Don’t ask us to attend
‘Cos we’re not all there
Oh don’t pretend ‘cos I don’t care
I don’t believe illusions ‘cos too much is real
So stop your cheap comment
‘Cos we know what we feel
Sex Pistols, 1977
Reviewing is fundamentally about having something to say. Jarring it might be, inconvenient it often is. It’s not about being an expert. If you happen to be one, great. But non-expert voices also have something to say and can be just as interesting and maybe aren’t self-censoring as much because of their “pro” role in academia or publishing.
It’s also about being true to oneself. There is no point in parroting someone else’s opinion and pretending that it is your own. Now, your own opinion may be the same as someone else’s but that’s fine. It’s serendipity if that happens and there are so many opinions.
And what about this thing about something to say itself? It’s not necessarily about being authorial in the sense of putting yourself in the middle of the action although there is nothing wrong with that. And certainly in some situations, say if you know the subject intimately or if you want to add a bit of reportage to explain your vantage point, that is absolutely fine. But this thing it is you have to say needs beyond stating facts and being as honest as you can about your version of events is how the effect of what you are reviewing reacts with the real world and you as a representative of someone in the real world beyond the art form itself.
Any kind of art is a sort of a trip that you are an onlooker of. It’s a creation, an entity, a thing apart and set loose by the artist. It isn’t literal beyond being a book, play, piece of music, work of cinema etc which of course it is; it’s usually metaphorical and that is even when it is straight documentary. The “thing” is an artefact and doesn’t just exist like rain, the wind, snow, the sun. Being artistic about the rain, the wind, snow, the sun is quite different to the source.
Sitting down as a reviewer for a blog, a magazine, a paper whatever is a form of journalism. And that in terms of arts journalism has changed massively since the days of Tom Wolfe (1930-2018) and writers like him associated with ‘new journalism’. Wolfe, author of Radical Chic (1970) and Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) believed New Journalism allowed reporters to incorporate the “subjective or emotional life of the characters,” which readers previously found only in novels and short stories.
“It’s not just that reporting gives you a bigger slice of life, gives – lends verisimilitude to what you are doing – it’s that it feeds the imagination.”
Tom Wolfe
Reviewing I’d argue like reporting feeds the imagination and acts as a surrogate for someone who isn’t there on one level. Everyone imagines being there at one time or another. Fear of Missing Out? It’s offset by reading about what you’ve missed perhaps although you might even be more infuriated that you weren’t there. There always a downside.
A reader should be aware and probably is that reviews aren’t facts. They are 100 per cent opinions even if very factually populated. The assembling of facts on a page delivered straight is a decision and arranged for a purpose usually fairly artfully which fundamentally is a point of view or multiple points of views distilled into a miniature theory. If someone doesn’t state their opinion there is a reason for that. If someone is resorting to hyperbole or its opposite meiosis you read between the lines and have to process the bluster in the search for the main drift.
Reviews are dashed off quickly before the writer has time to forget what it is that needs saying and above all are about finding a way to document that thought if not for posterity but for further use towards a greater goal as yet undetermined. Is this initial act important in itself like building a rocket that can go to the moon? Not at all. Although it is to the writer on a basic level as a draft for something else, as a kind of listening diary and final point for now a way of putting things in context. That often means deciding on rankings through lists. The act of making a list seems stupid but it is useful to clarify whether something stacks up against something similar or not. If it is so much better or worse than something else in the same idiom an enquiring mind wonders why.
To draw this article to a screeching halt ask yourself. Do you have something to say about the last record you listened to? Are you pretty vacant about it? Does it take too much effort to think? Is it simply a case of like, dislike, love, hate – are these reactions enough? I’d say they aren’t enough. But they are a starting point. Interrogating why you think these things is the start of a process that will make you listen more deeply. Try reviewing something today without even the need to write it down – you might be surprised the journey it takes you on.
MORE FROM MARLBANK
THIS WEEK WE HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO
TUBE’S, GRAZ, AUSTRIA – Upcoming acts include Seamus Blake, Eleonora Strino and Tim Armacost
Discover a new jazz club today
Knats, A Great Day in Newcastle, Fontana ***
This homage to the north east is certainly about local pride. Its appeal if you are not from there is more debatable.
Lorikeet, Woven, Babel ***1/2
Jaunty, rather lovely, English folk and some Americana and improv directions figure on newly surfacing Somerset band Lorikeet’s Woven.
