1.0: Dissecting Dan Harmonâs â10 Minute Long Songâ Metaphor
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>You walk into a room in which a song has been playing for 8 minutes and everyone in that room tells you that the song sounds pretty well like it is going to end soon. It is on its third chorus, and you seem to hear the beginnings of what sounds like a bridge. Also you are pretty sure it is a pop song.
It is difficult to know where to begin, personally, with âproblematizingâ a theory postulated by the very man who opened my eyes to the concept of âproblematizationâ-- by all means a sociology jargon. Dan Harmon is misunderstood in much the same way still today as he has always been, for the cult of personality surrounding him. But he is an impressively intellectual protege to both Joseph Campbell and (less notably) Spalding Grey, one of the most original writers in American history. I, like Dan Harmon, would agree that the work of Campbell and Grey might be a bit more worthwhile for fireside chats than say, Stein and Mensch, Ryan and McCain.
We are way way way way past the days when some headline from the frothy tops of the Today Show daily news has the potential to stir up a national conversation about fascism and apartheid. This might have been true in 2015 when Black Lives Matter protests were still attracting sizeable crowds. It is worth talking about that crowds at protests have dwindled. It is worth asking why.
So we dig deeper than the Today Show, into the realm of visionaries-- Camus, Laozi, hell, even Orwell. Zamyatin anybody? Harmon.
I hate to break it to him and to you, but our president half-consciously tweeting jibberish about coffee in the middle of the night really was the ultimate shark jump for this whole charade. But rejoice, because that means that weâre one step closer to taking it off air.
And I want to problematize the problematizer, but that does not make me his adversary. I have a respect for Harmon to the point where I am actually hurt by the arrogance and the ignorance and the anger that spews forth from these people who claim to actually follow him, but hey, that is a whole different story for a whole different day.
I want to dive right into what the point of this whimsical but officially inaugural post for FBC is about: Please refer to the meat of the opening monologue to the free E250 of his Harmontown podcast-- in the absence of actual transcriptions by yours truly all I can say is that it is easy to access and is between the 10 and 30 minute mark.. Recently Dan Harmon has taken on a bit of what we could call a âpro-praxisâ position as an anarchist, meaning simply that he is willing to apologize for politicians. I am putting words in his mouth, only not. (paraphrase: âI just want to go back to the horrible thing with the two corporations rigging debates;â âpolitics used to be the enemy but now it is actually the thing that we need to use to work against Trump supportersâ-- yes, he was being glib, to an extent.) This represents a shift in ideology, since prior to the 2016 campaign of Trump Dan soundly swore against essentially all things polis, âpolitical,â all things having to do with reptilians in suits doing corruption and greed. The metaphor he used was, as far as I can tell, âa ten minute long song that you are just entering the room to hear, it is 8 minutes in, and the âolderâ people are there (here) to say that the âsongâ is going to end in two minutes because they know the general structure of ten minute long songs throughout history.â âIf they tell you the song is about to end, listen to them.â Iâm sorry Dan, but first of all, what? Second of all, what? And thirdly, what? Impeachment? Also, as an additional aside... really? Number one is painfully obvious- you just literally said that you havenât been paying attention to the song these past eight minutes. How ageist is that? What about my 19-year old ass in 2008 getting a call from my best friend who worked for the Obama PAC, 10pm November 8th, listening to a parade of college students screaming on the streets of Bellingham, Washington, while you washed the cheeto dust out of your hair? You said yourself you werenât listening to the song that whole time, and fifteen years of age under your belt doesnât amount to a time machine, bruh. I was talking about Elizabeth Warren in 2011. I was lost in Adbusters and Mother Jones and Democracy Now! as a teenager. I debated socialist theory with my friends in middle school. Secondly, and this is crucial, what the hell is a 10-minute long song? â21st Century Splendid Man?â âRoundabout?â Beethovenâs 9th? Good god man, do you actually think that people still listen to that music? No, we are on future shock time, and there is no time for Manheim Steamroller in the life of a real life Millennial. Ever heard of a little band called Charles Bronson? Or a genre called Break-core? To extend your metaphor, we have to examine the actual science of music theory, which operates as so: pop song, like âart musicâ and traditional folksong, is an abstract form that is and can only be understood by the light of the historical existence of individual works. (so, to go along with point 1, not only would you have had to have been listening to the first 8 minutes of the song, you must also have had to have an actual set of historical data involving songs that last ten minutes with codas near the eight minute mark, which by all means would make you a scholar of little more than, yes, one good King Crimson album and a couple of Yes songs and Beethoven.) Epistemologically we should contend with the idea that there are in fact many 30-second pop songs for every 10-minute pop song**, just like there are 4-year terms for every giant unending empirical world megastate. **(see: Philip Taggâs âaxiomatic triangleâ theory-- this is actually very important to fully understand my argument involving this VERY imperfect extended metaphor.) Third, and there has to be a third because, style: where is this leading? All I am hearing is the exact opposite of what Barack Obama said in 2004 at the DNC, which by all accounts is an evocation of Jeff B. Davisâ post-neoliberal and anti-praxis, nonpartisan stance-- if Democrats want to act like they are saving the world while they secretly wage wars and profit off prisons, they really, really, are not any better than the other side. It seems to me that if Dan Harmon himself is saying to bring in the suits, the alt-right has literally already won. They have detached the anarcho-syndicalist arm entirely from the American left and replaced it with an ersatz. To ask the question was it the Russians, or is Democracy to blame? is the best way to completely fool and bamboozle yourself if you are the sort of person who likes to have faith in the common sense of her neighbor, but I suppose that is the way the tides are turning, so so be it.