I’m going to Hollywood
They’ll see that I’m so good
I won’t care how I feel
And I’ll get to fuck Brooke Shields
And I’ll just sit and grin
The money will roll right in
The Money Will Roll Right In (Fang, 1983) is a supposedly ironic track: a critique of triumph for triumph’s sake, of fame that aspires to no artistic intention and harbors no glimmer of depth.
It is paradigmatic that it became popular in 1992, nine years after its release, thanks to the version Nirvana incorporated into their concerts at their peak. In the blink of an eye, the track went from a hidden underground gem to being played at festivals before tens of thousands of people, performed by a band at its highest point (Nevermind had been released the previous year).
An exaltation of irony (and of Fang) by the band? Self-criticism, or perhaps pain, from Nirvana itself regarding what was happening to them? A jab at other bands for their shameful rockstar behavior?
Considering the band’s context, probably a bit of everything. But another question remains: could these lyrics have a point?
Why did they do it? Because they didn’t know it was impossible
This overused phrase, which is almost embarrassing to write, is sometimes the seed of great works and not just a cheap motivational mug slogan: sometimes it is, simply, a description of the facts.
In reality, that “it was impossible” is usually more like “it shouldn’t be done” or “it’s not done here.” Hence, those who break the mold often come from outside the core of a discipline. It happens in science, where the most groundbreaking advances almost always come from young people, still not well-established in the system. And it happens for the opposite reason at the other extreme: a researcher or politician with twenty years of a career invested in an idea has few incentives to revise it.
Something similar could be said about music. Although there are artists who have evolved their work over time, it is usually the incoming generations (with other concerns, another context, and nothing to lose) who found a style or a school.
Metal as a consequence of an industrial accident
Tony Iommi, considered the father of heavy metal, stumbled upon Black Sabbath’s characteristic sound purely out of survival. After losing the tips of two fingers in an industrial press at seventeen, he had to reinvent his playing style to avoid pain. Doctors told him he wouldn’t play again, and here comes the ingenuity (or unconsciousness): he made plastic thimbles covered with leather for grip, strung much thinner banjo strings, and lowered the tuning to further loosen the tension. The result? A dark and gloomy sound from which the genre was born. Quite something.
But Iommi’s case is not the only one where someone achieved something that seemed doomed to failure purely through heterodoxy (both medical and sonic), nor is music the only discipline where we find this type of event.
The man who knew infinity
Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who made great contributions to his field. So far, a common story. What is singular is that he was self-taught, having learned from a manual of results without proofs: from there, he reconstructed a century of analysis without knowing it already existed, precisely because he was unaware of which paths were closed, and achieved decisive advances in calculus with infinite processes, those operations that never end but whose result can be known with precision.
Ramanujan did what he did because he was unaware of the prevailing norms. And that was both good and bad: it allowed him to work without the corset of academia, but it also prevented him from distinguishing a brilliant contribution from an error, so he needed G. H. Hardy to guide him and discard the wrong paths.
The functions he described in 1920 did not make sense until eighty years later; today they appear in the calculation of black hole entropy.
The limit of one’s own knowledge
When does a work begin? When does it end? Is the creator the only person who can give it meaning? Does a certain unconsciousness help to break down certain barriers?
Far be it from me to want to answer all these questions, but a certain unconsciousness sometimes helps to bypass established rules, precisely by ignoring their existence.
Furthermore, re-signification has always been the order of the day. Just as a scientist’s work can prove applicable in another context centuries later, a piece can go from acidic punk criticism in 1983 to confession in 1992 without losing an iota of quality.
Therefore, the difficulty is not only in creating, but in understanding what has been created, and there the artist has no advantage over the audience: the work can be completed later, in a context that did not exist when it was made. Publishing is delivering something whose meaning is not yet closed and which can be different for each person.
CODA: There is no path, there are no rules
“They laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown”
Carl Sagan
The American popularizer’s phrase perfectly summarizes that going against the status quo is not good per se. A work can be good or bad, groundbreaking or classic, regardless of the unconsciousness with which it was made; and although that unconsciousness encourages bending the rules, it does not necessarily equate to quality.
What unconsciousness does produce is variance. Thousands of bands have existed that, despite breaking the rules, simply didn’t measure up. But among them also emerge acclaimed groups like The Velvet Underground, enriching the discipline in the long term.
It seems clear, then, that unconsciousness is fertile for the evolution of a discipline, even if it promises nothing to anyone in particular. There is no marked path or creative rules to follow: each artist simply builds their own worldview.