P'unk Avenue Window

Human intelligence didn’t evolve just to bring down woolly mammoths with engineered weapons and clever tactics. It also evolved to impress da wimminz (and da menz). Entertaining people, clever people, are people we want to be around. You can do the reproductive-fitness math for yourself. The Romans didn’t need 106 possible verb endings to conquer Gaul. They needed them to get busy.

The drive to create, being related to our sexual drives, runs deeper than most people realize. It is part of our shared heritage, part of everyone’s life. Or it should be.

When attending concerts I have always struggled with a desire to be the performer onstage. Or I did before I found my own art form. It’s part of the rock and roll experience to want to be a rock star, of course, but it’s also a distraction from my enjoyment of the show. And it speaks to a deeper issue: we are supposed to perform. The guy who wishes he were onstage is not just a raving egotist; he’s on to something.

Last week Rick laid out the story of the homogenization and centralization of culture through technology: the printing press distributes your book throughout the countryside, the radio lets your music be heard in South America.

To this I would add: the electric guitar lets you be heard throughout the stadium. And that is not always a good thing. There are two historically dominant paradigms in human sexuality: polygamy and monogamy. Do you want to be a beta male in a polygamous society? Gee, no thanks. Do you want to be a beta musician in a polygamous culture?

As Rick says, Internet-based social technologies have once again decentralized culture, making practical the dreams of the indies who published zines through the eighties and nineties. And this has created pressure— a welcome pressure, but pressure— to be both a producer and a consumer of culture.

From the perspective of someone who is used to consuming culture more than they produce it— as recorded music, as television, as a T-shirt design— it makes sense to be aware of this dichotomy and perhaps uncomfortable with questions like, “am I making enough art of my own to justify inhaling this DVD?” Part of the problem is the drive to keep up with the slick production values of commercial art. Garage Band, iMovie and their “prosumer” relatives have made that possible, or very nearly possible. But it remains exhausting. And we are all addicted to those polished high-end products. I will admit a certain impatience with “amateurish” production values, even if the performance itself is highly skilled.

But this is only a problem if we choose latter-day art forms that were never intended to be participatory, but always intended as state propaganda. And by “latter-day,” I mean those promulgated in the last 6,000 years.

From the perspective of a social dancer, the dichotomy between producer and consumer simply does not exist and never has. Yes, we’ll take classes taught and watch performances by dancers more skilled than we are. But we spend the majority of our creative time dancing with our peers. Which is to say, damn near everyone.

People say that “dance is a vertical solution to a horizontal problem.” This is at once a cheap shot, an acute observation, and a recapitulation of phylogeny. The connection between sex and art is present in all art forms. Dance just brings it to the surface.

And here’s the thing: art is totally a means of getting laid. But it is more than that.

It is also a sublimation and an expansion of sexuality beyond what would be safe, advisable or feasible in the actual, literal sack.

Through art, we get busy with an unlimited number of people. Without disease, jealousy, unplanned pregnancy, or moral outrage. Art resolves the polygamy/monogamy divide in everybody’s favor. We are all bonobos; we are just a little more subtle about it. A little.

Some people, dancers in particular, regard art as a substitute for sex. In whole or in part. I do not subscribe to this entirely; I think it’s an amplification, a recognition of the fact that the sexual drive in humans greatly exceeds what is needed for procreation. It is, in fact, a drive for creation without a prefix. We need the real thing, but we need more. And the one drives the other.

Ask Sister Wendy. She knows.

I’m not suggesting that we abandon every art form that is not inherently participatory, but giving those art forms a whirl is good shock therapy for those who are addicted to mass culture. And that includes indies who are still processing an internalized sense that their art is not good enough, or must resemble commercial art to be good enough.

One word of caution, though: don’t mistake participation for an absence of competition, or a liberation from the need to practice. There is nothing worse than a bad drum circle. When I meet a beginning salsa dancer who is making an effort, I dance with her gladly. But the effort is crucial. We should compete, admire, and learn from peers and experts nearer to hand, but compete we always will. Don’t forget, it all begins with Darwin.

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