John: I had a response all but set to publish tonight when suddenly there was a huge crash and a 60-foot cedar from our neighbor’s yard toppled down and smashed the back of our house. Unfortunately there’s still about a third of this huge tree standing over our house, there’s a major wind storm blowing, and the entire neighborhood is without power. Plus we’ve got flooding in the basement. Afraid that the rest of the tree will fall right on our bedroom, we have vacated to a nearby motel, where I am tapping this out in the bathroom on my laptop while the family sleeps. So where was I?
\nI myself was not attacking ovation inflation. I see nothing wrong with it, actually. I don’t stand myself because I guess I’m just not that demonstrative, but I don’t care if others are. I was just wondering if it signals anything about the modern audience that’s different from ears past. You write that:<\/p>\n
Audience timidity about strongly expressing opinions might seem contradictory with a disdain for standing ovations; sitting and applauding politely is hedging your bets; standing and cheering puts you out there, in some sense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’m not sure that I agree with that at all; in fact it may be the opposite. Standing and cheering might be the safer gambit in a group that’s doing it. Look, I’m not advocating for full-on criticism, only that the engagement be real somehow.
\nYou brought up the 60s, and I had meant to ask you about those early reviews of the hippie happenings in California and what effect you thought they had on your later writing. In a way, I was thinking as I read the book, your (sometimes bemused) accounts of these events and openness to them being whatever they wanted to be established a tone that carried on when you went on to write about pop and classical music in New York.
\nOkay – there was more in the first version of this post, but it’s getting on to 3 AM and I’ll pick it up tomorrow (er, later today)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John: I had a response all but set to publish tonight when suddenly there was a huge crash and a 60-foot cedar from our neighbor’s yard toppled down and smashed the back of our house. Unfortunately there’s still about a third of this huge tree standing over our house, there’s a major wind storm blowing, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ePZm-n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":40,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/12\/john_post-tree.html","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":0},"title":"John: Post-tree","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"December 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Doug: I hope you got some sleep and are dug out, as it were. As for audiences: I agree, sheep-like behavior masking a lack of conviction is bad however it's manifested, and if today it's manifested as automatic standing ovations, we're agin 'em. As for my hippie roots: I was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/12\/doug_back_in_the_tree_house_fr.html","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":1},"title":"Doug: Back In The Tree House (Friends and Critics)","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"December 16, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay - we're back online. Power has been restored here in Seattle (I understand as many as 1 million people had electrical outages). The tree that met the acquaintance with the back of our house was the most impressive tree in our neighborhood. It was more than 100 years old\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"tree.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/tree3web.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":24,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/12\/john_your_tree.html","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":2},"title":"John: Your tree","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"December 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Doug: Geez, with all due respect to Art, I would think a tree, a storm, a roof, power and family safety might just for the moment trump this conversation. I'll respond to the rest of your 3 a.m. posting in a bit. Looking forward to your next message, but take\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/12\/doug_classic_appreciation.html","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":3},"title":"Doug: Classic Appreciation","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"December 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"John: I wasn't at all suggesting there wasn't a place for the classics (when I was young I never appreciated all those disparaging remarks about \"old chestnuts\" as people used to call them. To me hearing them the first time, there was nothing old or tree-fruity about them). And I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/12\/john_standing_ovations.html","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":4},"title":"John: standing ovations","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"December 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"By John Rockwell Doug: The issue of audience sophistication and naivety is bound up with the democratization of the arts. The ideal, for those who believe the arts have been dumbed down by yahoo audiences (meaning rubes, not subscribers to that estimable e-mail etc. site), is of a Leo Straussian\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1278,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2017\/01\/hollywoods-political-bias-its-money.html","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":5},"title":"Context: Hollywood’s Political Bias? It’s Money","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"January 17, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Unquestionably, a majority of the people who work in Hollywood lean politically left. More than lean, in many cases. But how much of their politics makes it onto the big screen? Rory Carroll takes up the question in the Guardian, writing that: \"the industry as a whole could disappoint those\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "arts and politics"","block_context":{"text":"arts and politics","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/arts-and-politics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/hollywood-1246529_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C518&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/hollywood-1246529_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C518&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/hollywood-1246529_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C518&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/hollywood-1246529_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C518&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/hollywood-1246529_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C518&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}