Purposeful Incoherence

[Jeff Harrington]

I fundamentally reject purposeful incoherence as guiding principle in music/literature/art. You can't create advanced forms that way.

Purposeful incoherence creates a false (and intimidating) perception that there is a super-audience who will have a coherent experience. That is a lie. There is no coherence in purposeful incoherence. But there is the useful illusion of the super-audience.

The inspired insanities, improvisational flights of bizarre activity, ecstatic incoherences are different than purposeful incoherences. Purposeful incoherence steals the glory from the inspired and purposeless insane.

[J.C. Combs]

Michael had a good question. How can you tell if its purposeful or not?

[Tom Baker]

have to agree here.

i think there might be value in the desconstruction of norms or biases by purposeful incoherence (perhaps the theater of the absurd, or the spectacle of artaud's theater of cruelty)...

and mostly i love non-purposeful coherence - when forms arise out of absolute accidents or unintentional proximities...

[J.C. Combs]

For piano.

one example could be utilizing large amounts of space between notes.

another could be blurring notes.

etc.

I see these examples as methods of composing more so than methods of lying. but if you must think in such terms....

[Glenn Weyant]

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.



---- JABBERWOCKY , Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

[Chris Auerbach-Brown]

Eh, I'm not sure if the 'jabberwocky' quote is to showcase a successful example of purposeful incoherence. However, this isn't the case. If you do some research on this poem, you'll find out that Carroll was using nonsense words to mean specific things. For example, "brillig" means 4 o'clock (if i remember correctly), and 'slithy toves' are little worm-like animals (again, if memory serves correctly). and on and on...'gyre and gimble' is moving around, rolling and squirming, etc. etc.

A disclaimer: it's been a while since I read up on this, but I do remember using this info when I set the song to music in college.

Glenn Weyant said:

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.



---- JABBERWOCKY , Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

[J.C. Combs]

" If you do some research on this poem, you'll find out that Carroll was using nonsense words to mean specific things. For example, "brillig" means 4 o'clock (if i remember correctly), and 'slithy toves' are little worm-like animals (again, if memory serves correctly). and on and on...'gyre and gimble' is moving around, rolling and squirming, etc. etc. - Chris "

Could this be an example of purposeful incoherence? Carroll could have just said 4 o'clock but brillig? Hmmm. Those tricky artists, always trying to screw us over!!! ???? !!!! lol.

[Paul H. Muller]

Late Coltrane is, to my ear, incoherent at times.

Yet, I think it works.

[Glenn Weyant]

--- If you do some research on this poem, you'll find out that Carroll was using nonsense words to mean specific things.

yep.
things are often more than they seem but usually less than they are,
unless they aren't, in which case they are,
but never on tuesdays.

[Chris Auerbach-Brown]

What about on Arbor Day?

Glenn Weyant said:

--- If you do some research on this poem, you'll find out that Carroll was using nonsense words to mean specific things.

yep.
things are often more than they seem but usually less than they are,
unless they aren't, in which case they are,
but never on tuesdays.

[Glenn Weyant]

--- What about on Arbor Day?

well i think that goes without saying.
but yelling it is fine.

[Paul Hertz]

Don't miss the forest for the trees.

Chris Auerbach-Brown said:

What about on Arbor Day?

Glenn Weyant said:

--- If you do some research on this poem, you'll find out that Carroll was using nonsense words to mean specific things.

yep.
things are often more than they seem but usually less than they are,
unless they aren't, in which case they are,
but never on tuesdays.

[Jeff Harrington]

Jabberwockification now drives a significant part of our culture. It utilizes complex surfaces (which can be very interesting, and even completely convincing) to simulate advanced, complex form. It's a simulation of the inherently fractal-like deep structures that non-jabberwockified art has. :)

Some examples. A friend of mine posted on FB, that Ulysses is incoherent by necessity. The stresses of creating this complex form itself required frequent descents into textual madness. Compare that with Fineggans Wake, which is continuously inherently incoherent for the sake of being incoherent. Joyce of course would claim that the incoherence is merely the surface of these incredibly complex intertwined substructures jutting out and causing incoherence but that's talk, IMO.

A musical example. Compare Schoenberg's 4th SQ with his String Trio. The latter is just insane, monstrous, truly expressionistic. The 4th simulates this expressionistic intensity through rote methods. The 4th is simulacra to the trio's very real madness.

FWIW, I'm trying to point out traps that Western culture has set itself. Advanced art has now embraced intentional incoherence as law. Those artists who do not embrace this inherent incoherence, are claimed to be retro, unintelligent, living in the past. And again, there are all kinds of protection against having these kinds of discussions. There's the inevitable 'are we going THERE again.' To the, 'we're just talking about music that so and so doesn't like.'

What I'm saying is that inherently purposeful incoherence can have a compelling surface. Hell, I listen to this stuff all the time. It's interesting, but, but but... it is a dead end. There is no advancement in form or content. The artists themselves, I believe, typically do not have either the spiritual imperative nor the emotional history to spew incoherence honestly and transcendentally to the extent required. And it is exhausting. Spewing this shit, honestly can kill you. Look at Artaud. It leads to madness!

So, to simplify, we're a bunch of phonies, spewing shit we don't really understand because we have to continue the historical imperative of the breakdown of meaning.

And I'm just saying, fuck that.

And a sidenote. Elsie pointed out to me last night when we were talking about this, that intentional, purposeful incoherence is being used by politicians now as a standard way to message the public. (She was thinking of Bush's comment about how 'we make our own reality', and Sarah Palin's inherent meaninglessness by default). And of course, I'm sure that many absurd texts are themselves driven to mock 'political speech.' What that means is that because culture now has nothing to say that is coherent, it's possible that the real world has adopted this too as the standard modus operandi.

Meaning has many uses. Destroying the mechanisms to generate transmissions of meaning is dangerous over the long term. We need to develop new forms that don't deny meaning, that don't avoid creating meaning, and don't relish shocking meaninglessness as its primary surface.