Genius Hides Behind Its Gates

On Being Rated G

I think we could agree that that one word that gets overused—like gaslighting or misogynist—is genius.  In fact, how often are we defending a misogynistic gaslighter to point out that this person, however problematic—another well-trod word, drinking game—is also a genius.  Jean Luc-Godard just died, a misogynist, said many, but also a genius.  You don’t know him like I do.  Now we know that it takes something special to truly earn a comparison to what Charles Boyer did to Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, and that not all issues are problematic, and that not all people who are exceptionally good at what they do are geniuses. Hyperbole, one may say, is harmless, but is it?  If everyone accused of misogyny were truly guilty, that would make nearly every straight, male comedian accountable for hating half of the human race.  If we exhaust language, then when the real thing comes along, we’ve been crying wolf.  We have geniuses in fashion, in technology, in sports, in sports merch.  We have geniuses who spend a lot of energy convincing the world.  If Kanye West is Picasso, who was Picasso?  “Kanye West is Not Picasso,” wrote Leonard Cohen in a poem.  “I am Picasso.”  Picasso: genius, misogynist, gaslighter—the grand trifecta, along with a bonus problematic. 

The word “Genius” first appeared in the English language in 1580, and it has been used by promoters and self-promoters to get to the greatest of the great, the most original, the most uplifting, the shape shifters.  Are these things relative, or relatively relative, or does it take one to know one? Samuel Beckett was among the transcribers when James Joyce was going blind and writing a novel, Finnegans Wake, that few could understand.  But Beckett was in apprenticeship.  He never met Proust or Kafka, but saw their genius, and could see Joyce’s while he was on his way to becoming one, and a lot had to happen—the resistance, Joyce’s death, switching to French—before it could reveal itself.  The Nobel—a prize that has awarded many non-geniuses and was never given to Joyce or Proust or Kafka—was awarded to Beckett in 1969.  He accepted it, but did not say a word in response.  That James Joyce was ok, but he was no Sully Prudhomme (Nobel, 1901).

We are now going to move on to five years after Beckett’s Nobel, to an exchange where no misogynists were gaslighting.  I’m talking about the time that Paul Simon went on the Dick Cavett show, where he gave the audience an unfinished “Still Crazy After All These Years.”  He had two solid verses, then got stuck.  Getting stuck, Simon has explained, is when every place you go is somewhere you don’t want to be.  After the commercial, Cavett blurted the “G” word.

Who are the geniuses in your field?  Are there any authentic geniuses in popular music?

Today? 

Some people say McCartney is or you or Lennon is or has been…’

Well, I feel that there are no geniuses in it… This is terrible to say.  It’s really quite mediocre, I think. Me, included.  I don’t feel that I’m much more than mediocre… If you go through the major songwriters of this century, there were better ones a few years ago.

Who were your heroes?

Well, I don’t have heroes, but, uh, Gershwin was good.

Yeah, if you like music.  Cole Porter?

Cole Porter was good.  That was a good one.  Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rogers…

Mick Jagger?

Mick Jagger is good.  I just called you on the word genius. 

Years later, when Paul Simon inducted Stevie Wonder into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he praised him with great extravagance, but still no “g” word.  It happened that when Simon had that chat with Cavett, Wonder had just released Music of My Mind, Talking Book, and Fulfillingness’s First Finale.  The evidence was right there.  Duke Ellington died in 1974. Genius?  Monk and Mingus and Miles were still alive.  Marvin Gaye?  Come on.  Cavett brought up Dylan, who was apparently a non-genius to Simon at that point.   Where does one draw the line, and how?  How about Leonard Cohen?  He didn’t know Joni Mitchell very well, but Court and Spark came out that year.  Imagine when it was new.

Did you notice that when he praised Gershwin, Porter, Rogers, Kern, and Berlin, he didn’t call them geniuses, either?  He just said they were better.  How to ascend from better to the highest pinnacle of the heavenly muses.  Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop were still alive, and Beckett was still at it.  Genius doesn’t mean I love it.  Genius doesn’t care what I think.  Genius is someone who came from another dimension.  Kant said Hume woke him from his dogmatic slumber.  That’s genius for you.  It doesn’t care if you were sleeping. 

After I have left this mortal coil, music will be streamed, or beamed or something, genius will still be a pr word.  It will be in the language of advertising.  Will the word mean what it used to mean?  To anyone?  Will it transcend whatever is coming next?  If there’s any space at all to appreciate someone’s genius or even argue about it, that is a very optimistic proposition.   The next insurrection could be a success, and discussions of the arts will turn to survival.  Out of the upheaval could be a sound we haven’t heard yet.  It could awaken us from our dogmatic slumber.  Suddenly, all the gaslighting and misogyny could get more real than we could have imagined. There will be problems, and problematic will be a polite word for them.  We need music to help us transcend all of that, a tune beyond us, yet ourselves.  “The maestro says it’s Mozart, but it sounds like bubblegum,” sang Leonard Cohen in “Waiting for the Miracle.”  If there’s a future, filled with new people waiting for new miracles, how many will know the difference?