A Novel Someday

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
John Keats – “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Let me open by expressing my immense appreciation and enjoyment of Regina Spektor’s music. I think she is brilliant and talented, and my quality of life has been improved ever since my sister introduced me to her music.
Phew, glad I got that out of the way.

Walking home today, the song “All the Rowboats” from her latest album, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats came on my iPod. I’ve been enjoying this song since I first heard it, and I’ve often thought about the lyrics. Maybe now that I’m back on a university campus I felt inspired, but when I heard the song today, it occurred to me that Regina Spektor is in conversation with John Keats (as well as many other poets and artists, but Keats was the first to come to mind for me).

NB – Now, my goal here is not to write a term paper on this topic, nor is it to write my dissertation. In brief, I just want to talk about how I perceive Regina Spektor to relate to John Keats. Really, this is just my nerdy way of showing one of the many reasons why I love her music so much. Line numbers for the song are approximated based on the ones listed in the official video description.
Before we get too much further into this conversation, take a moment to watch the video and listen to the lyrics. If you want to read along, just go to the actual video page on Youtube. It’s awesome. Don’t worry, I’ll wait till you’re done.

Now that you’ve heard Regina’s song, let me direct you to John Keats’ most famous poem (and arguably one of the most famous in the English language), “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” In this poem, Keats celebrates the timeless perfection of art. He lays out several scenes taking place across the urn; of the two young lovers, Keats says:

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! (17-20)

It’s almost as if Keats says, “Cheer up, guy – even though you will never actually get laid, you’ll have this feeling forever and your lady will always be hot!” For Keats, there is a particular beauty in the anticipation – the young man’s feeling as he’s about to kiss his lover is greater than what he would actually feel should that love be consummated. Keats, as spectator of this scene, appreciates the “for ever” and “eternity” of the urn, along with its “quietness” and “silence” – a trait which he gestures to several times. The urn’s beauty is because of its silent stasis, rather than in spite of it. He exalts in it without any sense of sympathy for the lovers whose bliss is forever deferred and left on display.

Here’s where Regina Spektor’s track differs from Keats:

While she clearly has a great appreciation for the art, as evidenced by her need to reach out and physically connect with the marble sculpture (18), she expresses pity for the “living dead” artifacts which fill museum gallery (39). (Admittedly, there is some ambiguity as to whether that “living dead” is representative of the art or the museum patrons. Personally, I think we can read it both ways.) This theme of death and afterlife of the art(ifacts) pervades the song; these pieces are kept, in some sense, alive beyond their natural deaths. By continuing to be on display in their “glass coffins” in the “tombs” of the “public mausoleums,” the artwork languishes in a state between life and death (22, 38-39). Like Keats, we, as spectators, enter the graves of these pieces of art and attempt to reconcile our own mortality by identifying with the seeming agelessness of art.

But the gallery is not simply a grave; it is also a prison. Brilliantly, I think, Spektor makes clear the gilded cage in which the art is confined, describing them as “hanging/ in their gold frames/ [...] Forever and a day” (6-9). Every day, the tourists and docents – the voyeurs and wardens – come through the gallery, consuming the images of immortal art. And each night, once the patrons have left the building, “first there’s lights out, then there’s lock up” in the same way one expects to hear about in a high-security prison; in the most evocative line of the song, she decries the “masterpieces serving maximum sentences” (27-29). During these after-hours, the art returns to its silent stasis; they can never be free. So long as the art is kept imprisoned in the galleries, she seems to suggest, it cannot be out in the world fulfilling its purpose.

It is because of this imprisonment and entombment that the art cannot truly be alive. Spektor pities the “lonely” violins kept in the glass cases (20). Unlike Keats, for Spektor the silence of these artifacts triggers sadness rather than awe. These antiques are no longer permitted to carry out their intended purpose: to create music – to perform art. (More than any of the paintings or sculptures, it is perhaps Spektor’s own love of music that places her in close alignment with these pitiable instruments.) Encased in glass coffins, the violins have been transformed from agents of art into objects of art. Their exhibition in the museum as simply artifacts has changed their purpose by robbing them of their function.

As we moved through some of the tumultuous 20th century art movements like Surrealism, Dada, or Pop – one of the unifying themes is that an object “transcends” to art through this process of separation of purpose and function.

Early 20th-century Dada artist Marcel Duchamp probably best exemplifies this idea through his so-called “readymade” sculptures. Duchamp removed everyday objects from their functional context, slapped a title on them, and voila! readymade art. My personal favorite of these, a snow shovel entitled: En prévision du bras cassé (Prelude to a Broken Arm). But perhaps his most famous piece is “The Fountain,” pictured here. A simple rotation and a conscious decision by the artist to remove its function and give it a title. After all, an object becomes art once it has a title, signalling its transition beyond its mundane function, right? And once it makes its way into a museum, then it’s definitely art.

Now, in the 21st century, Spektor revisits these ideas and asks her listeners: How do we look at an object which has been separated from its function? What would be the appropriate feeling were you to see Van Gogh’s paintbrush on display? At one time it was tasked with creating beautiful art, but now, in its afterlife it has been transfigured and robbed of its purpose. As with the violins, is there something tragic or pitiable about that process – is something essential lost when form and function are separated?

This is not to say the object should or should not be art. The recognition of the transformational process does not detract from its new state as art. Rather, it creates a layering effect to the narrative: In realizing this transition, we should also be willing to recognize the loss or sacrifice of the essential “thingness” of an object when it becomes art. This tragic loss is the “price to pay” and the “consequence” of greatness (31-32).

Although the comparison between Keats’ urn and Spektor’s violins is not exactly one-to-one – after all, the urn’s function does not change, exactly – both artists exhibit an anxiety about not only the supposed timelessness of the art but also the ethics of display. Spektor shows a different way of approaching and looking at art on display than Keats. Keats celebrates the exaltation of an object into art without consideration for the piece itself, whereas Spektor recognizes the essential loss that an object experiences as a consequence of becoming art. Both clearly find appreciation in art, but Keats relishes in what the piece has become, and Spektor mourns for what is lost.

(N.B.- My parents are in town to visit, so I’m posting a canned post I wrote when I applied to blog for SoYoureEnGAYged. I never heard back from them, so I’m using it myself cuz I like it.)

“What should we call you?”

When Charlie and I got engaged, we’d already talked about wanting children someday. We discussed what our children would call us: Would one of us be dad and the other daddy? Papa? Father? I don’t know that we ever reached a conclusion on that one, deciding that we’d cross that bridge when we got to it and the kids would work it out.

When we got married, we decided that we would hyphenate rather than one taking the other’s name. We both loved our families and wanted to hold onto those names, as they were important parts of our identities. He had also already begun publishing academically under his name, and at that point things get complicated.

Tacking one last name onto the other didn’t work for us; Charlie K-M and Karl M-K just wasn’t going to work. It felt silly because ultimately we still ended up with different last names, which defeated the purpose. We briefly toyed with the idea of just mashing our names together, but it was a short-lived amusement. Ultimately, we decided on Charlie and Karl K-M because we thought that had a better ring to it. We both still go by our bachelor-names (GAYden names?) professionally, but our marriage certificate has the hyphenated name.

I don’t know why this question of “What will we be called?” didn’t occur to us for other things.
We ended up having one of our “State of the Union” meetings one evening after I’d been introduced to a colleague of his as “This is my partner, Karl.”

At this point, we’d been married for several months – legally married with the support of our families. As far as I was concerned, Charlie was my husband and nothing else. I think at the time of our discussion, however, I may have actually said “nothing less.”

This raised some definite concerns as we talked. The politics of naming are subtle but also powerful. On one hand, it is easier to keep using partner since we’d already been using that. Also, he felt that continuing to use “partner,” even though we were legally married, was a sign of solidarity with other gay couples who might either A) Not be able to get married or 2) Choose not to. Partner is a well-established term in the gay community. It is gender-neutral and expresses a relationship of mutual respect and equality. It also doesn’t privilege heterosexual terminology or relationships, which is why there are also straight couples who use it. So it also promotes relationship equality across the boundaries of sexuality.

(These are the conversations that come up in a household with an English major and a Psychologist!)

While neither wholly comfortable nor wholly convinced with the idea that I was, by my rhetoric, devaluing non-married gay couples, I countered by saying that to me it was more the equivalent of getting married and continuing to call your spouse “my boyfriend” or “my girlfriend.” I felt that “partner” was on the chain of progression that went approximately: boy/girlfriend > partner > fiancé(e) > spouse. I felt that by our commitment in the face of the law and our families that we were passed that point in our relationship. It wasn’t about devaluing anyone; it is about saying “Hey! We are legally married and folks best recognize that! We are not going away!”

I still dismiss the argument that by choosing to use husband instead of partner devalues non-married gay couples. For me, it is a political message (without talking about things like heteronormativity) in which we can exercise the fundamental use of language as a platform. It is a mark of how far we have come, but also of how far we have to go. It is a message of visibility and acknowledgement.

For us, I think we agreed that both terms are reflective of a truth. Charlie is my husband AND he is my partner. We are a married couple, and we are in this together. Yes, we obtained a marriage license from the wonderful state of Massachusetts, (yeah, fuck you too, California) but marriage equality is still our fight until gay unions are universally recognized. Now, we alternate between husband and partner depending on the circumstance.

I still tend to prefer husband, and I think Charlie still sometimes prefers partner. But we, as a couple, decided how to make the potentially messy politics of labeling in our relationship. It’s not necessarily something newly engaged or newly married couples think about, but it’s an important thing to discuss. Do you and your fiancé(e) have a preference for one or the other? Let’s talk about it in the comments!