An "interview" with Franklin Bruno

PART II

These next three parts are vaguely related -

I read in an interview that you dislike people thinking that music can't be art if it's song based. Reading this, I drew a parallel to the Warhol-like silkscreen that adorns the back cover of Emotional Discipline, which says to me that maybe you see what you're doing as "pop art", which isn't held in as high regard as "real art". So where do you see your work in this context?

Well "pop art," insofar as it's an art-historical term (Warhol, Litchenstein, and such), is definitely "real art." I mean, they're big expensive original paintings that use popular imagery. But what I think is that 'popular culture' (pop songs, comic books, show flyers, websites, I guess) IS 'high art,' or anyway, there's no strict line of division between the two, certainly not one based on who makes it, whether they're 'trained,' or how it is to acquire. If anything, I'm tossing 'high art' stuff - modernist uses of language, literary allusions, etc. - into a 'low art' context. It's all a big party. I can't call it high or pop art because I don't make the distinction.

A related point: a big trend in art and literary criticism has been to take things that the 'guardians of culture' have tried to pass off as timeless and unsurpassable examples of 'art' or 'beauty' for centuries and historicize them, bringing them down to the level of products of their culture. That's fine, but I've noticed that my strategy, especially when I'm doing rock criticism, is sort of the opposite - I want to take stuff that doesn't get taken seriously and say, "Look, this is just as wonderful and rich and meaningful as all that high-art stuff, and it doesn't matter that it's in a crappy rock club instead of a concert hall." I think this is related to the fact that as a critic, I'm more of a formalist than a sociologist.

Last point - the images on the back of Emotional Discipline are based on work by Wallace Berman, an important California precursor of better known Pop Art, and one of the first artists to use Xerox technology in his work, which is a fascinating mixture of mysticism and popular imagery. It's an unfortunate oversight that we left off a credit to him in the liner notes. The best book on him is Wallace Berman: Support the Revolution, Institute of Contemporary Art, Amsterdam. (Oh, and it's clever of you to have connected those images with this issue - I suppose I meant something like what I said above in using it, though not in any thought-out way.)

What's your definition of art?

Sorry, way too hard. I don't have a definition, but I will say that I think it's an important thing about the term that it signifies a category which can actually change on the basis of human action or response (i.e., that of artists, critics, observers). For an overview of various positions on the question, see Ch. 1 of Kant after Duchamp, Thierry de Duve, MIT Press, 1996 or so.

Do you think art is stronger when it's subjective or objective?

I don't know how you're using these terms, so I'm going to pass on this one, except to say that subjectivity implies a subject, so that to say "art is subjective" is ambiguous--whose subjectivity? The artist's? The audience's? The culture's?

What does music mean to you?

Honest to god, finding music that meant something to me saved my life in high school. It continues to remind me that the world is full of beautiful things, which one tends to forget in the fact of all of the awful stuff, and the casual cruelty and self-protection of individuals and governments. Do I sound nuts yet? (People can be wonderful, and music can be god-awful as well.) Doing music, for me, is made up of celebration, analysis, and vengefulness in roughly equal proportions.

Considering your experience as a teacher (or TA), do you find teaching to be more fulfilling than performing?

I don't really find performing 'fulfilling' - I enjoy it, but I'm usually just trying to get better at it, and while I'm doing it, it can often be frustrating. Teaching, in all honesty, is a job - a job I take seriously and try to do well, but it doesn't have a deep meaning for me. Of course, I'm just a teaching assistant, so I have the material I have to cover chosen for me, and my views might change when I get to design my own courses. I will say that I DO NOT share the contempt often expressed by graduate students for the (supposedly disinterested, ignorant, etc.) undergrads they have to teach. I think, especially with something as abstract and unfamiliar to most people as Western philosophy, that part of my job is really to convince students that there's some earthly reason to think about these things. And frankly, I don't know that the subject or its methodology is for everyone, certainly not for everyone of a certain age, so I have a hard time feeling that my students are 'beneath' me, which is an annoying attitude I often encounter. (Yes, I get as frustrated as anyone with shitty grammar - I think the most practical thing I can do as a teacher, irrespective of subject, is try to get people to write a little more competently.)

By "Western philosophy" - do you mean Tao and Buddhism, and the teachings of Confucius (if that's how his name is spelled), or other such things? (My knowledge of philosophy goes about as far as my Phil & Logic class - and my teacher spent half the semester talking about cigars.)

No, that would be Eastern philosophy--you know, China, Japan, the places we call "The East." Not trying to be sarcastic, but it seems like an odd confusion. (Ed. Note - Don't even ask what I was thinking...)

Logic professors are notorious digressers - I took a college logic course in high school, and the class was full of recent Vietnamese immigrants who didn't know enough English to know what was important to the class and what wasn't - the poor guys took notes on all of the teacher's random comments about the history of California citrus growing. I have a respectful interest in Zen, but the stuff I do is pretty solidly in the Anglo-American tradition (which has its roots in the Greeks, Descartes, British Empiricism, and Kant, though I'm not mainly a historian, and I'd be lying if I said I had more than a thumbnail understanding of Kant), with a certain amount of math and logic thrown in.

Do you see any similarities or differences between the teaching and performing that make one better than the other?

Well, I'm not trying to 'teach' when I'm performing, I'm trying to communicate (although, in my weaker moments, I'm probably just trying to impress). As a performer (or recording artist), I'm a peer with the audience, not an authority, and I don't feel very authoritative about most things, so I'm certainly more comfortable with that relationship than with the judgmental aspects of the teaching relationship (which are unavoidable). I'm also more nervous performing than teaching, and I much prefer playing with the band to playing solo - it's just more fun to rock out.

It's a bit ridiculous to ask this, I guess, but do you find yourself trying to 'perform' when you're teaching? (This would probably be a fitting ? if you were dealing with more reluctant students, such as high school kids and such.)

Oh, UCLA students can be plenty reluctant, depending on the class and the professor. I'm not there to entertain them, I'm there to get them talking about the issues of the class and to clarify what the assignments are asking for. I try to be engaging, but I'm not a stand-up comic - I've learned that I have no clear idea of what 'jokes' will go over students' heads.

While I was searching the Internet for information for these questions, an Infoseek search for "Franklin Bruno" brought up a Sesame Street site. Personally, I don't see the connection - do you?

No - though my mom used to call me "Snuffalupagus" when I had a cold as a kid.

Is there any artistic work (of any kind) that you wish you could say was yours?

Not really - it's enough for me that it's in the world. That said, one example that pops up is "Babies," a song by Pulp on His and Hers that I think is one of the most perfectly constructed I've ever heard. Surely, there's a lot of art I'd be proud to have made - many Rodgers and Hart songs, the early poems of W.H. Auden, Robert Smithson's essays, "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer," Joseph Cornell's boxes (which also turn detritus into great, resonant art), and most Verlaines songs. And if I could give up everything I do and choose one thing to be truly great at, it would be jazz piano.

How has writing about music affected the way in which you examine your own work?

Another hard question. I think I approach criticism as a musician - even when I don't like something, I try to treat it with respect. I figure that anyone making a record put something of themselves (and a lot of time) into it, and they deserve to be listened to in the light of what they were attempting to achieve, even if I don't think it was worth achieving. (I came to this conclusion after reading too many reviews of our records that read as if the writer had barely listened to it.) In the other direction, I probably had a narrower idea of what worthwhile music was before I started reviewing records semi-randomly. On the other hand, I've also witnessed a lot of trendiness and silliness in music over the last several years, and I'm probably more cynical about how bands get popular or famous, even on a small level, which can sometimes be demoralizing. But the healthier side of that is that I'm more committed to contributing what I can contribute without worrying about it as a 'career.'

What are you writing your thesis paper on? (Besides a computer, or on a legal pad, or the back of your hand.) Or - what is the topic of your thesis paper?

Well, I'm not to the thesis (dissertation) point. In our program, there's a longish paper one has to have approved by 2 profs before one goes on to put together a dissertation committee. I'm waiting for comments on the current draft from one of my professors now - it's called "The Relation Between Works and Performance," and it's basically a criticism of certain Platonistic theories about what the nature of music is, using jazz and popular compositions as examples demonstrating the deficiencies of these theories. It's quite dry, and doesn't have as much to do with my own music as it probably sounds. After I finish this, I'll probably change gears and work on the role of intention in linguistic meaning - aesthetics isn't really a specialty of our department (though my work is more metaphysics than aesthetics).

Any musical (or non-musical) works you'd care to endorse?

Sure, hundreds, but I'll just tell you what I'm listening to and reading right now.

On my turntable: Leonard Cohen, Songs From a Room

In my CD player:

• Jimmy Guiffre 3, Live in Stuttgart 1961
• The Upper Crust, Cream of the Crust
• new Mark Eitzel on Matador (Caught In a Trap... )
• Belle & Sebastian, "3...6...9 Seconds of Light" EP
• Grant MacClennan, In Your Bright Ray

In my car: a comp. tape of 60's Brazilian "Tropicalia" pop (Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso and the like), and a tape of two readings by poet Steve Benson.

On my nightstand (i.e. I'm still reading them): Infinite Jest and Kant After Duchamp (as mentioned above), Collected Poems of James Schuyler, Lorca's Poet In New York; Christine Schutt, Nightwork.

Recently read books I'd recommend: Ted Berrigan, On the Level Everyday (lectures on writing poetry); "The Bob Hope Poem," Campbell McGrath; Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon.

Any future recording plans or releases or tours in the works?

Well, the new 0PB album, currently called The Monte Carlo Method, should be out on Scat in April. We may tour briefly next summer, but the grand period of band touring is over for us, what with real jobs and such. Solo, I've got songs picked out for two records, one on Shrimper and one on a new S.F. label called Absolutely Kosher, but I want to do these with lots of guests (rather than all the self-overdubbing of A Bedroom Community), so it's going to take a while to get it together. I toured for several weeks this summer, and it was fun but unprofitable, so I think I'm going to hold off for a while unless someone invites me out to open for them. Both I and the band will continue to play the odd show in So. Cal. for the foreseeable future.

And, to end with a whimper...

What do you like (and dislike) about interviews?

I dislike questions like 2 (the origin of the Nothing Painted Blue name - ed.) and 3 (the Inland Empire question - ed.), which I've answered a lot. I like questions that seem like the result of interested reflection on the records, which most of the above are. I like questions about specific songs or lines, since, unlike some people, I'm not afraid of offering interpretations of my own work.

Okay, that's enough for now. Hope these answers are interesting.
fjb

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Check out http://www.absolutelykosher.com for the latest on the multitude of Franklin's recording projects
 (including stuff with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats and members of Calexico)

For all your Nothing Painted Blue needs, http://www.scatrecords.com is a good place to go.
(I recommend the Prisonshake & Electric Eels discs as well, if you like the rock music.)

Franklin's excellent writings on music can be found on-line at both
the New Times LA and at Feedmag.com

Pertinent POP SHOTS reviews:
FRANKLIN BRUNO - A Bedroom Community
NOTHING PAINTED BLUE - The Monte Carlo Method & Emotional Discipline