As a part of the Lilith Fair/90s singer-songwriter crowd, Jewel was one of many punching bags available to rock critics. Reviews of any of the albums from that movement read like a critic who had been holding all of their quality negative material for the right time. I have not heard Jewel’s music since it was popular, so I have no idea how it has aged. She was marketed like a Reality Bites character come to life, so that was a turnoff in 1996.
Despite not having much of an opinion of her, I still have a photocopy of Sarah Vowell’s review of Jewel’s second album, Spirit, initially published in Spin magazine. I keep it for two reasons. It is an excellent summary of how an artist's marketing is sometimes positioned to make you feel like you are the problem if you do not like that performer. The main reason I keep it is because the last paragraph explains form vs. content in a way anyone can understand. It can start a discussion about why all visual artists’ ultimate goal is not accomplished representational or “realistic” work. Never mind that “accomplished representational painting” is a moving target that changes as time passes. A person with a music streaming service could read the following paragraph, listen to the songs, and understand why form should trump content in art:
“Hope and union are still achievable in pop music. What Jewel doesn’t understand is that the least icky way to accomplish those things is not through words but through sound. She actually says stupid shit like, ‘Hear our voices ring out clear with sounds of freedom’ instead of just making the glorious noise. Take, for example, one of the most free-sounding songs in history, the Beach Boys’ ‘I Get Around.’ It goes, ‘Whoo! I get around!' and uses harmony and enthusiasm and melodic hooks and humor to liberate. Jewel’s record, which comes down to her unwavering voice tacked onto what seems like the same folky vamp, is so musically unambitious, so aesthetically lazy, it lacks all of the fun, all of the freedom, all the life-changing bliss that is pop music’s reason for being. A good song doesn’t tell you that everything’s going to be fine; a good song makes you believe it - whoo! - for three whole minutes at a time.”
To be fair to Jewel, she was not a pop artist. She was a sort of folk artist. Also, some pop songs do tell you everything will be fine, like Bob Marley. But to Vowell’s credit, Marley’s music tells you “everything is going to be alright” just as much as the lyrics do. Form, meet function. If you cannot understand that form outranks the subject, you will be miserable in art school. But take heart, you will not be in art school for long. You will either fail out or quit in frustration after crying in a critique while blubbering something like, “But this piece is important to me!”
—-
I thought about Vowell’s review while listening to Billy Nomates’ Cacti album. Cacti was one of a few pop albums in 2023 written by someone younger than me that I could tap into. Nomates (real name: Tor Maries) was born in 1990, but she does not write like it. There are a few reasons why this album resonates with me. It is recorded with every acceptable synth, drum, and guitar tone from 1987 to 1997. She records most of her vocals dry, with little effect, and positions them forward in the mix. To any rock vocalist working now, I beg you to find your diaphragm, lose the reverb and fake falsetto, and slide that vocal up more in the final mix.
Maries also writes direct lyrics. Direct yet not specific. She bucks the trend of diaristic writing that is so coded and personal that I do not care. She writes pop songs in the way that I think they work best. Do not tell me what you are feeling. Tell me what I am feeling. Or, more correctly, tell me what we are both feeling. Taken in sequential order, Cacti comes across as a break-up album, full of the heartache of being abandoned with that giving way to an existential crisis of questioning the value of everything else in life.
One of the album’s highlights is a song called Vertigo. It is her version of Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime. Both address the same hollowness of achievement in contemporary society, even though they were written 40 years apart. Some subjects are eternal. “Good gifts make bad gods” is eternal.
Once In a Lifetime has one of the greatest opening lines in pop music: And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack.
And
And. What came before “and?” As a listener, you have been with the song from the beginning, yet somehow, you are behind the narrator after the first word.
Nomates’ Vertigo starts with the question, “What on earth is this?”
What on earth is what? I just got here.
What on earth is this?
Is this what I’ve waited for?
Step out of my front door
And the ground caves in
They told me it was big
That the feeling would lift me
Whoah!
You wait a long time to love someone
Who doesn’t love you
And maybe they do
Living in a modern world, what’s the difference?
“This” is the brass ring you have been trying to grab. The “whoah!” does not translate outside the song’s performance. It sits lifeless on the page. Is it screamed, or is it delivered in a muted way like Keanu Reeves? Upon listening, you will hear that it is the whoah of someone falling, but it is also the vocal transition to the chorus. It serves both form and content. The delivery of the word “whoah” (the form) validates the use of the word. She uses it again in the following verse:
Well, what the hell happened?
I climbed all the way up here
And I never had vertigo in my whole damn life
But I just put my hand through it
I started a fire, but I just put my -
Whoah!
The vocal delivery of the verse deliberately runs too long and infringes on the chorus. The form of the song interrupts the content of the line “I just put my - “so the thought remains incomplete, but now, “whoah” both interrupts the line to stay on time with the emerging chorus and completes the reaction to putting her hand in the fire she just started. She does not say, “I just put my hand in a fire, and it hurts,” but reacts to it: whoah! Simultaneously, whoah, I’m surprised that the chorus is already here, and whoah, fire burns.
I listened to this song seven times while on a walk. I got caught up in the form. She does not return for a third verse. One more return to the “whoah” well would have turned it into a gimmick. Instead, the song runs out of steam like a person would want to take a seat after realizing they wasted a lot of energy on a goal that did not fulfill them.
Would Sarah Vowell approve of this track? I have no idea.
Repeatedly listening to Vertigo was a good way to wind down the year and think about 2024. It was a reminder not to burden myself with unrealistic expectations.
——
I had what may end up being my career peak before the 2008 recession. 2006-2007 was the only time I thought, “I might not have to work a job for too much longer.” Then, I installed my first NYC solo show right as Lehman Brothers collapsed. That was it. Step out of my front door, and the floor caves in. No doubt, there are bounce-back stories from this era. But five or six years is a long time in the art world. It is enough for people to move on to the next batch of recruits. Your best bet in becoming an art star after 2008 was to be in graduate school. Galleries descended on those poor students, promised them a fortune, and sold their works for relatively cheap to collectors so they would buy something during the recession. “Get in on the ground floor of the next superstar.” Once the economy bounced back, most of those artists were dismissed. It is easier for galleries to find new artists than for them to find new clients. That has been my reaction to the content of Vertigo.
In terms of form, I find myself asking a series of questions with the same formula: “If I am not going to do X, then why am I still doing Y or Z?” The questions picked up pace last year when I gave myself a simple ultimatum: you are finished working with the human form. People are surprised when I tell them this because I have been working with the figure for 30 years, if you count art school. Do you still have the same job you had 30 years ago? I am not still mowing yards and working at Michael’s craft store.
This is not an abrupt shift in my work. The figure has slowly dissolved over the past eight years. Once, there were figures. Then, there were just heads and hands. Then, there were just abstractions of heads. The question then became, “If you are not going to work with the figure, why are you going to work with any other recognizable form?” This line of questioning sped up in the final quarter of 2023. Why more than three colors? Why more than one color? Why more than one shape? I read about artists rushing toward a perceived endgame of art, but I did not know I would get caught up in it. How far away am I from “Why even one shape or one color? Why make anything?”
I have often used a part of Steve Martin’s 1991 movie, L.A. Story, to think about and teach economy. It is put forth as an absurdist joke, but at one point, Trudi (played by Marilu Henner) says, “The best thing to do is- right before you go out, look in the mirror and turn around real fast, and the first thing that catches your eye, get rid of it.” It sounds silly in the movie, but it is good advice for someone trying to whittle something down to the basics. It works for me because I know the movie. I teach people born in 2005. They do not know who Steve Martin is, much less have heard of L.A. Story.
2024 will continue the trajectory toward simplicity and the expression of joy—a lot of looking in the mirror and getting rid of the first things that catch my eye. My goal was to publish here once every two weeks. The pursuit of simplicity will push that to once a month. I am just about cured of social media. The dumbest election year of my life will drive me further away from it. If you need me, I will be elsewhere. What if we actively engaged in relationships again instead of passively observing our friends via their online posts? That sounds frightening to people now.
As for the news part of what is supposed to be a newsletter, I have a show in Nashville in March at David Lusk Gallery. I will share more information at a later date. The work was made through the aforementioned pursuit of simplicity and joy. It is better to fall short in pursuing those goals than any other.
I have checked two books off my “still-to-read” list from my year-end posts.
American Gun - Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson
Reading this history of the AR-15 reminded me of reading Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower. The development of this rifle takes so many turns, and there are several instances where we could have been spared its domestic consequences.
Romney: A Reckoning - McKay Coppins
How McKay Coppins became one of the only reasonable reporters during Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign is beyond me, considering he was writing for Buzzfeed. Not exactly a bastion of journalistic integrity. His reporting at the time was critical yet respectful, and this book continues that analysis of a figure who continually surprised and frustrated both his political friends and rivals until he was left in relative isolation. Romney gave Coppins access to his files, journals, and emails without limits or editorial veto power. The result is a sympathetic but honest autopsy of a skilled problem solver who lacked a grand vision but possessed enough backbone to stand up to Trump.