mind the most basic version of it, and also the most elegant and probably my favorite, was Merle Haggard's:

 

I don't know what year this is from, though I would estimate it is around 1969, close to the same moment when he began antagonizing the hippies (though recent revisionist history now says that was all a misunderstanding; Merle was alway on the good side).

Next I moved on to Dolly Parton, from around the same era. She is singing in the same general genre, but the style and tone of it is very different. It is whimsical and full of personality, and far removed from the actual content of the lyrics (would there ever really be a 'lady mule-skinner'?).

 

But there is another, parallel legacy to this song, a split in its evolutionary path, that precedes both Dolly and Merle's interpretations, and goes back to the very beginnings of rock-and-roll. It portrays the mule-skinner character as insane, perhaps murderous, someone who has been depraved and bestialized by his line of work. Here are The Fendermen, from, I suppose, around 1957:

 

And finally we come to The Cramps (where it all started, for me). The Cramps take their cue more from The Fendermen than from Haggard, though there's a lot else going on there as well. The Cramps are hard to genealogize fully and with precision: the principal elements, anyway, are the celebration of '50s b-movie horror (already innovated long before by Screamin' Jay Hawkins); conscious or unconscious influence from New York Dolls-style drag that preceded them by a few years (hence Lux Interior's bra); and a deep and true love of the sort of authentic American roots music that gave us 'Muleskinner Blues' in the first place. Anyway here's their version:

 

At this stage of life I still find this iteration curious, but I confess it's the one that leaves me with the least desire to hit 'replay'.

But my point with these examples, and there are more, and I could go on and on, is that as YouTube increasingly becomes my principal source of finding and learning about new music, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to think of popular music as --as the aestheticians say-- autographic. I suspect blues and folk musicians never thought of it this way, and for this reason tended to put up resistance at being integrated into the star system maintained by the record companies in their golden age.

YouTube, I think, is helping to put popular music in proper perspective as the sort of art form it is.

*

I'm jet-lagged after a sleepless night, waiting for a connecting flight at Charles de Gaulle. I may want to make some corrections or additions to this post soon. But the thought of it kept my mind active as I crossed over the wine-dark Atlantic, and I wanted to get it out before it faded.

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Learning to Speak New-Jerseyan

Qvande ie me suiz installé au Nouveau Jersey ya ung moys, ie me suis donaté la tasque d'appréhender la lingue locqale. Ladicte lingue s'appelle 'néo-jèrriais', car elle a sez raçynes sur l'yslette d'Jersey, qvi se troube dangs Lamansche yntre la France et l'Angglie. Ladicte lingue se rezêmbe énormueusement à la lingue des Francz de la France, e parmyz les scientificqs yan'a mesme qui diraynt qu'il s'agyte plus tost d'un diallecte qvedvne lingue séparate.

Pù-ymporte çequedyzent lez linguiçienz, si ie veuylle m'addâpter à mez nouvellez çircqonstancies, ylfaudraqve i'apprendz à parler aveq lez habitibantz. L'néo-jèrriais, parcontrâte aveq l'jèrriais d'l'yslette d'Lamansche, ayté natureusement beau-coûp transformé par le fayctqv'il aïayté parlé pendante des siâclz yn Nord-Américque, ouvilest entouré par des régions yntièrement angglophonicques, com parexemble l'Nouveau Jorvicq, l'Délouare, et l'Pennsylvânie. Doncq on dicte parexemble 'mon Camaro' auvlieude dicter 'ma voiture', ez on dicte 'le spray-tan' auvlieude dicter 'salon de bronzage'.

La version d'néo-jèrriais qve ie suiz çenzé appréhender ècelle d'Princeton, une esmalle ville universitaticque aumillieude l'estâte. Yçi-t-on parle ung néo-jèrriais verré raffinaté. Parexemble, s'ong veuylle sçaver où sont les toilettes, ong nedicte-paz 'toilettes' danz l'pluriel, comme yn France; ong dicte 'où e la toiletterie', com-sy l'endroyct où l'ong pisse ayté qvelq-choz d'abstrayct. 

Apprehender l'néo-jèrriais non è paz extremueusement difficillié, s'ong aye dé-jà qvelq'cognosçençe d'une-autre lingue soy-dictante 'Romanticque'. Çe qu'è pluz, lez habitibantz d'la région sunt verré patientz, e tous-jours énormueusement happé qvand un éstranger faict un esmall'éffort pou parler danz leur lingue. Doncq pou-quoy paz vener nou visître yçi au Nouveau Jersey? 

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Progress Report

Here is what I have managed to accomplish since I arrived in Europe on May 3.

I submitted a new book proposal to Princeton University Press. I submitted the final revised proofs of my Leibniz book to the same press. I put the finishing touches on, and sent off, at least three articles. I co-organized one conference, participated in one other, attended two others, and gave a colloquium-series paper. For these purposes, I travelled to Cambridge, Lyon, Helsinki, and Budapest. I made some, but not much, progress on the translation of G. E. Stahl's Negotium otiosum. In preparation for the essay-review I am expected to write, I read someone else's book on Leibniz (thumbs up). I wrote a long essay for the print edition of n+1. I dealt with the fall-out of a book review I wrote for the electronic edition. I worked through chapters 10, 11, 12, and 13 of Robert Goldman's Devavanipraveśika: An Introduction to the Sanskrit Language. I read Jack Goody's The Theft of History as well as his Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, Surendrenath Dasgupta's A History of Indian Philosophy, and substantial portions of Valerie Allen's On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages (a very serious and learned work). I finished reading Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Rabelais' Gargantua, and began reading Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. I made 17 posts to this website, not including the present one. I attempted to go running 7 times, and each time was frustrated by the condition of either my own body or of the environment in which I sought to run. In Marseille I bought special 'support socks' to help me run better, but they had no perceptible effect. I drank alcohol on only 2 occasions, which is for me a 17-year record low. I reduced my pants-size by 4 inches, surviving on a diet of mostly fruits and raw vegetables. I made at least two new friends.

Here is what I did not do:

I did not make any progress on the satirical novel I claim to be writing, and for which I had initially envisioned this sojourn as a writing retreat, during which I would take a break from all academic output, as well as from the production of minor occasional pieces. I did not go to Russia. I did not make any progress in my spoken Romanian. I did not begin flossing. I did not watch the World Cup, though the arc of its development from the initial matches to the final served as a sort of background framing device for my summer's activity. I did not discover any good new music, or see any films. I did not begin, as I had intended, to contribute to a charitable organization of my choice.

How many more summers will there be like this one? --Twenty? Thirty?-- Summers of cranking shit out and taking shit in, always feeling like I'm not really doing that thing that, were I to do it, I could stop and say: There. I've done it.