the iconmaster

Several people have asked to hear my reasons for voting for Obama. I’ve already explained my thoughts on the abortion issue, so I won’t repeat those here. And I won’t have much to say about Republicans versus Democrats. In the past I’ve voted for Republicans, third-party candidates and, now, for a Democrat. (I’m not just a swing voter — I’m a crack-addled hamster in a plastic ball.)

You see, I didn’t vote for a party. I voted for a man.

Presidential campaigns are harsh crucibles. Every last skeleton in the closet is dragged out and paraded before the media. Off-the-cuff remarks are deliberately misconstrued. The most tenuous of associations are scrutinized for the sake of making the candidate look worse.

You can learn a lot about a candidate, watching him slog his way through the electoral process. Does he fall apart as the pressure mounts? Or is he sharpened, even improved?

Barack Obama, I think it’s safe to say, was improved.

Consider as just one example Obama’s response to the kerfluffle over the remarks of his former pastor. (I might have something to say about whether the remarks were even very troubling; or about the fact that they were not Obama’s remarks, but someone else’s — but I’ll set all that aside for now.) The politically expedient thing for Obama to do would have been to immediately throw Jeremiah Wright under a bus. To distance himself from his former pastor as much as possible.

This is just what he didn’t do. In fact, for Obama, that crisis became an opportunity to deliver one of the best speeches of his campaign. This is not a man who crumples under pressure.

(After that speech, Wright continued to speak out in ways that damaged Obama in the eyes of voters. It did become necessary for Obama to eventually distance himself; but for that I blame Wright, not Obama.)

While Obama had a record of inspiring audiences, his track record with debates was not so stellar. But by the time the three presidential debates between himself and John McCain rolled around, Obama was a pro. Even in the “town hall” style debate — supposedly McCain’s home turf — Obama came out on top according to the majority view. Whereas McCain seemed uptight and angry, Obama looked like a guy who’d done his homework. He knew what he was talking about, and McCain’s attempts to rattle him simply bounced off.

McCain, on the other hand, is an excellent example of what it looks like to fall apart over the course of a presidential campaign. When the financial crisis became impossible to ignore, McCain’s response was erratic. His decision to suspend his campaign in order to spearhead the congressional effort at a bailout was ill-considered and went nowhere. His campaign message, too, seemed to drift from one issue to another — from “drill here, drill now” to Joe the plumber.

The supreme example of McCain’s spasmodic decision-making was, of course, the selection of Sarah Palin for his vice-presidential candidate. Don’t misunderstand me — Palin is no idiot. She is, however, supremely disinterested in anything unrelated to her immediate experience — such as the existence of foreign countries, what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do, or whose rights the First Amendment actually protects. In this way she is not so very different from many Americans; she is, however, rather unlike the kind of American one would normally consider for election to national office. Sarah Palin was the nail in the coffin of McCain’s chances at garnering my vote.

Obama, by contrast, is someone I trust to make decisions of international import more than I trust myself. He was right to insist on scaling back in Iraq (a largely manufactured war) in order to focus our efforts on Afghanistan (where the U.S.-targeting terrorists actually are). I trust him to restore the United States’ reputation torn to shreds by eight years of unilateralism. I trust him to be skeptical of barely-superintended mercenary organizations like Blackwater. I trust him to concentrate on shoring up the middle class. In short, I trust him to display wisdom and prudence in all the decisions with which he will be confronted over the next four or eight years.

There is another factor here. Fifty years from now, I doubt anyone but the most expert historian will know who John McCain was. But my grandkids will know the story of Barack Obama. This election was that historic; and I can’t imagine not being able to tell them, “Yes, I was there. I voted for that historic man on that historic day. On the night he won the election, people ran through the streets yelling ‘Yes we did!’

“And the world was never quite the same.”

Since casting a relatively public vote for now-soon-to-be-President Obama, I’ve had to withstand a surprising degree of vitriol from my socially conservative friends. (And as a general rule, I consider myself socially conservative.) Not all of the comments are directed at me personally; often they just float through the ether of Twitter and Facebook: People are disgusted by voters like me. They’re ashamed. They wonder how anyone who believes as they do can vote for the pro-choice candidate.

Well, I can try to explain why; but be warned: you are unlikely to find the explanation satisfying and fairly likely to find it uncomfortable. In fact, if it doesn’t leave you uncomfortable, then something will have gone wrong with my explanation somewhere.

Abortion is not the issue.

By that of course I mean it’s not the primary issue. It’s symptomatic of a deeper dilemma that (in my view) is not getting enough attention, for reasons that are going to become very obvious. But I had to work my way there from the symptoms first.

When it comes to abortion, I find it helpful to look at social factors rather than at the legalities. For me the question is not, “Can it be outlawed, and how soon?” but “Why are there any abortions at all?” There are many many discussions we could have at this point — discussions about poverty and education and women in the workplace and industrialization. But let’s get down to the absolutely most basic, brain-dead obvious level we possibly can. Why are there any abortions at all?

Because people want sex without children.

That’s not very hard, is it? If people wanted sex and were okay with it leading to children, they would not be aborting pregnancies. If people weren’t interested in children but were also disinterested in sex, there wouldn’t be any pregnancies to abort. So it must be in the stepping from one to the other where the issue lies. People want sex without children. They don’t accept that the two must always or ordinarily ship as a set, so they make a way to decouple one from the other.

Abortion isn’t the only mechanism available to decouple childbearing from sex, however. Just today, homosexual couples in Connecticut began taking advantage of a new ruling with allows them to marry as if they were heterosexual pairs. Those unions are highly unlikely to be fruitful.

Isn’t it interesting how hard it is to come up with a good (secular) argument against homosexual marriage once you accept the premise that children need not follow from sex? Homosexual couples have sex and produce no children. Why should they? Heterosexual couples have sex all the time without producing children. Not only because they’re having abortions, of course. No, the far more frequent decoupling mechanism for the heterosexual couple — married, living together, whathaveyou — is contraception.

At this point, you may be getting uncomfortable. (Unless you’re a Roman Catholic who takes her church’s teachings seriously — aren’t you happy now?) Contraception. Where would we be without it? Struggling to provide more food, more clothing and more education for an ever-growing family in an economy that’s already unfriendly to single-income households. Hopelessly outnumbered by offspring while extended family can only worry from several hundred miles away, thanks to our constantly-mobile society. Left without free time, peace of mind or discretionary income. In short, miserable, beset upon and without any light at the end of the tunnel.

Well, I can’t bring myself to disagree. But the fact is, we are now finally staring down the barrel of the real issue.

Should sex lead to children? Or shouldn’t it?

Someone is going to object that contraception is merely the prevention of the formation of an embryo while abortion is its elimination, and therefore I am conflating two very different issues. To which I say, Congratulations on your scientific grasp of the situation. I’m not here interested in the morality of this or that particular reproductive act. I’m interested in the underlying philosophy that guides all of those observable acts. Is our philosophy on the whole pro-reproductive, or anti-reproductive? (And it’s worth pointing out that some contraceptives turn out to be abortificants too. The line here is probably much fuzzier than you think.)

If we claim our philosophy is pro-reproductive, as I suspect many of my socially conservative friends would do, then we are on the hook for that ethic in every area — not just the ones most convenient or least applicable to us. It is the most rank form of hypocrisy to condemn others for an anti-reproductive practice when we ourselves cherish anti-reproductive practices in our own lives and marriages.

That bears repeating: It is the most rank form of hypocrisy to condemn others for an anti-reproductive practice when we ourselves cherish anti-reproductive practices in our own lives and marriages.

Either sex is meant to produce children or it isn’t. When we try to split hairs on this point in order to get contraception in the door while leaving abortion outside, it’s no wonder others see through our pedantry. We will never be taken seriously on this point as long as we cling to our convenient inconsistencies.

Obviously the practical shift this would entail would be profound. It would require reorganizing our extended families and communities, and rethinking our careers and standards of living, in order to provide the kind of environment in which larger nuclear families can thrive. I’m not going to be the pioneer to get those arrows in his back, and you’re probably not going to be either.

But until somebody does take the lead on a truly pro-reproductive ethic and practice, we need to shut up about what everyone else is doing. They’re only following along with what they see in us.

This week, quite out of the blue, I received an email from Todd Levin. It seems his wife found my post about his music through Google and pointed him to it.

After I picked myself up off the floor, I made sure to ask for an interview. Mr. Levin graciously agreed, and the results are below. The good news is Todd Levin is a real guy. The bad news is… well, everything else if you enjoy his music.

iconmaster: Just what have you been doing since DeLuxe was released in 1995? It seemed like you went into hiding there for a while.

Todd Levin: Not “hiding.” I just never wanted to be a “career” composer – it didn’t interest me. There are other things I enjoy doing more on a daily basis than writing music. Nor did I want to compose music in order to earn money. There are other ways I’d rather earn money.

i: How have your views on classical music and the world of classical music changed or matured since DeLuxe?

TL: I would say my views on classical music and the world of classical music have not changed/matured substantively. Classical contemporary music is, on the whole, less interesting to me than it was 10-15 years ago, though there always are individual exceptions.

i: You said in Todd Levin that you didn’t want to influence history. However, I think you probably did in some way. Do you feel like critics and fellow composers have come around to your point of view somewhat? Now that you’re older, do you still find yourself wanting to “push the boundaries” in music?

TL: I said what I meant. As to critics and fellow composers, I wouldn’t know what they’re thinking, as I haven’t really spoken to anyone in the contemporary classical music world in over five years.

i: You also said that classical music needs to “climb down from its parochial pedestal and throw off the artistic aurora.” Do you think classical music can compete for attention in today’s digital culture? Does it need to? What should it do to stay relevant?

TL: I think that in the most basic terms, comtemporary classical music is as impotent (or more so) than it was 10-15 years ago, in terms of its ability to impact culture in any meaningful way. There are individual exceptions, but I’m talking broad generalities.

i: Do you think this is a trend we ought to be trying to reverse, or should we just accept that classical music is not really a “fit” in contemporary culture?

TL: Why would one desire to be involved in an art form one believes to be impotent, and unable to make a significant cultural contribution to the arts community as a whole? I think I stated this as clearly as possible in the text of Todd Levin (DG Ultramix) on DeLuxe.

i: Are you working on any music projects right now, or looking ahead to any?

TL: I always revolve ideas in my head, but I do this for my own personal delectation only.

i: What other composers or musicians would you consider to be successfully covering some of the same ground that you’ve been covering (figuring out what “classical” music should sound like today)?

TL: The last group of composers who created their own musical language were the minimalists such as Glass and Reich. Adams has extended this musical approach successfully by packaging this music better than any other “post-minimalist.”

i: It’s probably hard to make a living off composition these days unless you hit it big as a film composer. What kind of work are you doing instead of music?

TL: I’m a curator of Post War and Contemporary Art, and have been doing this before either DeLuxe or Ride The Planet was released. I’ve been involved in the Post War and Contemporary Art market as a buyer/seller for almost thirty years.

i: That’s great work, and I’m glad you enjoy it. But isn’t contemporary art even more rarified than contemporary classical music? Consider how many people will buy and listen to Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings soundtrack or just about anything by John Williams, and compare that to the number of people who visit modern art galleries. You might argue that soundtracks are too populist to count as true “classical” music, but once you take the movie out of the equation I’m not sure of any empirical test that could neatly divide those categories. To put it another way: isn’t it the responsibility of the artist, rather than the medium, to inject the cultural potency that you feel is missing in classical music today?

TL: Your assumption, viz. “…contemporary art even more rarified than contemporary classical music..” is sadly, incredibly mistaken.

Go to a major international art fair such as Basel Miami Beach, and look at the crowds. Look at the prices being paid. Look at who shows up to be seen – anyone who is anyone in the fields of the Arts, Business, Sports, Popular Culture, etc. The immediate cultural influence is overwhelmingly massive. Young artists are sexed up for the pages of such magazines such as Vogue, WWD, GQ, and Esquire, and the results of major auctions when record prices are set is seen immediately on Bloomberg News, CNBC, MSNBC, and any/every major paper/web page. Your comment shows a total ignorance of the contemporary art scene [iconmaster note: He’s not wrong], and more importantly the market mechanism.

Art can be quantified, therefore, it can be bought and sold, and therefore, a market economy which is impossible for classical music exists behind it. Global music sales (including digital music sales) were just under $20 billion in 2008, down for the tenth consecutive year in a row – but remember (and this is important) classical (or ‘fine art music) sales make up only about 2% (!) of that total amount. Global fine art sales are probably around $40 billion dollars, and have increased every year for the past ten years, with Post War and Contemporary Art being the largest portion of that total.

Contemporary Art has an immediate cultural impact on people’s lives today in a way that it never has in the past – artists such as Jeff Koons are rock stars (not classical stars) in their own right, with all the attending cultural awareness and adulation. Contemporary classical music once had that power – at the end of the 19th Century (think Wagner) – but has allowed itself to be marginalized and rendered impotent.

That’s why someone like Philip Glass is important. His early work not only created a new language, but he also took on the responsibility of creating his audience and inserting himself wherever possible into the wider cultural milieu. Interestingly, do you know why PG became the cultural phenomenon he now is? Because of the support of the visual arts community – they basically ‘made’ him.

i: Finally, what do you think are the essential components of a good work of music?

TL: It’s like pornography – “I know it when I hear (see) it.”