The Creativity

July 30, 2013December 11, 2023 RilalyLeave a comment

Bill Cosby had a show called Kids say the Darndest Things, and they did say the darndest things on the show. We all did at that age, but we all knew that we would have to grow out of that if it was our goal to be taken serious. Those of us who wouldn’t, had to be institutionalized into the ways of human operations (i.e. school), if we ever hoped to mature properly. Some of us matured into good business assets, fathers, and occasional games men. For the most part, however, those fantastical ideas were required to be laid by the roadside in the pursuit of a quality, adult life.

Some of us remain trapped in a fantastical mindset, and while we led a good life, and had a good wife, we haven’t matured to the point that we can meld a serious life with a fantastical mindset. We all know people who cling a little too much to fantasy, and while we try not to think less of them, it can prove difficult to take them serious. These people are apt to have an unhealthy addiction to gaming, science fiction, vampires, and now zombies. These people, depending on the progression of their fantastical mind, often have little to nothing to offer corporate America.

Others have all the foolishness of unconventional thinking, and fantasy, behind them early on. They are often children of ultra-serious parents who want their children devoid of foolish thinking. These people eventually get so locked in on serious, or conventional, ways of thinking that they end up neglecting that part of their brain that indulges in fantasy, art, and creativity for so long that they ignore a huge ingredient of what it means to be human. They eventually veer so far into the serious side of life that they become disgusted by creative thinkers. They “don’t have time” for such silliness. They have developed the tunnel vision necessary to compete in the corporate world, and they can’t understand people that don’t have a master plan. These people usually have a mathematical equation for life.

They prefer the absolutes inherent in the Superman story over the cloudy interpretations offered by the Batman character. They prefer the concrete absolutes of standard music over any creative music that messes with the formula, and they prefer the more standard comedy of Everybody Loves Raymond over the comedic study of intangibles on Seinfeld. These are bottom line people who will tell you all you need to know in life to succeed are two words: “Yes and sir!”

At some point, this type usually crashes and burn under the weight of all that seriousness. The purchases they’ve made to substantiate their status begins to lose their luster, the family no longer interests them in a substantial manner, and the career they’ve worked their whole lives for has suddenly become meaningless to them. When they reach that point, they either seek the fantasy of an adulterous affair, a job change, a move to another state, or all of the above. At some point, the master plan loses value, and they become perpetually unsatisfied with their direction. These people can be just as unhappy as the fantastically minded, and neurologists say that the only thing keeping them from utter insanity is the fantasy they experience in the dream world while sleeping. Everyone tells artists to have something to fall back on, in case their creative pursuits never come to fruition, but you rarely hear anything like this directed at conventional thinkers that succeed in conventional ways with nothing fulfilling the side of their brain that contains healthy ingredients of play and fantasy.

The healthiest mindset, and the one probably most difficult to achieve is the matured, creative mind. The matured, creative mind is one that has progressed beyond the fantastical thoughts of youth to a more practical hybrid of conventionally unconventional thinking. The problem they generally have is how to make their unconventional thoughts productive, practical and profitable, for as anyone who has worked in a corporation knows it’s not exactly a conducive climate for unconventional thinkers. In this equation, of course, the onus is on the creative mind to make their talents know to their bosses.

Some, like CEO Steve Jobs suggests that anyone unable to reach their creative peak, should try hallucinogenics. This statement made some creative types think that Steve Jobs wasn’t as creative as we had all been led to believe. It made some of us think that he views creative types from the same, jealous distance conventional thinkers view creative types. How many times have we heard non-creative types assign drug usage to creative types? “They had to be on something to make that,” they say. “No normal human could create something like that, sober.” Those of us who have flirted with creative thought encounter epiphanies on a much lower scale, know that the mind can be mined with constant work, and it can produce incredibly creative thoughts without artificial aid. Jobs’ comment was such a shock from such a creative mind that we wondered how creative he was. If he were that creative, why would he feed into that cliché?

Those who know the story of Apple, know that Steve Wozniak was the creative genius behind the Apple I and II, and he had a major influence on the Apple Macintosh. We didn’t know the instrumental role Jonathon Ive played as the chief architect of the iPod, and that he was a part of a team that included: Jon Rubenstein, Scott Forstall, Michael Dhuey, and Tony Fadell. We learned that while Jobs may have overseen the project, but we had no idea these names were the creative types behind the final product we know today.

Jobs’ role in the insurgence, and resurgence, of Apple is unquestioned, but the undue credit he received (see took) for the iPod outraged those on the creative team who sweat blood over it. Jobs was the leader of the company at the time, and he changed the company’s culture to “think different”, and he eliminated distractions to provide more focus. He may have been overly demanding with the aesthetics, the processes and the machinations, and he may have remained stubbornly unsatisfied with what he termed “unfinished” products. He may have gotten more out of his creatives than anyone in his market, and in the end he was the “guy in charge” of the company that created products that were unmatched in its field, but Steve Jobs did not deserve the amount of creative credit he took for the products it produced. And some creative types were partial to the complaints his creative teams made, after Steve Jobs said all creative types should take drugs to increase their creativity.

The primary reason it bothered us is that it’s the typical charge that all conventional thinkers make about creative types that create something conventional thinkers consider inhumanly creative. I don’t know if this “They had to have been on some wild drugs” cliché began with The Beatles, but it does appear to be one of the origins of the charge. The other reason that it bothered creative types is that it allowed non-creative types to feel more comfortable in their serious, mathematical world: “Well, I could’ve created something like that too, if I decided to take all those drugs.”

When it first came out that Led Zeppelin sold their souls to the devil, that made sense to a number of my friends, because, “No one could come up with that many great songs on their own.” When these friends grew out of such fantastical notions, they changed their minds on the subject saying that “corporate guys, or unaccredited songwriters, must have stepped in there and changed, mixed, altered, or finessed the final product, because there’s no way Page and Plant wrote all those songs alone.” Or, they say, “They must’ve been stoned out of their minds to think up things like these.” It bothers creative minds, because we know it’s possible to reach unbelievably creative planes without artificial substances, and those who have tried some artificial substances don’t see how an altered state of consciousness can lend itself to productive creativity.

It’s possible that mind-altering drugs can introduce thoughts to a brain, but how many of those thoughts are absolute nonsense? It’s possible that they can lead the brain to “Think different”, but my guess is that it takes a sober brain to sort through those different thoughts to help them make sense. I wonder if we were the tamper with the timeline and The Beatles never touched a drug, how much different would their discography be? As with using ‘save your hair’ products, it’s almost impossible to know if the mind-altering drugs did it, or if the drugs gave the mind the perception that they were free to do something wildly different than they ever tried before. It could be that continued use of hallucinogenic drugs teaches one to finesse creativity in an altered state, but most truly creative minds only experiment with altered states, and most of them found that it didn’t enhance their creativity. Unfortunately, in the case of The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin, it appears as if they either created, or fed into, this misconception.

That cliché was born, in my opinion, based on the frustration that non-creative types have for those that are excessively creative. These people can accept that a bunch of fellas could sit around and write Back in Black, or Eliminator, but “You’re trying to tell me that three guys (John Paul Jones) came up with Led Zeppelin II, Zoso, and Physical Graffiti? Sober? With their souls still intact? Come on!? There’s just no way.”

Some non-creative types make the same charge with Albert Einstein. They state that the autopsy performed on Einstein’s body showed traces of LSD, as well as Dimethyl-triptimene in his system. They also state that his heart exploding could’ve easily have been caused by years of cocaine use. This led all non-creative types to almost leap with joy, as it confirmed for them the fact that no one man could think all that stuff up, not sober, with his soul intact. As we all know, these opiates were common, at the turn of the century in medicines and painkillers, so the fact that they were in his body, at the time of his death, doesn’t necessarily indicate that Einstein used them recreationally, or to enhance his creativity. “It was still in his system,” non-creative types would argue, “and whether he took these opiates for medicine or recreationally, it’s possible that it affected him.” It’s also possible that it didn’t.

How many people looked up to the stars and tried to figure out the ways of the universe prior to Einstein? How many of them ingested the same opiates, whether or not it was deemed medicinal? How many of those same people had all of the same information on the abstract concepts, and couldn’t make meaning of them in the categorical manner Einstein did by picturing himself riding a light ray bareback? “By picturing himself riding a light ray bareback, you say? Yeah, he had to be on some serious stuff to think like that. That ain’t normal.”

Einstein also said that playing the violin helped him make sense of the universe by helping him make a connection with sense-experiences. Is that something a drug-user would say? Perhaps, but here’s something that could blow your mind, so if you’re not prepared for it read no further, but it’s possible, possible that a person could indulge in different thoughts so often, that they produce creative ideas that are unimaginable to those who have never indulged in creative thinking.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” Einstein once said to define insanity.

Einstein thought differently, and he thought so differently, so often, that he was able to approach the problems from so many different angles that he ended up approaching these problems in ways conventional thinkers couldn’t fathom. They still can’t fathom it, so they suggest that it had to be drugs.

Those of us who routinely think different know where the mine is. In our experience, it’s not chock full of illustrative colors. It’s just a mine. If you’re anything like me, you’ve been surface mapping and sampling that mine your whole life, so you know exploring and exploiting the mine will be worthwhile, because you know the ore and minerals in there, all you have to do now is drill deep to start the discovery phase, the development stage, until we reach the production stage. It’s not simple or immediate, but the hard work we put into excavation will produce results.

The results for the reader will be the highlight reels of all of our effort, as we learn to edit and delete until the effort is removed. The excised material is the nonsense we developed in childhood, and the whimsical inanities we created on mind-altering substances, be they drugs, beer, or other stimulants. Most of the time, we just write poor sentences, be they littered with errors, or those not as engaging as we originally thought. We’ve all unearthed bizarre ideas, sober and otherwise. An overwhelming majority of them, about 99%, are cast aside, but there are some valuable nuggets in that mine that needed to be cultivated and cleaned up. We won’t have fans in the stands who “were there” when the star was born, because most artistic endeavors occur in quiet corners when no one else is around. Most of it is finessed, staring at a poor sentence, trying to approach it in multiple ways to make it make sense, and most of the finished product, an article, essay, or novel is an assemblage of highlight reels that appears inhumanly creative.

It would be foolish to say that some brilliant creative types don’t find refuge in mind-altering substances from The Beatles to Edgar Allen Poe, but did their alteration of choice enhance the thoughts or form them? It’s the 100 monkeys on typewriters joke that suggests one of them could accidentally write Hamlet. Anyone could write Sergeant Peppers or The Raven on the right drug. Everyone could be creative, brilliantly creative, if they had the time and resources necessary to devote time to it. I don’t know if it’s jealousy, or if most people have no idea how hard it is to create something beautiful, but I think we should all drop our ideas about shortcuts regarding the creative process and just recognize brilliance for what it is.

Most creative people came about their matured creativity naturally, for creativity cannot be taught. It can be workshopped, and it can be finessed day by day and interaction by interaction, but no one can teach another person how to be brilliantly creative. For that reason, and for all the reasons listed above, creativity remains a largely unexplained phenomenon, but those of us who have spent most of our lives honing the science and math parts of our minds would much rather think mind-altering substances spawn that which separates them from creative brilliance.

Avoiding misery in the midst of the culture war

July 27, 2013August 9, 2015 Rilaly2 Comments

A chapter in Chuck Klosterman’s book IV asks why some people insist on making themselves miserable when the culture disagrees with their values?

“(Most of these people) don’t merely want to hold their values; they want their values to win, and this is the reason why so many people feel “betrayed” by art, consumerism, and by the way the world works.”

The point Klosterman is making is your values are your values, but if you expect the culture to pivot to your way of thinking you’re probably going to end up making yourself miserable in your pursuit.

All of us have our own set of morals, values, and principles. They can be instilled in us by region, parents, school, or religion, but Klosterman states that these can vary quite a bit from one group of people to another. He states that the code you live by is not wrong, but the code that the culture has is not wrong either. It’s just different. Even if you disagree with him, Klosterman does have something of a point when he says that documenting points, in a sports-related mindset, is inevitably going to end in a losing proposition. The culture is the culture, and you have to accept the fact that your code is not going to win all of the time, and if you don’t you’re probably going to end up drive yourself crazy.

Klosterman essays is largely focused on cultural tastes, regarding the manner in which some people get so upset by the fact that some people like the group Limp Bizkit over Nirvana; or that so many dumbed down novels occupy the New York Times Best Seller List; or that shows like Everybody Loves Raymond remains so popular. He rarely mentions politics, except loosely with his “the way the world works” phrase, and a brief mention of voting patterns. So, as one that gets upset by voting patterns, I find it intriguing to contemplate the idea that I might one day take this so far that accidentally become a miserable person.

Is Klosterman saying that we shouldn’t defend our values? He isn’t. He’s saying that if you have integrity, you should be able to defeat any attempts at cultural attacks on what you think. Can we get angry in the privacy of our own homes, without fear of being called ridiculous by Klosterman and those that can’t believe that some of us get indignant by these values obliterated on our TV? I think so, but it is a decent point that we shouldn’t take our righteous indignation so far that we accidentally become miserable to all of those around us.

When the author suggests that we’re all going to run across “certain instances” where the culture is diametrically opposed to our values, and those oppositions are so confusing to us that we’re going to become unhappy by it, I would say he’s wrong by a matter of degrees. I would say that I’ve encountered so many “certain instances” over the decades I’ve been watching TV that I should, by Klosterman’s definition, be a miserable person by this point. Anyone that knows me, however, knows that while I may have a stick up my ear some of times, I’m generally a pretty happy person.

One such “certain instance” happened to me the other day, when I watched an episode of Netflix’s Orange is The New Black. I disagree with just about everything that happens on the show, just about every character on the show, and just about everything but the credits. (I skip the credits, so I’m sure if I watched them, I might be able to find something I disagree with in them.) I disagree with the show, but I watch it, and I don’t become angry watching it. I get a little ticked during some scenes, as you’ll see, but I don’t end up becoming miserable.

My problem with the show, and all shows like it, is that there is no significant debate on some of the topics I consider important and worthy of more discussion.

In one particular scene of this show, an insanely duplicitous, evil religious wacko attempts to convert the poor, “just wants-to-be-left-alone” main character to Christianity. The main character is somewhat agreeable with going through the motions of this conversion, if it means pacifying the evil, proselytizing Christian that the main character “disrespected” in another episode. (Sorry about all the adverbs and adjectives, but liberals love using them to describe evil, in-your-face religious people.) So the harmless, sensible, and “truly kind” main character agrees to be baptized by the meth head, out-of-her-mind with-this-religious-stuff, and monstrous (ROAR!) Christian, until the main character sees that the water she is to be baptized in is a little dirty.

“I can’t do this,” the main character begins. She then goes on a liberal, Bull Durham-style rant regarding things she believes in and concludes it with: “On some level we all know that this (religion) is BS don’t we?” She then proceeds, in that condescending meme of all snearing non-religious types talking to religious people: “I wish I could get on that ride, I’m sure I would be much happier.” (Translation, I am just too intelligent for religion.) “Feelings aren’t enough,” she says, “I need it to be real.”

This clichéd response is the ultimate form of hypocrisy in a world where most non-religious, demand that religious types be respectful of all opposing viewpoints and lifestyles. When a religious person fails to be open-minded to lesbianism, for example, they’re called narrow minded. When a TV show ridicules and sneers at religious people, saying, ‘I wish I could be more open-minded to your set of beliefs, but I’m not as dumb as you,’ it’s called a yuppie, coming-of-age narrative.

I honestly don’t care if anyone is religious, but this piece of dialogue simply calls for some sort of response. I’m not saying the main character’s worldview had to be defeated, but for the sake of quality writing, for the sake of some sort of conflict in the scene, it would’ve been nice if some character had said something to provide for an interesting exchange. Notice I didn’t say debate. I’m not saying that the creators of the show needed a Scopes Trial style debate. I’m saying something would’ve been nice, something along the lines of: “Well, isn’t science wrong too … some of the times?”

If you watched this show, you saw all the scenes that led up to this point in which the hysterical, religious character was a mouthy, confrontational sort that couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Was she rational, of course not. She was barely lucid in most scenes —to fit the worldview of the show’s creators and writers of religious people— but until this scene, this obnoxious tart always had something to say when her beliefs system were challenged, and this scene contained more condemnation of her beliefs system than any of the prior ones.

I realize that all of the religious women in this show, save the transsexual nun, are depicted as slovenly creatures that probably would’ve felt more comfortable in the Palaeolithic Age, but they could’ve said something like, “I believe in science too. Can’t science and religion stand hand in hand on some matters?” At that point, another religious woman in the scene could’ve said, “Didn’t Einstein suggest that such a relationship could exist? Didn’t he say something along the lines of: “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” The combative females could’ve said, “You do believe in Einstein don’t you?” with an equal amount of snarkiness and condescension. I realize such a line would’ve been inconsistent with the ‘barely above grunting’ characterization of the religious people on this show, but that would’ve been excellent writing as far as I’m concerned. That would’ve provided some excellent conflict, and it could’ve ended with the main character still winning. Instead of any of these exchanges, one of the religious women made a snarky comment about religious people believing in angels. Boring!

Instead of some small semblance of a debate, what we get in shows like Orange is the New Black is open-mouthed awe and silence from the “Cletus the slack jawed yokel” Christian side that has obviously (you’re supposed to laugh knowingly here) never-been-in-no-science-class before.

The exaggeration of the casting in this show has to be seen to be believed. The main character is depicted as an urban, well groomed, beautiful woman, with beautiful teeth, while the Christians are all female meth heads with stained, and missing, teeth and unwashed, stringy hair that suggest that they, along with their beliefs, may be more comfortable in the Cro-Magnon era. (I realize that I’m mixing eras here, but it’s hard to know where these violations of modernity would be most comfortable.) What we get in this “secular humanist” oration scene is a main character that gets to deliver her sermon on the mount without the any form of debate on the topic. We get slacked jawed yokels that can’t hope to compete with big words, like science. We get a form of unchecked proselytizing that many claim the other side was guilty of in another era.

In the closing paragraphs of the “Cultural Betrayal” chapter in Chuck Klosterman’s book, IV, he basically writes that it will be your own fault if you get irrationally angry about the fact that the culture doesn’t agree with you, and you will be happy if you learn to care and not care at the same time. You can care, in other words, but if you have integrity —“if you truly live by your ideals, and those ideals dictate how you engage with the world at large— you will never be betrayed by the culture. You are not wrong,” he writes to close the chapter, “and neither is the rest of the world. But you need to accept that those two things aren’t really connected.”{1}

On the point that the culture and I should be able to co-exist on separate planes, and that for my mental health it’s probably not a good idea that I reach over and try to convert the other side, I say that I’ve waved the white flag long ago. I still attempt to competitively defeat those “certain instances” of manipulation that all writing attempts to exert on its audience, but this is not done with the hope that the culture will pivot back to me. I just need to point out their subtle forms of manipulation and defeat them internally. I think it’s a healthy practice that I’ve developed to challenge myself with all attacks and attempt, be it in my living room or in a blog like this, to defeat all of their theoretical arguments. When I’m done, I’d be more than happy to shake the creator’s hand, say, “Nice try!” and go back to my respective corner to inform Mickey (Rocky reference) that I should probably be cut to prevent the kind of extensive damage that might prohibit me from coming out for the next round.

The point is that I don’t get miserable. I don’t care that my sensibilities aren’t shared by those that write movies or shows, and I don’t expect them to pivot back in my lifetime. I don’t care if people are religious or not, and I secretly don’t care that they’re not respectful. As far as I’m concerned, it’s on them that they’re hypocritical in their quest for universal respect of all people in all walks of life. It actually fuels me to write material like this when they aren’t. If I did care, and it was eventually going to make me miserable, you would have to call me a sadomasochist for paying PAYING for HBO and Showtime over the last decade and a half.

I do know people that get miserable though, they’re out there, and I thought of them while reading this chapter, but I enjoy internally defeating those cultural attempts to change my ways of thinking. “I don’t get miserable when I see my sensibilities getting slaughtered in the culture,” I say with an action hero’s menacing whisper, “I get competitive.”

{1}Klosterman, Chuck. IV. New York: Scribner, 2006. Pages 265-269. Print.

My Obsession with “The Elder”

July 25, 2013January 8, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

It all began with a dream, an actual dream that involved me walking into the record store. I often walked into our local record store, and I did so in this dream. I then spotted it, the KISS album Music from “The Elder” (The Elder). I nearly froze with excitement. The record store clerk eventually made his way to me, and I said, “I’d like to purchase that.” I pointed to the cassette tape, he retrieved it with typical record store clerk dismissal (If you weren’t purchasing an artist favored by Rolling Stone magazine back then, 99% of record store clerks had no use for you). In this dream, I ran home and plugged the cassette tape into my Walkman, and as I listened to it for the first time, I knew that my life would probably not get much better than that moment. I woke with a peaceful and serene smile that my “not a morning person” personality didn’t often permit. For reasons I would only be able to properly collate later, as an adult, I became obsessed with the Music from the Elder.

“It ain’t no dream,” my friend said, his tone loaded with ridicule. “It’s real. The Music from The Elder is a real album, it’s out there, in stores, on actual shelves in those stores, and it sucks. You just have to find it, or if you can’t find it, have a store clerk order it for you.” He then turned to a third party to drill down on my humiliation, “He just had a dream about buying a KISS album last night.”

I deserved that ridicule. Dreaming of buying an album was an odd, bizarre dream, but it defined my desire for that album in ways that were otherwise hard for me to define as a teenager. I wasn’t so simple-minded that I thought The Elder would act as an elixir to all that ailed me, but this desire for something, somewhat out of my reach, said more about me, and that era, when juxtaposed with the modern era, than it did about the quality of music on The Elder. The Elder might have been a symbol for all things out of reach. I might have assigned magical, almost mystical qualities to this album based on its limited supply at this time, but I still enjoy a number of the songs on this album.

As that last paragraph suggests, this piece is not so much a review of the quality of music on The Elder, as it is that special quality attached to a product through inexplicable and irrational desire, the rebellion to group thought, and the influence scarcity can have on a product. This piece is also about how the current lack of scarcity –abridged in the modern “on demand” world of MP3, file sharing, YouTube, etc.– may eventually cause music to be so much less prominent in our lives than it was for an 80’s kid who loved music so much that he felt an almost unquenchable desire for it.

For those who weren’t there, we 70’s and 80’s kids called into radio stations to request that they play “my song”, only to have those annoying DJs wait about an hour to play it? It was so exciting to hear that DJ finally played our favorite song and attach our names to it? “And now … as requested by Billy, in Millard, I give you Rhinestone Cowboy by Glenn Campbell.” We felt a special affinity with Glenn Campbell in the course of that effort? How many of us thought that a part of the success of Rhinestone Cowboy was a result of our continued requests? Is it just me, or did this association have a mystical attachment to it, that bred an irrational, and inexplicable, brand of loyalty, that cannot be touched in today’s MP3 world of “on demand” listening experiences. How many penniless young ones dreamed of one day living in an “on demand” world where we had more control of the when, where, and how we could hear our music that didn’t require assistance from DJs? How many of us would’ve loved to have a YouTube source where we could punch a song title into a search engine and hear it in two seconds? We all did, but now that it’s here, we have a “be careful what you wish for” warning for the world of music and music lovers.

No radio stations would play a song from The Elder, and there weren’t internet resources back then. I had to sit and stew in the bouillon of my desire. This scarcity was not intentional, and it was not a supply and demand tool put forth by KISS, or any of its associates, to increase demand for their product, but for one kid in Omaha, Nebraska, that’s exactly what it did. The scarcity was a result of the almost worldwide condemnation of the project. Critics and fans attached the word “flop” to The Elder, and they declared it KISS’s first commercial failure, after the near unprecedented levels of commercial viability they achieved with their previous albums.

The Elder proved to be such an embarrassment to the remaining members of KISS that guitarist Ace Frehley considered it emblematic of the new direction of KISS, and he quit the band as a result. Some of those involved in the project, adamantly refused to have their names listed in the liner notes of the album after hearing it. It embarrassed the remaining members of KISS so much that they decided not to tour in support of it, and by the time I began searching retail outlets for it, five years after its completion, I learned, firsthand, the economic concept of scarcity.

This scarcity resulted in a whole lot of self-imposed hype. It resulted in me briefly befriending those fortunate few lucky enough to have heard it. “What did you think of it?” I asked them, panting with anticipation. “What was so different about it?” I asked. “Why is it considered so horrible?”

“It just sucked!” was the consensus of those I knew who heard the album. When I would ask for a greater, more detailed explanation, they would dismiss me with, “I don’t know. I didn’t listen to it more than once. I just know it sucked!”

For reasons endemic to my personality, I only found this universal rejection of the album more compelling. I would later find the same level of intoxication –purposefully erected against group thought– with the comedy of Andy Kaufman, the infamous Crispin Glover appearance on David Letterman, U2’s Zooropa, and the other music of Mike Patton (other than Faith No More). I needed to know why the music on The Elder was so much worse than all the other KISS albums I adored. It was almost inevitable that I was either going to love the music on the album, or I would find that it was not as bad as my friends were telling me it was, for reasons native to my personality.

I would not say that the almost universal reaction to The Elder was my first experience with group thought. I knew about it, and I think I explored it on certain levels, but whenever you’re face to face with it, it feels like the first time. I’m also not going to pretend –as so many others do– that I’m impervious to group thought. I hear what other’s think, I read what critics think, but I’m more apt to force myself through such a hole if everyone dislikes something I decide I might like. I find intrigue in having an opinion that differs from group thought. I tend to find myself trying to have a converse relationship with it. Some believe that I do this to be difficult, or complicated, or artificially different, and that may be the case, but if it is, I’ve convinced myself of this lie so well that I now believe it. In the case of The Elder, however, my initial allure was such that I either never recovered from my desire to rebel against group thought, or the album wasn’t as bad as group thought suggested it was. I leave open the possibility for either in the case of The Elder.

In the space of the decades since its release, The Elder has spawned two camps: those who further their initial proclamation that it’s one of the worst albums ever made, and those who suggest that it now has a campy quality, similar to the movie Return of the Killer Tomatoes. Very few will suggest that it’s simply a good album with quality music on it. Q Magazine has ranked Music From “The Elder” 44th in their list of The 50 Worst Albums Ever. The same magazine ranked the album 6th in their list of 15 Albums Where Great Rock Acts Lost the Plot. The website Ultimate Classic Rock, quotes Paul Stanley saying that the Music from “The Elder” “Was pompous, contrived, self-important and fat.” “Critics pounced on the record and fans stayed away in droves.” The website KISS Elder Book states that Gene Simmons attached zero stars to it, and Stanley and Simmons have both admitted that they were “delusional” with the Bob Ezrin project. [Note the attempt to distance themselves from The Elder, by saying it was a Bob Ezrin project. A practice those who know their KISStory know all four members engage in when a project wasn’t well received. The album Destroyer was also a “Bob Ezrin project, but the four members climb all over each other to claim credit for it.] Ace Frehley said that he thought the idea of a Ezrin’s idea of concept album with The Elder “wasn’t a good idea to begin with.”

When almost everyone, including the band, crushes a brutha with group thought, the notions that we still like the album usually implode with “I don’t like it either” or “I like all of their albums, except The Elder” qualifiers that send shrapnel throughout the mind, until that person convinces themselves that their initial stance can no longer be maintained.

Maintaining such a stance can lead one to believe they are in the middle of a battlefield with friendly fire penetrating their belief. This lone soldier begins to believe they have no allies, especially when they cross the big four oh (forty years of age), and the idea that they still enjoy any KISS music proves to be a little embarrassing. At that point, a person has to qualify their affinity with words, sentences, and sometimes paragraphs that lead their friends and family to believe that they simply love the kitschy campiness of the act. By doing that, the soldier may gather some like-minded allies that say, “Well, I still like Duran Duran, Leo Sayer, or Michael Jackson, so I understand the attachment.” Saying that one still likes The Elder, however, will even cause like-minded KISS fans to strive for distance. “Sorry brotha, you’re on your own here,” they say to suggest that some loyalists are in too deep for them.

What makes defending The Music From The Elder so difficult is that I still don’t know why I love this album so much. I’m not sure if the reasons lie in those aspects of my personality that loves things other people don’t, or if I romanticized the album so much in my youth that I can’t defeat the feelings of nostalgia I feel for that time and place where I desired the album to the degree that it invaded my dreams one night. I also can’t determine if the music on the album simply appeals to me in that intangible manner that some music appeals to one person more than others, or if the album contains great music that people “won’t” like, because they fear the counter arguments (see ridicule) from their peers.

What I do know, or guess based upon my interactions with current, young music fans, is that this relationship with music may never happen again. It’s the human condition to want what you want, when you want it, but the reality of actually getting it “on demand” as many times as one wants it, often results in little satisfaction, no irrational, magical qualities that they can’t explain attached to it, and no loyalty. At some point in the process, songs become nothing more music. One song may be more creative than another and that may be why we like it, but we lose all personal attachments to it when we can listen to it hundreds of times, on our own time. It’s the want, the chase, and the desire, that ultimately defines the irrational love of the intangible.

This isn’t to say there isn’t demand for music anymore, but it pales in comparison to the youth-driven demand that caused young girls to swoon at Frank Sinatra, scream at Elvis and the Beatles, or fire up radio station, phone lines for the latest Hall and Oates song. We later experienced the magic of albums like, Appetite for Destruction, Nevermind, and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Is that magic still there for young music lovers? It may be, brilliant music is still brilliant music, but that relatively unquenchable demand for songs that spawned loyalty may never happen again due to the ubiquitous availability of music on the internet today. I’m sure there are still “some” albums that are hard to find, but for the most part the “on demand ‘if you want it, you got it’” era of music that those of us once dreamed of, is now here in the form of MP3’s. If you can’t find it in the MP3 universe, you can go to file sharing sites, or YouTube. There’s no more want any more for a young kid who loves music, because the idea of scarcity is almost nonexistent, and as a result, there’s no such thing as hyping something up to the degree that you’re so consumed by it, that you dream about it one night, and you’re still somewhat embarrassed to be obsessed with it decades later.