{"id":27,"date":"2008-05-26T22:51:47","date_gmt":"2008-05-26T22:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp\/?p=27"},"modified":"2008-05-26T22:51:47","modified_gmt":"2008-05-26T22:51:47","slug":"you_can_make_me_feel_bad_if_yo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/2008\/05\/you_can_make_me_feel_bad_if_yo\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can Make Me Feel Bad if You Want to"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"justify\">by guest blogger <a href=\"http:\/\/www.automaticheartbreak.com\/\">Corey Dargel<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Eric G. Wilson&#8217;s polemical book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wfu.edu\/%7Ewilsoneg\/againsthappiness.html\"><i>against happiness<\/i><\/a>, is not as dismal or misanthropic as you might expect from its title.&nbsp; It&#8217;s less <i>against happiness in general<\/i> than it is against a certain kind of performed happiness or superficial happiness.&nbsp; Wilson wants us to embrace melancholy as a means of experiencing beauty in the world.&nbsp; After all, he argues, part of what makes something profoundly beautiful is knowing that it will eventually pass away.<br \/><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"arthurrussell.gif\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/arthurrussell.gif\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 20px 20px; float: right;\" height=\"295\" width=\"220\" \/><\/span><br \/>I&#8217;m sympathetic to Wilson&#8217;s point of view, but when I think about art and culture (as opposed to, say, friends, loved ones, and pets), I&#8217;m not sure his philosophy of beauty holds up. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Certainly the performing arts are ephemeral, but what about sculpture, painting, and film?&nbsp; What about recordings of music?&nbsp; Maybe Wilson would say that while some objects of art are relatively permanent, our <i>experiences<\/i> of them are not, and it is our experiences of these objects that we find beautiful.&nbsp; Or maybe he would argue that sculpture, painting, film, recordings, etc., are representations of something ephemeral (i.e. a photograph of a time and place that no longer exists)<\/p>\n<p>As I&#8217;m writing this, I&#8217;m thinking about the cellist\/singer\/composer <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Arthur_Russell_%28cellist%29\">Arthur Russell<\/a> who died in 1992, at the age of 40.&nbsp; Every time I listen to his music, I imagine what a better place the world would be if there were twice as many Arthur Russell songs in it.&nbsp; What if we could still go out to see Russell perform his songs in concert?&nbsp; How would he have embraced the exponential progress in music technology since his death? &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Maybe Wilson is right.&nbsp; Maybe the fact that Arthur Russell passed away enhances my experience of his music, but I think I would be just as madly in love with it if he was still alive. <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by guest blogger Corey Dargel Eric G. Wilson&#8217;s polemical book, against happiness, is not as dismal or misanthropic as you might expect from its title.&nbsp; It&#8217;s less against happiness in general than it is against a certain kind of performed happiness or superficial happiness.&nbsp; Wilson wants us to embrace melancholy as a means of experiencing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}