This is some of the best, most clear-headed writing I've seen among the fog of angry, raging, grief stricken people "screaming into the digital abyss." The question that keeps coming up, implicit or explicit, is "why have people voted for him?", and that's a question we can't shy away from. Cutting all the Barberas out of our lives, telling them that they're stupid and wrong just makes the Barberas angrier, sadder, more devoted to their golden idols. There must be common ground and we must find better ways to reveal it. Thanks Tim, and thanks for the music. The new song is a beauty.
Thanks Tom - that's really kind. Another perspective I thought was interesting in other articles I've been reading was that getting lectured on trans rights, defunding the police, BLM, abortion rights, #metoo by liberals populating the rage farms online etc when you're white and out of work because corporate America has outsourced production to another country, was never going end well. 'Yeah, but what about me?' whispered, embarrassed and self-consciously at first is eventually going to end up yelled and possibly accompanied by some ugly rhetoric or even AR15 fire. Trump's real victory was seeing this as an opportunity, perhaps. But... Oh, the horror; the HORROR ;-)
It's easy to sit back and say what went wrong NOW, but... in a greater context, looking at the collapse of the left around the world, I think that the main issue is that the fascist right have a huge advantage in their moral absolutism. The right can lie, they can offer you whatever it is you want, because, as we know, they have no intention of delivering it. The left are stuck arguing about nuance. One group won't vote because of Gaza, one because of too much focus on trans rights, one because of too little. The left, and the freedom we have, is doomed until it can grow the hell up and accept that the only way to defeat fascism is a collective of willing — we might not all agree on all the details, but the opposite of agreeing with everything doesn't have to be disagreeing with everything. And that, I think, is what you said so nicely in your post :)
THIS. So much THIS. All the THIS. Trump just figured out the right promises to make (and doubtless later break) while we shout at people for not respecting pronouns or confusing 'they're' and 'their'. Not for one second suggesting that the former isn't important, but - like you say - this isn't the time for nuance or outward displays of moral superiority.
I'm now going to get Jana, my bandmate, to read your comment. We were discussing this very thing on Tuesday night! x
Definitely not! Perhaps contrary to appearances, I love so many things about how the world is changing, and how my sons are better people for it (though I also see the pressure it exerts on them). I'm just aware that shouting at people, effectively for not keeping up, when their priorities are necessarily elsewhere is not going to open them up to new and possibly unnerving ideas. I've also witnessed an almost Totalitarian ugliness in the weaponisation of online popularity in what we'd call left-leaning alternative culture that just *stinks* of entitlement and self-importance. So... Yeah... Conflicted sometimes. But - as I said in the article - some people are just assholes and you can't account for that ;-)
Seriously, they certainly walk among us and I know some of them. I can't comprehend their decision, it's like a joke voting for Trump. But there are certainly too many of them... 😞 We are also suffering them in Valencia post floods: so many rumours fuelled by the far right wing. Total lies about things the goverment did (and they didn't) and how "they are hiding the corpses / there are more victims" comments. I am tired of reporting them to fb (that does nothing). It's just frustrating...
I wish cheese was the answer. It should be. Perhaps it is! What's a cheese beloved of the right and the left; a cheese so good that it can dial down the 'them' and 'us' rhetoric I know I'm prone to. In the meantime, I'm so sorry that you're having to deal with such bullshit in the midst of all that. x
Very hard times over here in Valencia. It just feels surreal carrying on with life almost as normal, while so many are living among the mud and destruction just 10 kms away. Sure that we are enduring the transport problems (no metro, no commuter trains, hoping that high speed trains are back this week... and lots of traffic jams), but those are mild annoying troubles compared with the Valentians in the south. So horrible and so many lives lost 😞
I sympathise. I remember waking up after the Brexit Referendum in a state of numbed shock, wondering how it was I had failed to recognise that 50% of my fellow countrymen felt very differently to me about the European project. And these were people I had no connection with other than the - to me abstract - bond of nationhood. So I can imagine your sense of discomfort being immeasurably worse - discovering your unique musical and creative sensibilities finding common cause with someone whose outlook on life you believe to be toxic.
But, if it’s art pop that you’re making, then you should see it as a measure of its success that it can bypass narrow partisan affiliations and arrive straight to the heart! It suggests your songs touch on what it means to be human, not what it means to be a participant in the ‘culture wars’. This is something of which you can be proud!
When it comes to understanding your fan base, you may find me a useful bridge between you and Barbara. I am an architect who, for decades, identified with the architect’s dream of being a member of a creative vanguard, forging new forms and experience. I was seduced by a sense of being at the boundary of history when I lived in Berlin in the 90s. I felt like a genuine participant in the modern project - the dissolution of tradition in favour of the expansion of human experience through art and technology. Nor was I immune to what I like to call the ecstasy of despair, which pop music, such as yours, can so eloquently capture. The agnosticism I enjoyed, when I first got to know your music back in 2005, allowed me to take comfort in ignorance - I embraced the contention by philosophers such as Richard Rorty that, because truth is a product of language, and language is contingent, metaphysical truths can never be other than contested. So we should embrace irony, and seek solidarity with our fellows on the basis our contingency is a universally shared human reality. Rorty’s philosophy seemed to be predicated on the idea that human flourishing happens only when individuals work to CREATE meaning, that they cannot discover meaning as inherent to reality. And I think I detected something of this in your music: a kind of celebration of diffidence, loss, yearning; ambivalence as a badge of honour. I imagined, like me, writing songs - making things - was one way to escape temporarily the ignorance that you appeared to believe was a prerequisite of the human condition.
So I was perhaps the quintessential Pilgrim fan! (And not just in my artistic and philosophical sensibilities. Since reading ’Small is Beautiful’ in 1986 I have been committed to the stewardship of the Earth. I even helped Natalie Bennett, the then leader of the Green Party, to contest the constituency which Kier Starmer went on to win. I’ve always thought of myself as a left-leaning liberal - I phoned Labour Party members encouraging them to vote for Jeremy Corbyn when he was contesting the Labour leadership.) But around 2014 I started to evolve down a different path - becoming a sole practising architect allowed me the opportunity to listen to podcasts, lectures, and research while drawing. It wasn’t long - without TV and newspapers - before I realised there were all sorts of counter narratives which deserved attention. I’m no nihilist; it was obvious to me that the universe is intelligent and purposive. And I came to believe slowly that knowledge - of the nature of reality, of human origins, of how the world works - is not out of reach; that some ideas stand up to scrutiny better than others, some explanations are more compelling than others. I have evolved from being a humble agnostic to a searcher after truth!
This search for truth has led me to a position of profound scepticism towards almost all orthodoxy. I realise that no side of the ideological spectrum has a monopoly on virtue. It has got me beyond the lazy characterisation of Brexiteers as xenophobic provincials and has led me to take a much greater interest in individual liberty and natural law. When Trump won the presidency in 2016 I was one of those who felt it entirely appropriate that this vulgarian should be made to feel unwelcome in Britain but, 8 years on, with a son of 7, I know that all the absurd invective from both sides of the aisle, is the product of a concerted effort to divide humanity by those who seek to profit from our division.
I don’t like Trump. I have next to no cultural connection with many of his supporters. (And, in any case, I’m confident that all sides of the political spectrum are ushering us down the same path of digital servitude.) But I do know that supporting bodily autonomy (freedom from the mandating of medical interventions), freedom of speech, not wanting to kill babies in the womb, not wanting children to be encouraged to butcher their genitals irreversibly, believing that Jesus Christ is the most important human exemplar of the last 2000 years, does not make me a hateful person.
I have not seen Barbara’s Facebook page. For all I know she may be one of the uglier manifestations of ’Trumpism’ but I can say: if she, like me (who has all your records, and even helped fund Wapentak) cried when Trump announced that he was banning all ‘gender affirming surgery’ for minors, I would consider her a worthy recipient of Motorcade Amnesiacs!
Hey Tobias. Thanks so much for your insight. Really enjoyed reading this. Can't believe you're not publishing your own stuff here, especially given the care and detail in this reply!
This: 'I imagined, like me, writing songs - making things - was one way to escape temporarily the ignorance that you appeared to believe was a prerequisite of the human condition' is so beautifully put, because that's such a big part of the creative process: we make stuff as we see-saw between ignoring our mortality altogether and - having even temporarily accepted it - trying to dodge it by carving our names into the things we make along the way. Then we ignore it again in times like these, when really it's the ultimate common ground.
I'm an atheist, with a Queer son (his preferred descriptor) who - I'm proud to say - has taught me lot about a world I was unwittingly pretty ignorant (that word again!) of, so you and I are looking at some things differently, but if neither of us are on social media yelling at those we disagree with, then we've already got something right. Because it's in these quiet, thoughtful conversations that we might give someone pause for thought; and that phrase is more than just an idiom: it's what the internet rarely encourages. The important thing becomes the *having* of the opinion, not even what the opinion is or what it might mean, and then - as soon as someone's thought it - they shout it out, because 'IT'S MY GOD-GIVEN RIGHT'. It's not to open a discussion, it's almost put out there as a marker of entitlement; a proof of life, even: 'I SHOUT, THEREFORE I AM'.
And you're so right: there are people on both sides who are *literally* profiting from the division that they sow.
But, Barbara's feed was a cesspit. No kindness; no understanding; no empathy: just fury. Regardless of what she believed, it seemed lonely and desperate. Almost as if getting shouted down occasionally for her provocations was better than being ignored. That word again. The hope - for me - comes in that lovely little interaction that we had, and I guess I'm saying that I'd like to think I'd still have that now if a similar thing was to happen again. Unwittingly, we found a place to come together, and that seems like a tiny victory; a minuscule win brought about by music of all things ;-)
Thanks again for commenting! Keep in touch :-) xxx
Hi Tim. I'm glad that my musings hit - if not THE spot then - A spot. So much more to say about all this but sadly time is not on my side. All the best till our next comms.
This is some of the best, most clear-headed writing I've seen among the fog of angry, raging, grief stricken people "screaming into the digital abyss." The question that keeps coming up, implicit or explicit, is "why have people voted for him?", and that's a question we can't shy away from. Cutting all the Barberas out of our lives, telling them that they're stupid and wrong just makes the Barberas angrier, sadder, more devoted to their golden idols. There must be common ground and we must find better ways to reveal it. Thanks Tim, and thanks for the music. The new song is a beauty.
Thanks Tom - that's really kind. Another perspective I thought was interesting in other articles I've been reading was that getting lectured on trans rights, defunding the police, BLM, abortion rights, #metoo by liberals populating the rage farms online etc when you're white and out of work because corporate America has outsourced production to another country, was never going end well. 'Yeah, but what about me?' whispered, embarrassed and self-consciously at first is eventually going to end up yelled and possibly accompanied by some ugly rhetoric or even AR15 fire. Trump's real victory was seeing this as an opportunity, perhaps. But... Oh, the horror; the HORROR ;-)
It's easy to sit back and say what went wrong NOW, but... in a greater context, looking at the collapse of the left around the world, I think that the main issue is that the fascist right have a huge advantage in their moral absolutism. The right can lie, they can offer you whatever it is you want, because, as we know, they have no intention of delivering it. The left are stuck arguing about nuance. One group won't vote because of Gaza, one because of too much focus on trans rights, one because of too little. The left, and the freedom we have, is doomed until it can grow the hell up and accept that the only way to defeat fascism is a collective of willing — we might not all agree on all the details, but the opposite of agreeing with everything doesn't have to be disagreeing with everything. And that, I think, is what you said so nicely in your post :)
THIS. So much THIS. All the THIS. Trump just figured out the right promises to make (and doubtless later break) while we shout at people for not respecting pronouns or confusing 'they're' and 'their'. Not for one second suggesting that the former isn't important, but - like you say - this isn't the time for nuance or outward displays of moral superiority.
I'm now going to get Jana, my bandmate, to read your comment. We were discussing this very thing on Tuesday night! x
Thanks Tim. I'm glad it's not just me!
Definitely not! Perhaps contrary to appearances, I love so many things about how the world is changing, and how my sons are better people for it (though I also see the pressure it exerts on them). I'm just aware that shouting at people, effectively for not keeping up, when their priorities are necessarily elsewhere is not going to open them up to new and possibly unnerving ideas. I've also witnessed an almost Totalitarian ugliness in the weaponisation of online popularity in what we'd call left-leaning alternative culture that just *stinks* of entitlement and self-importance. So... Yeah... Conflicted sometimes. But - as I said in the article - some people are just assholes and you can't account for that ;-)
Like a million times.
I wouldn't mind some of that cheese...
Seriously, they certainly walk among us and I know some of them. I can't comprehend their decision, it's like a joke voting for Trump. But there are certainly too many of them... 😞 We are also suffering them in Valencia post floods: so many rumours fuelled by the far right wing. Total lies about things the goverment did (and they didn't) and how "they are hiding the corpses / there are more victims" comments. I am tired of reporting them to fb (that does nothing). It's just frustrating...
I wish cheese was the answer. It should be. Perhaps it is! What's a cheese beloved of the right and the left; a cheese so good that it can dial down the 'them' and 'us' rhetoric I know I'm prone to. In the meantime, I'm so sorry that you're having to deal with such bullshit in the midst of all that. x
Very hard times over here in Valencia. It just feels surreal carrying on with life almost as normal, while so many are living among the mud and destruction just 10 kms away. Sure that we are enduring the transport problems (no metro, no commuter trains, hoping that high speed trains are back this week... and lots of traffic jams), but those are mild annoying troubles compared with the Valentians in the south. So horrible and so many lives lost 😞
Wishing you, your family and friends and fellow Valentians lots of love xxx
Thank you! ❤️
What a delight to read. And I punched the air at the inclusion of Burkeman.
I love that you're the intersection between popular psychology and Journey fans.
Don’t stop..improving! Oh my god that was so David Brent and I was just a little sick in my mouth.
Great post, Tim. Just let me know if the artisanal cheese stall is ever needed.
Always needed. I want one in my studio, for a start.
Hi Tim,
I sympathise. I remember waking up after the Brexit Referendum in a state of numbed shock, wondering how it was I had failed to recognise that 50% of my fellow countrymen felt very differently to me about the European project. And these were people I had no connection with other than the - to me abstract - bond of nationhood. So I can imagine your sense of discomfort being immeasurably worse - discovering your unique musical and creative sensibilities finding common cause with someone whose outlook on life you believe to be toxic.
But, if it’s art pop that you’re making, then you should see it as a measure of its success that it can bypass narrow partisan affiliations and arrive straight to the heart! It suggests your songs touch on what it means to be human, not what it means to be a participant in the ‘culture wars’. This is something of which you can be proud!
When it comes to understanding your fan base, you may find me a useful bridge between you and Barbara. I am an architect who, for decades, identified with the architect’s dream of being a member of a creative vanguard, forging new forms and experience. I was seduced by a sense of being at the boundary of history when I lived in Berlin in the 90s. I felt like a genuine participant in the modern project - the dissolution of tradition in favour of the expansion of human experience through art and technology. Nor was I immune to what I like to call the ecstasy of despair, which pop music, such as yours, can so eloquently capture. The agnosticism I enjoyed, when I first got to know your music back in 2005, allowed me to take comfort in ignorance - I embraced the contention by philosophers such as Richard Rorty that, because truth is a product of language, and language is contingent, metaphysical truths can never be other than contested. So we should embrace irony, and seek solidarity with our fellows on the basis our contingency is a universally shared human reality. Rorty’s philosophy seemed to be predicated on the idea that human flourishing happens only when individuals work to CREATE meaning, that they cannot discover meaning as inherent to reality. And I think I detected something of this in your music: a kind of celebration of diffidence, loss, yearning; ambivalence as a badge of honour. I imagined, like me, writing songs - making things - was one way to escape temporarily the ignorance that you appeared to believe was a prerequisite of the human condition.
So I was perhaps the quintessential Pilgrim fan! (And not just in my artistic and philosophical sensibilities. Since reading ’Small is Beautiful’ in 1986 I have been committed to the stewardship of the Earth. I even helped Natalie Bennett, the then leader of the Green Party, to contest the constituency which Kier Starmer went on to win. I’ve always thought of myself as a left-leaning liberal - I phoned Labour Party members encouraging them to vote for Jeremy Corbyn when he was contesting the Labour leadership.) But around 2014 I started to evolve down a different path - becoming a sole practising architect allowed me the opportunity to listen to podcasts, lectures, and research while drawing. It wasn’t long - without TV and newspapers - before I realised there were all sorts of counter narratives which deserved attention. I’m no nihilist; it was obvious to me that the universe is intelligent and purposive. And I came to believe slowly that knowledge - of the nature of reality, of human origins, of how the world works - is not out of reach; that some ideas stand up to scrutiny better than others, some explanations are more compelling than others. I have evolved from being a humble agnostic to a searcher after truth!
This search for truth has led me to a position of profound scepticism towards almost all orthodoxy. I realise that no side of the ideological spectrum has a monopoly on virtue. It has got me beyond the lazy characterisation of Brexiteers as xenophobic provincials and has led me to take a much greater interest in individual liberty and natural law. When Trump won the presidency in 2016 I was one of those who felt it entirely appropriate that this vulgarian should be made to feel unwelcome in Britain but, 8 years on, with a son of 7, I know that all the absurd invective from both sides of the aisle, is the product of a concerted effort to divide humanity by those who seek to profit from our division.
I don’t like Trump. I have next to no cultural connection with many of his supporters. (And, in any case, I’m confident that all sides of the political spectrum are ushering us down the same path of digital servitude.) But I do know that supporting bodily autonomy (freedom from the mandating of medical interventions), freedom of speech, not wanting to kill babies in the womb, not wanting children to be encouraged to butcher their genitals irreversibly, believing that Jesus Christ is the most important human exemplar of the last 2000 years, does not make me a hateful person.
I have not seen Barbara’s Facebook page. For all I know she may be one of the uglier manifestations of ’Trumpism’ but I can say: if she, like me (who has all your records, and even helped fund Wapentak) cried when Trump announced that he was banning all ‘gender affirming surgery’ for minors, I would consider her a worthy recipient of Motorcade Amnesiacs!
Tobias
Hey Tobias. Thanks so much for your insight. Really enjoyed reading this. Can't believe you're not publishing your own stuff here, especially given the care and detail in this reply!
This: 'I imagined, like me, writing songs - making things - was one way to escape temporarily the ignorance that you appeared to believe was a prerequisite of the human condition' is so beautifully put, because that's such a big part of the creative process: we make stuff as we see-saw between ignoring our mortality altogether and - having even temporarily accepted it - trying to dodge it by carving our names into the things we make along the way. Then we ignore it again in times like these, when really it's the ultimate common ground.
I'm an atheist, with a Queer son (his preferred descriptor) who - I'm proud to say - has taught me lot about a world I was unwittingly pretty ignorant (that word again!) of, so you and I are looking at some things differently, but if neither of us are on social media yelling at those we disagree with, then we've already got something right. Because it's in these quiet, thoughtful conversations that we might give someone pause for thought; and that phrase is more than just an idiom: it's what the internet rarely encourages. The important thing becomes the *having* of the opinion, not even what the opinion is or what it might mean, and then - as soon as someone's thought it - they shout it out, because 'IT'S MY GOD-GIVEN RIGHT'. It's not to open a discussion, it's almost put out there as a marker of entitlement; a proof of life, even: 'I SHOUT, THEREFORE I AM'.
And you're so right: there are people on both sides who are *literally* profiting from the division that they sow.
But, Barbara's feed was a cesspit. No kindness; no understanding; no empathy: just fury. Regardless of what she believed, it seemed lonely and desperate. Almost as if getting shouted down occasionally for her provocations was better than being ignored. That word again. The hope - for me - comes in that lovely little interaction that we had, and I guess I'm saying that I'd like to think I'd still have that now if a similar thing was to happen again. Unwittingly, we found a place to come together, and that seems like a tiny victory; a minuscule win brought about by music of all things ;-)
Thanks again for commenting! Keep in touch :-) xxx
Hi Tim. I'm glad that my musings hit - if not THE spot then - A spot. So much more to say about all this but sadly time is not on my side. All the best till our next comms.
What a great read Tim. Very eloquently put.
Thanks Iain. Lots of love to you both xxx