Dave Hickey part deux

So, dinner wasn't so bad after all. In fact, it was fabulous. Hickey is one of the most crass individuals I have ever encountered, and as such is amazingly entertaining. He's so anti-formal that I felt perfectly at ease for all 3 hours of dinner conversation (and probably ate a little too much raw eel sushi).

The most memorable thing he said to me was "Given the choice between art and music, I'd pick music any day. Music makes people feel good. Art doesn't." I don't unconditionally accept that statement as true, but I see his point and I agree with him.

He also had a lot of interesting things to say about the resurgence of Modernism since 9/11, and he essentially called out pluralism as a racist institution to "keep black people from going to Princeton." He argues for a kind of holistic assimilationism (my term, not his) which accepts the inevitability that when one culture assimilates to another, neither is the same in the end. So this process is therefore intrinsically democratic...? I'm not sure, but at least it's a new thought in a pretty stagnant and putrid pool of self-indulgent postmodern intellectualism.

Playing:
Kayo Dot - Choirs of the Eye
Isis - Panopticon