The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [8]
There are really two ways philosophers mull over the question of art (including music). There are those who worry mainly about the “work,” such as the song or the symphony or the painting, or the sculpture. They will argue about the definition of what does or doesn’t count as a “work of art,” and they will discuss how we can or should interpret the work. This is the stuff most of us are on about. So, if I were like that (and I’m not), I’d try to get you wondering about certain songs or albums, or even certain concerts or videos. It’s pretty natural to be curious about those things. We like to take the product of our creativity and use it to find the meaning and value of art in our common experience. The work itself is our guide to thinking about what artists are, and so forth. In this case the philosophy of art is about things, and what things can tell us.
Other philosophers (like me) worry more about the creative process itself, and we want to understand what happens and what can happen in the course of creating works of art. Such philosophers are often more interested in the artist than in the art, wanting to know what (if anything) makes (good, great) artists different from other folks, and inquiring into why and how they do what they do. From this viewpoint, the key to understanding the work is to understand how it came into existence. For folks like us, to think about works of art without thinking through the creative process is like building a castle in the air. So this is about processes, not about things.
In fact (and now I’m picking a fight), I would go so far as to say that there isn’t a single “thing,” strictly speaking, that is “the” work of art. Artworks are processes, even after they’re nominally “finished.” Mick’s and Keith’s song “Street Fighting Man” means one thing in 1968 and something different now, and you can’t completely separate one from the other. To speak of that song as an artwork in the fullest sense is to begin when it didn’t exist—was just a glimmer in the twins’ eye—and bring the story up to the present day. You can cut off a slice of time at some point, if you like, and just talk about the song in that context, but don’t try to claim that this half-story just is the song. You can’t really bottle up a work of art in a single slice of time. Artworks don’t really work like that.
To give another example, hearing Keith do “Gimme Shelter” with the X-Pensive Winos really transforms the song. They totally jam on that song, and I am really moved by the way Keith sings it. Prior to that new interpretation of the song, it was something less than it is now. Go to Youtube and watch it. See if you don’t agree. Artworks are living processes, and the processes are connected with their origins, their creators. Sometimes an artwork awaits the right context—Michelangelo’s David surrounded by his own unfinished works in the Academia in Florence instead of standing in the entrance way for which it was commissioned, or Aretha Franklin singing “You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman),” instead of Carole King (who certainly did a decent job, but anyone can see she wrote it for Aretha, whether she knew it at the time or not—and I’ll bet both would agree). So context is a moving target and it matters very much to thinking about works of art.
Only Rock’n’Roll
One of the best known among philosophers of the creative process was Susanne Langer (1895–1985). She believed that any philosopher who wanted to talk about art at least needed to try a hand at making it,