The Effort

Note on this blog post: These thoughts spawned from a comment discussion on the Dangers wordpress blog. It is also something I have noticed lately from my own experiences. You might disagree,the rest of my band might disagree, but isn’t that the beauty of dialogue? And doesn’t hardcore and punk need to thrive on dialogue? (even if it doesn’t happen as often as we would like). Though I think the purpose of this mini essay in content has everything to do with hardcore and punk, more importantly I am posting this to encourage interesting discussion within hardcore and punk, something that we, as a band, always have pushed for. Lets start talking about the observations and creative impulses we have, rather than resorting to dogmatism and/or shallowness when we come together at these shows. This essay is just something I noticed, that I want to be challenged on. Something that I thought and want to express, to get gears turning to see if anyone else has noticed, agrees, disagrees, etc with what i have to say. The content is never more important than intentions behind creating.

Or is it?

I can’t wait to see you in the winter, Europe. Lets talk.

- Jordan

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Collectively, hardcore and punk kids, fans, musicians, critical thinkers (or whatever other label that you most associate with) should read “the Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes.

His essay, published in English 1967(He is/was a French author), argues against literary criticism that incorporates the perspective and personal life of the author when dissecting the intentions of the text he/she creates. It is hard to not obviously do that, but by looking at literature as its own being rather than an extension of the person who wrote it, there is much more depth that can be found in a piece of work. Not to say that doing the opposite of what Barthes suggests is “wrong”, but instead just another path we could take in understanding.

“To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing.”

I think (note: my opinion) hardcore and punk, being so intimately personal lyrically, unintentionally ruins this style of interpretation for us. It is almost impossible to separate lyricist from lyrics because what makes hardcore and punk so vibrant and powerful is the person screaming (their feelings) at others. How can you separate a person screaming from their words that expresses (their) feelings? Why would a person blow out their vocals chords to express words that aren’t directly linked to themselves in some sort of way? Hardcore and punk rock thrive on the personal, and separating the “author” from the “text” as Barthes suggests we must do, would destroy the power and would defeat the purpose of hardcore entirely, reducing it to a bunch of mindless fools screaming at each other only to scream for the act of screaming (which in a sense, could also not be such a bad thing if interpreted differently. See what I am getting at here?).

So in that, it makes sense why we attach this way of interpretation to other forms of art, because it is what we know and are so intimately familiar with, how we grew up seeing the world through the eyes of others. This is not per-say, a bad thing, because there is no “right” way of interpreting art or creating criticism. I am just suggesting there are other ways we can make an approach to understanding the world outside of hardcore and punk once we move outside of our comfort zones.

If anyone is interested in this essay by Barthes, you can read it online for free here