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Music, Milo, and Pin-Ups of the Heart
Conservatives are not exhibitionists. But real Americans value real-life experience. Which means, if you write, putting your real life on display. I was thinking this as I read @therightnurse’s recent, very frank post on fibromyalgia, written with a kind of directness I’m quite honestly not brave enough to attempt in front of a full audience.
Like many children with a musical ear, I used to improvise at the piano a lot. The impromptus weren’t technically brilliant – I was (and still am) clumsy at the keyboard – but you could always tell a piano what you really thought, and it wouldn’t judge you. Instead, it would make music for you, music which could be judged, if there was anyone around to judge it (and often there was not), for itself alone. Some found the music beautiful, some found it annoying, but in either case, the music could be valued for itself rather than for the experience of the one who made it. For a shy child, that was mostly an asset.
Shy people may remain shy even when they’ve disguised themselves with music, and for years I had horrible stage fright. I still do, I suppose, it’s just now I’m marginally better at managing ways around it. Some audiences are less scary than others, though. Friends’ families, babysitting charges… “Why are all the songs so sad?” one littler kid my older-kid self was babysitting once asked me. “Those aren’t sad, just minor. Minor is beautiful.” It wasn’t a lie. Minor is beautiful. Even for those who tend to live life in a minor key.
Pin-up art nostalgia is pretty common here at Ricochet. It’s not hard to get conservatives to hold forth on why pin-up art, which reveals a lot, but not everything, is superior to today’s exhibitionism. Where is the thrill of transgressing boundaries when there’s no longer a sense of boundaries to transgress, and so forth? Even Milo Yiannopoulos, who is an exhibitionist, displays this aesthetic. He quips gay is boring when it’s no longer transgressive. He’s Catholic and happy to be a bad Catholic, one who jokes about his latest shag and how he once seduced a parish priest as an underage teen. (NSFW) Exhibit. Exhibit. Exhibit. As long as there are boundaries. After all, there must be at least some fig leaf to distinguish us salt-of-the-earth folk from the exhibitionists we decry.
Gross exhibitionism, exhibitionism without reserve or regard for what others want to see, is not even seductive, we say. Either display less than is seductive, or seduce, but for heaven’s sake, don’t display more than that! Not that everyone wants to be seduced, either – a serial seductress is manipulative, and good Americans also hate being manipulated.
So, what do we choose to exhibit, and what do we choose to keep covered up?
I know when I write an essay, the more personal the topic, the more careful I am about what’s showing, for fear of immodesty. Many conservative women are happy to admit they have two reasons to fear bodily immodesty: virtue and vanity. Writing is the same. Expose what is flattering, cover what is not – not just for your own sake, but for the sake of the poor reader whose eye you have caught and who has to look at it. And if you feel silly displaying yourself as too much the protagonist when you know you’re not (a predicament I often find myself in), tell the same story, but about other people, or abstracted altogether.
Sure, not everyone claims to like the abstract, but that doesn’t mean the abstractions we assemble aren’t rooted in real experience. A musician talks to his instrument, using the abstraction of music to say the real things he couldn’t say otherwise. Nor is music the only abstraction we speak through, it’s merely one of the most abstract: music is an end in itself, can be judged for itself, and in that sense is intensely impersonal, although everyone knows how personal it can be.
Other times, maybe, the abstraction is just a personal mythology, not “high abstraction”. But we can’t get away from abstraction, nor should we if we wish to reveal our hearts without disgusting exhibitionism.
So sometimes we’re “artless” and “tell it like it is”. Other times, we artfully leave something (maybe a lot) up to the imagination. It’s a pin-up artistry of the heart, hopefully seductive enough to catch some reader’s fancy, but not the kind of shameless seduction that just makes people feel used.
In the past two years, there’s been a lot I found I just couldn’t talk about politely in public, and no, most of it hasn’t been about US politics. It would simply be too absurd if all told, and gross. Maybe cheaply manipulative, too. If acceptable revelation proceeds in true pin-up fashion, the license to bare one thing is purchased by deciding to cover something else. Which means, if you’re not sure what to keep covered, not baring in the first place. And even those of us bravely “baring it all” on one matter might be quite reticent on others.
Published in General
Milo’s detractors do say that, of course. And maybe some of Milo’s fans, too, for all I know. Milo’s fans here don’t see it that way, I’d wager. Decent people must give themselves permission to like his schtick for other reasons, right?
I chose pin-ups with hearts in them for obvious reasons, and so passed up the most humorous examples of how decent people give themselves permission to look — oh, those poor hapless, oblivious gals who’ve burnt dinner so badly they can’t help lifting their skirts to fan away the smoke, who didn’t realize what their hoop skirt would do when they sat down, or how attracted various and sundry animals (dogs, ostriches, “fresh lobsters”…) would be to their hemlines! Not to mention the babes inhabiting the universe of Art Frahm, where the presence of celery induces failure in the primitive elastics of the era (thanks to @jameslileks for documenting this). The whole joke is decent folks can give themselves permission to look, and permission to believe the gal didn’t mean what she was showing!
You missed Wal Mart? We’ll have to fix that somehow.
Don’t kid. Milo would never have made it but in America. He never was nor never will be comparatively significant in Britain. Just like there are Americans who, to put it mildly, would rather not live in America–Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Henry James & even your Hemingways &c.–so also there are people who could make it much bigger in America than anywhere else.
Milo didn’t make American colleges into scenes where he’d be acclaimed. America did that.
”I’m backing up and I’m not checking in my rearview.” Classic!
I’ve seen a few Walmarts–but they were very middle class…
Why is this always posed as an either/or question???
Ahem.
You’re big enough, Judge.
Who is Milo? Is it important for me to learn more about him/her/whatever?
I think we also disagree about pinups & what they mean about America. I think the case for pinups is strong &, uh, healthy…
I was just thinking of someone I know who’s been writing for the Federalist.
You’ve ruined the mood.
Midge?
Do you know that that’s how I learned her name? We’ve been talking years, not once did she tell me her name. That’s how discreet she is. Never played the piano either, come to think of it. At this point I feel I would probably need Milo if I have any chance for a how’d’ye do!
Yeah, but most of them are Canadians.
In this case, because I knew the answer and was being a very baaaaaad boy.
In defense of American crazy, it also makes room for the Frank Capras & Billy Wilders of the world–at least it used to–I hope some new ones ever emerge…
Only if you believe his assessment correct. I do not.
Why do you think that that is really her name and not a pseudonym? She’s a very shy little rattler.
I naturally assumed she wanted to keep me in the dark while having no problem naming names to the Federalist. If it could be shown she calmly & deftly lied to that august body, I would feel a little assuaged. I would hold out hope, only to be thrashed a few more times.
Pen names happen, Titus, even at the Federalsit.
(It’s a cool typo, and I’m keeping it.)
Milo is a him/her/whatever, depending on when you ask. Or so I’ve been told.
Said in Lou-Costello-fashion…And, yes, you were, tsk, tsk…(By the way, only her dresser/bureau knows for sure.)
I’m grateful for Gary McVey (and others) who prove the value of imagination for this Panda’s enjoyment and well-being…
Thanks, Nanda! And thanks for being such a good sport and playing along with, and in, our imaginary radio adventures.
Of course, dahlinkh, and there is a strong reason for that. I bet Mr. McVey could tell you what it is, too.
I… Never read pinups that way. I never figured them as giving permission to look (I mean, guys have eyes), but rather as giving permission to show. I mean, no one is that bad a cook. It’s a very specific level of bad that requires extinguishing flames with a raised skirt but doesn’t set the skirt on fire itself.
Milo:
I wonder whether there’s any market in America for public personages of some fame or even notoriety who dress elegantly.