Review Summary: Conversing in circles at the end of the world
The notions of apocalypse and isolation have, naturally, been on my mind a lot recently. While it is, at this juncture, still pretty unreasonable to expect the COVID-19 pandemic to result in some kind of widespread disintegration of human society as we know it, watching the world economy crash and burn as thousands upon thousands fall gravely ill and die naturally calls to mind images of such a collapse. It colors my daily life. Every time I watch TV or read a book or listen to a song, it’s there in the back of my mind:
What will all this mean at the end of the world?
Recently, I was asked by a friend if I would still make music or write if I were the last living person on earth. My answer came easily: no, I don’t think I would. I’m not even sure I would still be able to enjoy music, at least not the way I do today. My relationship to art in general and music in specific is largely a linguistic one. I create because I love to communicate, and I love music and invest time into listening to it largely because I find it to be such a great conduit for communication. If I knew with complete certainty that I'd never be able to show the album I'm listening to to someone else, or tell them about it or have a discussion about how good we each thought it was, then I think the experience of listening to that album would feel hollow, pointless even.
As an important caveat, I have not listened to
287: n. Under normal circumstances, this means I wouldn’t even consider writing a review of it. After all, how could I be expected to adequately judge the quality of a piece of music I’ve never heard? But of course,
287: n is not a normal piece of music. Frankly, I’m not even sure “music” is an appropriate term for it, much as I do subscribe to the idea that any art made using sound can constitute music. Because what matters about
287: n is not so much the sounds it comprises, but what its very existence says about our relationship with ideas and works of art.
Here is what
287: n is: a single, bassy pulse, not unlike a sound effect in an arcade game, being played over and over again for about 10 billion years. That’s not just longer than any plausible human lifespan, that’s longer than the planet Earth has before it gets vaporized by our expanding sun. It would take dozens if not hundreds of astounding advances in every field of technology to create circumstances under which this piece could even conceivably be listened to in its entirety. If it were to be committed to vinyl, it would take entire libraries to house all the shellac. It is an exercise in scope so vast that, to many, it becomes constitutionally incapable of being an exercise in anything else.
The skeptical response to this would be: So what? They made a really long thing. They messed around on a computer for a bit and spat out a sh*tpost that could outlast humanity. It’s not artfully crafted, anybody could make a noise and repeat it ad nauseum. But of course, this is modern art, where “But I Did” eats “Anyone Could” for breakfast and scoffing at the piece itself is, to a degree, missing the point. If art only matters to the extent that it can be talked about, well, here you go: an album that’s effectively pure conversation. Don’t even bother listening to it; you can’t, and also that’s not the point. You only have to ponder it, consider what it is and what that means. Try to fit all that time, all those terabytes into your puny meat-brain, and tell all your friends how it feels to realize you can’t. If you can talk about it, what, really, makes it any different from
OK Computer or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or “Like a Virgin”? Why did Clayton Counts and Neil Keener make and release a million bajillion seconds of distorted thudding? The same reason, on some level, that anyone makes any art: To get their audience to ask themselves why they did it, and to get them arguing over their various conclusions. It’s all just a conversation, baby, and in its own unconventional way,
287: n is a hell of a conversation piece.
This is, in my estimation, a pretty nihilistic perspective on art as a practice, and if there’s any solace to be found here, it’s that if this is indeed what Counts and Keener are arguing with this piece, I don’t think they could be more wrong. I love art because I love to communicate, but I also love art because I love to be communicated
with. The notion of never being able to share art I’ve made or discovered with another person is a bleak one, to be sure, but the notion of the art itself, the thing that activated my curiosity or passion and made me want to share it in the first place, being incidental to the process of sharing it is not only bleak, but almost contemptuous of art and those who love it. Music, even not-particularly-great music, is always trying to actively convey something, trying to not only be conversation-worthy but to, after a fashion, have a conversation of its own with you.
287: n, at its core, feels deadly silent. It could not be less interested in communicating, and whatever meaning I or anyone else derive from it must be assembled from one’s own reactions to its stony, deliberate silence.
It’s tough to say for sure what I really think of
287: n at the end of the day. If you pressed me, I suppose I’d have to begrudgingly admit that I’m glad it exists. I find it fascinating to contemplate and I’ve enjoyed writing about it a lot, and for all I know my ideological problems with it could be nothing more than my own insecure philosophies, reflected back at me through my own eyes. But the best modern art can make artistic expression feel limitless, and over a thousand words later
287: n just makes me feel glum and foolish and a little bit hollow. I still don’t know what my favorite songs and films and novels will mean at the end of the world, but when that end does come, and
287: n is still playing somewhere, thumping away into the ether, I have a hunch it’ll be just as meaningless as it is now.
