a second coming

cultural stagnation and what comes next

One of the most famous poems in the English language is WB Yeats’s The Second Coming. Composed following the end of the First World War while the Spanish flu pandemic raged, the poem highlights Yeats’s uncertainty about the state of the world and his belief that the world was about to enter a new era, ushered in by something like the second coming of Jesus Christ:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Yeats holds nothing back here, an entire first stanza filled with apocalyptic visions and denunciations of the moral fiber of the world. Any of these lines alone would feel like an emergency, but they’re all bundled together, and it feels like even the ground beneath your feet is unstable. The speaker of the poem isn’t entirely driven by fear, though; instead, we learn that the chaos serves as a sign of something to come. The speaker sees ominous visions of a monstrous creature, something that has been sleeping since the birth of Christ, and believes it will soon arrive to bring in a new era.

As bleak as the second stanza can seem, the speaker seems to describe it with a dark fascination that contrasts with the hopelessness that the first stanza holds. I wonder if the speaker welcomes the change, just to see what could come next, however scary it may seem.

A reason that this poem is so famous is that it feels incredibly relevant during times of uncertainty. Much of the first stanza feels like it would be entirely at home among the average headlines of today, in the most popular articles that we share with each other, and the conversations we have between deep sighs. But even if these statements are true and all-encompassing, then perhaps they still signal the coming of a new era.

I see examples of the first stanza everywhere, but it’s less common to see suggestions of how the future could differ. However, I was reminded of the poem in the work of W. David Marx. His latest book explores the cultural stagnation of the 21st century. Marx posits that the last few decades of culture lost the innovative edge that the 20th century was defined by. Things do fall apart.

In an excerpt of the book published in The Atlantic, Marx suggests several ways that the culture around artmaking must change, but sums it up this way:

“Making art with lasting meaning requires resisting the pull of instant exposure and early buyouts. We must think through ways to encourage artists to disappear into their own worlds for a while, developing ideas away from corporate influence and assimilation. Not everyone will have the discipline or capacity for this, but those who do or can will shape the future. And the least that critics and fans can do is give them esteem—when justified—for attempting to move culture forward, instead of ignoring them as marginal, castigating them as pretentious, or belittling their view counts. The past 25 years have taught us that the contemporary economy and media will not prioritize creative invention.”

I largely agree with Marx, though I still think there are some incredible works of art that have come out this century. Still, I find it incredible how much of music, films, and writing seem to be rehashes of what already exists, how market-tested everything feels. I’m saddened by the way that many who enter creative fields end up focusing on attention rather than the details of the work, either accidentally or out of necessity. I’m saddened because, at times, I fall victim to the same desires.

But I wonder whether the ideas we have of a creative life are out of date, formed by social media and even the films we watch. Consider the idea of the starving artist, the pervasive idea that originated centuries ago but still appears in modern films. In both La La Land (2016) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), we meet poor artists struggling to make ends meet. Both of these characters have a purist idea of what a creative life can look like, failing to find steady income in part due to their resistance to finding other ways to make money.

In La La Land, we have Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian, who dreams of opening a club where anyone can play anytime as long as it’s “pure jazz.” In his pursuit of such purity, Sebastian gets himself fired from a gig playing piano at a restaurant for freestyling too much, and seems to be in agony when forced to play pop music at a party later on. But eventually, in search of stability, Sebastian ends up joining a pop band started by a former bandmate, even while disliking the music.

By the end of the film, Sebastian has left the band and opened his own jazz club, and has achieved his dreams of keeping his concept of jazz alive and well. Though it’s never explicitly talked about in the film, it’s hard to imagine that Seb would’ve ever been able to open his club with the money he earned before he sold out to join the band.

In Inside Llewyn Davis, we find the titular character penniless and sleeping on the couches of his friends while he tries to land gigs as a folk singer in the early 1960s. We learn that he’s a solo act now, after the suicide of his music partner, and grief surrounds him throughout the film as he tries to keep his folk music career alive.

Llewyn finds his own opportunity to sell out, gritting his teeth as he records a novelty song about space travel to earn a few bucks. Pressed for money, Llewyn gives up his royalty rights in favor of a quick $200, a decision that’s easy for him because of how little he thinks of the music he’s recording. We later learn that the song is a massive hit, something that could’ve completely changed his life financially.

When Llewyn auditions for a record producer, he’s told that he isn’t a frontman, that his only shot would be joining a trio the producer was putting together or getting back together with his old partner. “That’s good advice,” Llewyn says before leaving and essentially giving up on his career.

In both of these narratives, the pursuit of purity puts these men into a false choice between abandoning their dreams or selling out. They’re ceaseless in their belief that their art is the only way forward. Sebastian, the successful sell-out, is able to achieve his dreams, while Llewyn, with all of his baggage and desire for purity and distaste for selling out, is left penniless, beaten down, and dreamless.

What films about artists rarely show is the very real possibility of working any sort of day job to support their creative passions, the way Philip Glass was a plumber before he was famous, or Richard Serra ran a furniture removal business. If an artist truly wants to resist “the pull of instant exposure and early buyouts” as Marx suggests, then perhaps not associating art-making so closely with money is an important part of it.

These ideas are self-serving, as someone who has only ever written while having a day job. I have felt shame in this at times, wondering if I can consider myself a “real writer,” despite the fact that I have spent so much of my life dedicated to writing over the years. But I appreciate the freedom that this approach gives me, that I rarely cede my interests to what I think the market desires. If enough artists were to find this freedom, perhaps that would end the stagnation.

In the face of the widening gyre of cultural stagnation, I gladly look forward to what that rough beast may hold and imagine a world of art far beyond what I currently know.

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💧 Drops of the Week 💧

• ALBUM - 1996 by Ryuichi Sakamoto - just an excellent album

• POEM - “Poem” by Ron Padgett - I’m in the house. / It’s nice out: warm / sun on cold snow.