On Pandit Pran Nath (1918-1996) © Henry A. Flynt, Jr. December 1996 – March 2002 There is a short glossary at the end of the first section. Names of scale tones are in caps. Western note names assume C as the tonic, e.g. C D E F G A B c. Appreciation is due La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela for overseeing the musical knowledge here (not to mention sponsoring Guruji in New York). When the ragas are starred, specific recordings are referred to. There is a discography after the glossary. In the early Seventies, Guruji’s usual vocal tone was round, completely unforced in the lower range (only occasionally raspy); only occasionally cutting as he rose to high SA. His intonation, vocal quality were beyond compare. He would pour the raga out like a physically massive storyteller; his production was speech-like, not colorlessly pure. It was always earthy, not precious—a certain roughness of speech. Visceral qualities of the music had an effect. Guruji’s occasional dwelling on tones in the low octave, as in Malkauns. A visceral sense of grounding or foundation. Guruji told Young, you can’t learn my style from records, you can’t learn it unless I teach it to you. The technique and thought of his performances—some recollections. the unforced vocal production in the low range comes from developing the voice at full strength and then easing off. Guruji had absolute pitch — in a master class at Harrison St., he sang a capella, then brought the tamburas in, and they were on the SA he was on. in a descending melodic shape, a descending mind, accenting the beginning of a descending slide — a technique especially used in Kirana — *Darbari alap exposition of the raga: the pitches are successively involved in the melodic shapes in ascending order — Guruji hides the tone to be introduced in the melodic shape at first use, so that the audience has heard it before they are aware of its use — discrete change across the perceptual threshhold in Hindustani music, the first note is supposed to prefigure the entire performance, which unfolds from it — in our terms, the way SA is produced and ornamented. resting on a scale tone, usually in the lower octave, SHUDDH NI below SA, shaping melody as if to tonicize NI, then revealing the tonal center as SA (*Yaman, *Todi) ascending as expected to PA, but passing right through it to KOMAL DHA — the surprise the yodel-like upward break at the end of an intense sustained high tone, SA — gitkiri the use of the lower octave, gliding like a rudra vina and dropping to kuraj, conveying a visceral sense of being completed or grounded — Malkauns I heard him run the descending scale as if it were being strummed on sympathetic strings — Harrison Street, Multani, 1980? a late morning performance at Harrsion St. — Guruji sang a drone (tambura) pitch, SA or PA, in a way that gave the impression of resonance like a sarangi, a shimmer — a microtonal andolan? — I associated the sight of silver with it (around 1980) in live performance, an ascending mind would make you feel like it was lifting your virtual torso from where you were sitting. two examples from *Darbari: in the lower octave, his ascending mind in ahkar from MA to SA — in the middle octave, his ascending mind from PA to upper SA In the drut he would demonstrate just enough tricky syncopation to show that he could do it. ° *Bhairava 19 V 1974 Guruji draws entirely different moods as he brings MA, PA, DHA, NI into the melodic shapes. He conjures up —joy —pensiveness, sublimated moroseness —a “zingy” flavor When he introduces NI, the theme descends to GA or RE — the “zingy” flavor of Ab, F, E, F, Ab, B, c, B, Ab, F (C/G drone). [the flavor reminds me of Ram Narayan’s descending theme in the gat, *Todi, from SA to RE — although the intervals are quite different] Singing on the pentachord from PA to SA: GA, MA, PA, lullaby-like, vulnerable, intimate joy [Indian writers say tender adoration — the shape not typical because DHA is the vadi of Bhairava] — then descend to SA through KOMAL RE, the touch of the exotic or macabre. Near the end of the performance. Hindustani music, an inexplicable inspiration. The carefully thought-out techniques to make the music intimate, uncanny, cosmic. (Resonance and scale choices.) Conjuring up joy, offering the vicarious experience of [or vicarious return to] grief, a pensive emotional flavor, a zingy emotional flavor. To experience the emotions of an occurrence at one remove from it. Vicarious To aestheticize the emotion, detach it from the jolting occasion. Sublimated The whole question of artistic use of the eerie, uncanny, sombre, morose, morbid, macabre — which is central in Hindu mythology. It is involving, not estranging, if it is sublimated [done with acceptance] — excluding resentment and ridicule. Why does the vicarious encounter of grief conjured up with tones have a healing, remedying effect? [this function is intended in traditional music, characteristically] Our emotion makes us real, and deep, and we want to re-experience it as a re-commitment to our depth. (And as a way of mastering or absorbing a loss or injury.) The evoked joy is elicited, is real, not aestheticized. A joy that heals despair and grief. In *Asavari, Guruji’s performance is profoundly mastered in terms of system and technique. Yet he stays close to the intonation of speech, chant, the storyteller. An ancient sound. He never turns himself into a musical instrument. He never leaves the intonation of speech, chant, storytelling. His ahkar tans are usually offhand. But he drives it in the drut of *Todi. It’s about developing the feelings, so that there is a reserve in other aspects. He shows the boogie beat or groove and then drops it. He doesn’t want getting in a groove, propulsion by instinct, to be what it is about. His intelligence is always on. Guruji had many strategies of melodic exposition which made his sound subtle and uncanny. But what really mattered was beyond the definable techniques. Glossary [bracketed is pronunciation] gharana family, style, school drupad “chanted” performance khayal “imagination,” improvisation which develops the raga Purabanga [purvanga] lower tetrachord Uttaranga [utterang] upper tetrachord kuraj [courage] any SA; lowest SA; lowest octave Mandhra [mandra] lower octave Madhya middle octave Tar upper octave lay tempo arohe [aro] ascending scale avrohe [avro] descending scale vadi melodically dominant scale tone samvadi melodically supporting scale tone Sargam solfeggio asthayi [astay] first verse of song, lower tetrachord antara [antra] second verse, introduce upper tetrachord, and express the inner feeling of the raga alap first section of performance unmeasured beginning of alap nom tom style (drupad); avahan style (khayal, sung in ahkar) slow measured alap vilampit madhyalay [madyalay] later section, measured medium tempo drut last section, rapid gat in instrumental music, measured later section ahkar melisma on “ah” mind [meend] sliding lehak [layhok] winding andolan swinging between tones gitkiri voice break tan a pitch sequence in tempo, or “run” sargam tans tans on sargams ahkar tans tans on “ah” bol tans tans on tabla mnemonics unpublished 19 V 74 NYC Pandit Pran Nath Raga Bhairava K. Paramjyoti - tabla discography Earth Groove (Bhupali, Asavari) Douglas SD784 (1968) Pandit Pran Nath (Yaman Kalyan, Punjabi Burva) Shandar 10007 (1972) Ragas of Morning and Night (Todi, Darbari) Gramavision 18-7018-7 (1986) Masters of Lahore and Bengal from the 1930’s and 1940’s [label unknown] inde du nord (Ram Narayan—Shuddh Todi, Marva) disques BAM LD 094 • I was beside myself for days after hearing *Bhairava 19 V 1974. Once one has been seized up Without a part left over, Not a toe, not a finger, and used, Used utterly, in the sun’s conflagrations … What is the remedy? Sylvia Plath The sense that there was this supremely intelligent strategy in back of his invocation of your appreciation of poignancy and exaltation. For his students, who were career musicians, the question was how was it musically possible. My question is, how was it humanly possible? Pandit Pran Nath was more fully realized than blues musicians—no less honor to them—but he had an advantage of context. He did not have to practice an “illicit” music while situated socially below a hostile majority. (Although his parents threw him out at 13 for wanting to be a musician.) He was “at home,” in his own country, his own tradition, and the musical vocation entailed a comprehensive “yogic” discipline which is not expected in the West. The European modernist project of annuling tradition was not an issue in his landscape. All the same, he departed the expected Hindustani practice to the point where he was alone (and not universally beloved) in his originality. Guruji went to strange emotional places, already familiar in his native culture, which the West would call surrealistic or like an inexplicable dream. But instead of being odd in an estranging way, it involved you; he forcibly confronted you with your own appreciation of emotion, poignancy, and exaltation. It took you into yourself and showed you that you have sensibilities, and nobility, you did not know about. A sensibility of poignancy and exaltation. Other Hindustani singers are great entertainers. Guruji’s job description was: to awaken your true self. The most remarkable thing is that he chose the path of probing people emotionally, reaching them in an earthy and basic way and yet with an underlying strategy of the highest intelligence. He channeled his incredible technique into emotional confrontation, into involving us emotionally. Why did Guruji want to elicit our “humanity”? Where did Guruji’s capacity to elicit [awaken, vivify] our “humanity” come from? It brings us up against the word ‘humanity’. The usage is colloquial. A biological metaphor for “the dignity of the person,” the object of the greatest phobia and hatred in the West. (Even as the West’s jeering cultural leaders demand that they and theirs be treated with the utmost graciousness.) This discussion will not be grounded until ‘humanity’ has been semantically validated, or replaced with literal language. The realm of the performance honors real emotion, honors self-respect. When a communication conveys this, it is awesome to the receptive listener. We are inherently oriented — so that a realm of self-respect and emotional honesty, a realm without self-masking, evokes awe. A more valid/real sensibility/consciousness. How do the meanings of ‘valid’ and ‘real’ relate in this context? “The truth/reality of one’s self and of one’s proper future.” When another person conveys this to me—dissolves my pretense with myself—I experience that person as having the advantage of me. Was it Pandit Pran Nath’s achievement precisely to take people into themselves and show them that they had sensibilities and heights which were latent, which they did not suspect? The music lets you regain, revivifies, a feeling which you lost access to. Hence it is predicated on his continuity with other people. Hence it imagines that there would be a way of life that honors real emotion, that is self-respecting. I was sitting in the Tishman Auditorium at the New School (fall 1970) before Guruji walked on stage. A young man was sitting next to me and I had a copy of the latest Monthly Review (Stalinism for Fabians) and may have been browsing it. We fell into a conversation, finding that we both sympathized with the publication, and he cut it short by saying “it’s impossible to think about that here.” But if most people ideally should be serfs and philistines, what is the music’s promise? Let there be an aristocracy of people who find themselves: even these people are not aloof from society all the time, and have to be recalled to themselves. And surely there are people who are prevented from doing what they should by mundane burdens. To separate “inspiration” and “social engineering” is to condemn people to never have anything but isolated glimpses of the best of themselves. This is America, and people don’t take thirty or forty years of unpaid leave to pursue “matters of principle.” And yet, as I try to tell my associates, you can’t understand a matter of principle by browsing it like a Sunday supplement article. You have to be engrossed in it, to work for hundreds of hours on it. To be in Guruji’s audience was to encounter that which has the advantage of you. Inspiration beyond anything you ever expected to know in your life. An encounter with something that solves a problem for you, that you would not have scripted. It opens a door intellectually, vivifies the life-tone. Being in the presence of such inspiration and dedication is humbling. I had a “take” that I must be near the end of my life since I am encountering a greater reality, something there is no precedent for in everyday life. Since I am blessed with something so much finer than the usual, something so far from the present public norm. What is it worth to be instructed in feeling, to be opened up emotionally in a sensitive, conducive way? What is it worth to be taken into yourself and shown that you had sensibilities and heights which were latent, which you did not suspect? What is it worth to renew your acquaintance with joy? What is it worth to be confronted with the degree to which you are short-changed by the world around you (and by yourself)? How many people have a power, to heal despair (or grief), which goes beyond personal complementation, being the soulmate of one other person? Or have a power to show where the truth/reality of one’s self and proper future is? Guruji challenged anyone, but probably the Westerner the most: you have short-changed yourself, the milieu has cheated you. The moment of regret or remorse for all the times you cheated yourself. The far greater consideration, how your native civilization cheated you. Libby Flynt says that Indians think in terms of a perennial dichotomy between profane mundane life, and a person who refines self. Indians see a perpetual dichotomy between the profaneness of the mundane world and the inspiration and refinement of their music. The Pandit in India needs intoxication to be able to bear the mundane world—is happy only when singing. • The individual in question has a personal intent and absorbs from elders and cohorts and is trained by mentors. There comes a point when the mentor’s mission no longer prevails; the student’s intent takes over. The former student may continue to absorb from cohorts, now harnessing to a distinctive intent that which is absorbed. Acquisition from others may continue—the role of learning from others varies from case to case—but a new, distinctive intent prevails. The surfacing of the qualitatively new. (The reason we are talking about the intent or mission is not that it is “neutrally or abstractly new” but that it is valuable in the respects I have outlined above.) One may always be acquiring and harnessing ideas from others. Even so, everything is reorganized to serve a new intent, a new mission. It starts with demanding what is noble from oneself. Not just the mechanical talent, the fast fingers. The aspiration to bring people to ennobling (or just deeper) feelings, feelings perhaps unknown to them. Even as Guruji’s achievement was predicated on his continuity with other people, there was also a discontinuity. Other people would not have chosen, or found, his path of nobility, nor could they have. Here was a summit of achievement as a musical performer unreachable for anyone else. The new, distinctive intent emerges somewhat subtly, since it emerges while the individual is being familiarized and taught, since it only gains mastery after an apprenticeship. Nevertheless, it comes to outrank the precedents and to transform what it, and the precedents, mean for us. A qualitative novelty confronts us which has the advantage of us. It is unsatisfying to explain it as the product of social influences, because it goes precisely where those social influences did not go. It does what nobody asked for. • During his apprenticeship, Pandit Pran Nath obviously absorbed content from others, his mentors and cohorts. (i) Does there come a point where his content comes entirely from him? (ii) Does he receive energy from a (non-social) outside after he establishes himself as an original? “The normative outlook” in this civilization—that is, naturalism-secularism—must answer (i) yes, (ii) no. The normative outlook has it that Guruji’s artistic capabilities were entirely within him. They were extinguished when he expired. The normative outlook, I must say, becomes a difficulty to itself. If we speak of cultures, they are a matter of the transmission of meaning. But the normative outlook has no more of an ontological analytic of the transmission of meaning than it does of the subjectivity of the subject. Transmission of meaning is a transpersonal subjectivity, and as such, the normative outlook does not and cannot acknowledge it. The only way it understands communication is as in information theory, as the physics of the notation-token. For all that, Indian music is a collective achievement and an honorable one in the sense that any proficient performer will be worth hearing. But even if the normative outlook allowed us to invoke cultures as explanations, it would not explain Guruji. At some point, Pandit Pran Nath outstripped his cultural influences. He projected a distinctive intent which could not be explained by cultural influences. Where do anyone’s personalistic subjectivities come from? (The audience’s receptivity, for example.) Not from “being.” (Not from what-is labelled as a person or thing, the way we label “nothing.”) Might my personalistic subjectivities derive from what-is as part of a whole which I did nothing to earn, like my equilibrium with sunlight and air? If the normative outlook is the context, it’s a misleading question. For the normative outlook, what-is is the totality of things, like Thales’ water or Archimedes’ universe packed with sand. Personalistic subjectivities are heterogeneous with sunlight and air. If what-is is supposed to encompass heterogeneities in this sense, then we are outside the normative outlook without an explanation of how we left it. The normative outlook cannot address personalistic subjectivities as such. (Cf. Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind. The normative outlook rebuffs personalistic subjectivities with slashing contempt. Again the normative outlook is a difficulty to itself.) But the normative outlook’s informal verdict must be that personalistic subjectivities subsist where they manifest—inside the individual. My subjectivities may be molded from without, but they do not live outside me. (Except in my works and in particular my communicative works? That doesn’t get us anywhere, since the normative outlook rebuffs the transmission of meaning with slashing contempt.) The normative outlook accumulates difficulties for itself. The “gift” is inside the “gifted” individual. Then that individual has an unfathomable advantage of the rest of us. If it all came from inside Guruji, he must be of a different order from the rest of us. Then aristocray is a fixture of our collective existence. (The only reservation is that this aristocracy does not always enjoy success. See below.) What about the socio-psychological axiom that says, nobody is an aristocrat by nature? Or the weaker axiom that says, if there are aristocrats by nature, they are randomly distributed? Does democracy require the former axiom? Does it require the latter—emphatically yes. If there is a systematic natural aristocracy, then democracy is at best an expedient lie, a scheme to co-opt restive masses. All humans may be vaguely similar, but in detail, all are not the same. Some people display an incontestable, unfathomable advantage over others—although perhaps in a different dimension in every case of such an advantage. The normative outlook doesn’t know what to do with incontestable advantages and their rebuke to democracy. ° Again we speak of Pandit Pran Nath as a graduated apprentice, age 31. Does his unique intent come from a non-social outside? The normative perspective must give the question a vehemently negative answer. After all, if such an “outside” were straightforwardly evident, then the modern world-picture would have accounted for it in the course of the day’s work. Philosophers would be able to tell us the reality-type of this “outside” without further ado, without departing from their standard themes. The point is that there is no official exposition of the demanded non-social outside from proximate evidence. The notion of the outside comes to us from exponents of religions. Religions rest on beliefs from ancient times—when people’s picture of the cosmos was necessarily different from what it is now. A god: a man who sits on a chair in the sky and happens to be immortal and incorporeal. (Who was given a promotion to infinity by the Latin Averroists, one jump ahead of the Inquisition.) A god: a unique monarch of the universe whose egoic impulses define goodness. Ancient peoples, being more helpless in the world than we are, being unable to accommodate sophisticated social legitimation, submitted to their pictorial fantasies. Five major religions arose, Islam being the last, and then the creation of major religions stopped. People won’t listen to spiritual speculation from sources other than these religions, because the legitimation of state actions rests on the authority of familiarity. Political legitimation rests on locked-in ideologies. The god-picture of religion was never a rational speculation. It was always wishful thinking. I shall not pretend that the earth is flat and the center of the universe and that a man with a beard could sit on a chair in the sky forever and all the rest of it. To be more blunt, it is with atomic bombs that the “holy” nations of India and Pakistan menace each other. I require that we encounter modernity at its eye-level, not below it, and draw on evidence, not legend. For me, it is not acceptable to switch from physics to Hinduism and back to physics as the occasion dictates. That is equivalent to turning quaintness on and off like a light switch. All the while, there is a profound lesson on the sidelines of this discussion. The life-world is filled with commmonplaces, like personalistic subjectivities, like choice-making, like the transmission of meaning, which the normative outlook rebuffs with slashing contempt. As we said, the normative outlook becomes a difficulty to itself. We propose to open doors. The normative outlook closes them. We have to give the life-world its due: for my reflections on Pandit Pran Nath to be compelling. What did I say above? “If such an ‘outside’ were straightforwardly evident, then the modern world-picture would have accounted for it in the course of the day’s work. Philosophers would be able to tell us the reality-type of this ‘outside’ without further ado, without departing from their standard themes.” I retract that. The normative outlook viciously rebuffs lived experience. Nothing is nearer to me than the escape route—and yet modern Western civilization extirpates it with hysterical frenzy. As a rhetorical device, I am pretending to be more baffled than I am. I am addressing religious notions and scientific notions argumentatively because they are implanted in the respective social circles in which Guruji moved and to which his public belongs. The normative outlook becomes a difficulty to itself in another way. Rejection of a non-social outside implies that “the judge” of one’s solitary endeavors is inside oneself. It is all about one’s counsel with oneself. But then we trip over the normative outlook’s commitment to mundane sociality. If the person judging me is merely myself, the normative outlook appraises “the judge” to be reclusive, schizoid, trivial and transitory. • What the normative outlook answers negatively would have been answered affirmatively by Pandit Pran Nath. My deliberately vague formulations might have annoyed him, because he had no reservations about being antique intellectually as well as musically. He said that one sings for God. He said that he could not have performed as he did without the blessings of the saints. Because Pran Nath’s circle puts traditional notions of a God and saints into play, I have to reply in ways which I would say are concessionary in other contexts. Pran Nath could believe what he did because he never set himself the task of confronting modern science. (And because his native culture did not drive him to the brend critique—see the note at the end.) Pran Nath thought his music worshipped God. Very well, J. S. Bach would have said the same thing. And so would Hindemith. Pran Nath believed that music possessed an absolute truth. Then J. S. Bach’s music would be an absolute truth. The catch is that I have no respect for J. S. Bach. Or for Hindemith. At best, common-practice music constitutes a poisoned experiment. Common-practice music was Pran Nath’s mortal enemy—if he had only known what I know about musicology! Pran Nath only had to learn good things. I’m from the West, and from an avant-garde center; I had to learn European serious music and modernism. One doesn’t “create” for God. It is preposterous that an infinite god would be concerned with human pastimes such as music. The notion that human ears would matter to the infinite god (why not a dog’s ears?) is preposterous. And how would this infinite god sort out Pran Nath and Bach? Pran Nath’s music was intersubjectively significant because it awakened dignity among those whose “emotional faculties” were human. (It sublimated that which was human). To have “wider significance,” Pran Nath’s music needs a palpable audience, not a divine audience. Why did Pandit Pran Nath have the advantage of us? Perhaps someone will say, because the god favored him. But does that explain anything? Presumably Pandit Pran Nath rubbed shoulders with many people who wanted the god’s blessings. Why did the blessings go to Pandit Pran Nath? He exhibited not so much the mandate of a religion which everyone shared, as a personal willfulness which remained controversial. I admire anyone who is as unusual as Pandit Pran Nath was and manages to avoid a tragic life. Pandit Pran Nath was comfortable, lionized, known around the world. But it wasn’t all glory, not by a long shot. To date, he has three records. He is known only to a thin layer of the cognoscenti. And he was overtaken by severe illnesses, beginning with the heart attack of 1978, so that he could not give the best account of himself in the last phase of his career. If the path of nobility carries penalties, the explanation that the god mandated those penalties for Pandit Pran Nath is not satisfying. If what he did was good, why does the god arrange it so that it remains obscure? What good purpose did Pandit Pran Nath’s decline serve? I don’t want to be this concessionary. Why does the outside have to be a man on a chair in the sky who is immortal and unique? (Recall that Pran Nath was a polytheist.) Astrophysics: our universe is probably an experiment by a committee of extra-terrestrial scientists. Why can’t the controllers be a committee of extra-terrestrial scientists? As somebody said, at least the committee of extra-terrestrial scientists could become a testable hypothesis. The infinite man on the chair in the sky is scientifically worthless. But as long as there is not a shred of positive evidence for any of it, none of these speculations are worthy of being argued here. (I leave the debate over the extra-terrestrial scientists to the astrophysics journals.) • The myth for children is that everyone succeeds precisely in proportion to his or her submitted contribution. In fact, when an applauded public figure lives in good faith and genuinely contributes, I consider that extremely atypical. If a person is famous and actually has something to say, it is extremely atypical. Pandit Pran Nath, above all, exemplified that it can happen. Part of Pran Nath’s specialness was that he was a naga in a cave temple from age 26 to age 31, “singing for God.” In the West, successful people campaign for success their entire working lives; they don’t have long episodes of refusing success. In 1949, Pran Nath’s guru Abdul Wahid Khan instructed him to go back into the world, and he did. His contribution wouldn’t have been the same without the public dimension. It wouldn’t have been a participatory occasion, a celebration. His native culture didn’t think in terms of making home recordings and storing them for decades. It’s a little like being a dancer; you can’t write a dance and put it in the drawer for posterity. If a dancer is not seen live, then the dance was not realized. Success (limited as it was) was a constituent of Pran Nath’s contribution. Hindustani music is an honorable community. So is rhythm and blues. Any proficient performer will be worth hearing. But it may happen that the master resides in a milieu in which crowd-pleasers and hustlers predominate numerically. Another regrettable neighbor is inflicted on the master by modern art, namely the hollow intimidator. But Pandit Pran Nath lived in the midst of a disaster in New York which is of a different order—although he never seemed to be aware of it, being sheltered by his hosts as he was. A culture which derides dignity—a contest to see who can be the most sordid and degraded. Up the street, the Ramones were singing “beat the brat with a baseball bat.” From my vantage-point, the person who has something to say and is also a success is a thoroughly baffling manifestation. All the more so if that person can be impervious to the chorus of derision, the immersion in the sordid, which came after flower power in New York. Pandit Pran Nath could disregard punk as long as his sponsors were able to assemble audiences for him. If there were those who viewed Pandit Pran Nath and punk as interchangeable entertainments of an evening, that is troubling—but Guruji could remain unaware of it. If “enlightenment” is utterly discontinuous with everyday life, then presumably everyday life crushes people. Guruji did not address this problem: outside of professional musicianship and the reminder which a performance furnishes to the passive audience. As for the masters known to us, how do they manage the conjunction of greatness and success? How can a master be cheerfully impervious to the milieu? They pour themselves into specialization. They play to an identified role. The role is already there, and they step into it. They offer themselves to the public in a single dimension. In fact, the combination of accomplishment in one dimension with worldly status is what is meant by being “an adult.” All the while, these figures block out most of the challenges implicit in the culture. • The myth for children is that everyone succeeds precisely in proportion to his or her worth, but as I said, it is thoroughly baffling to me when anyone who has something to say gains success. I want to speak about how matters appear from my vantage-point. It is outside my personal experience to be rewarded commensurately for doing something worth doing. I speak for a social debris whose “creating” does not translate into public reward or even a cogent public identity. Of course, there is an easy reply: that we the debris have done nothing worthy of reward. It was not Guruji’s problem; but he had answers for the question “why?”—and we may ponder our problem in that light. If one has something worth doing, if one has something to say, and one cannot gain recognition for it, should you do it, and if so, why? Guruji would say, you do it for God. Again, to respond, I have to be concessionary. Wittgenstein wrote one of his posthumous books, Philosophical Grammar, for God, he says. (Wittgenstein did not have the concept of one’s counsel with oneself.) Is “doing it for God,” a slogan which we find in sophisticates like Wittgenstein and Rahner, prefigured by religioius petition and sacrifice? It starts as an irrational destruction of produce to gain a favor from Heaven, and ends as a far more vague offering to a judge who is outside me and outside humanity. (Actually, sacrifice is far more grim than that, there is a mortal spilling of blood to expiate sin—we don’t have to pursue it that far.) For the normative outlook, this offering to the god is absurd, as it was absurd of the Egyptians to build pyramids for the next life. That leaves the judge of one’s solitary endeavors as oneself. But (as I said) if the person above myself is merely I, the normative outlook appraises “the judge” to be reclusive, schizoid, trivial and transitory. Marx wanted to overcome solipsistic encapsulation in the 1844 Manuscripts by saying that what seems to be the most private and idiosyncratic quest proves to be the most important for society. As always, Marx rotates the payoff from life after death to the reality-types “society” and “future.” But what is the point of saying that my work will be found vitally necessary by people a thousand years from now? Other people regard my claim as presumptuous and preposterous. And how do I know that I want to do the people one thousand years from now a favor? Pandit Pran Nath said, don’t release my records in India, they don’t deserve them. As for Marx, he was a humanist-fetishist; he did not conceive the option of siding with attacking Martians. But we can—you can do it for the committee of extra-terrestrial scientists, for example. But how do you know what impresses the committee, where do you go to get your grade? I know what my answer is. Notwithstanding that we are dependent on each other, each of us is alone anyway, intractably so. If you didn’t already know it, you will when the doctor tells you that you are incurably ill. As adults we discover that we have separate fates, even if we wish we didn’t. When one finally meets the sensitive, aware people, one discovers to one’s shock that personal perspectives do not merge. The perspectives of the sensitive, aware people remain disunited. (Seemingly because of the way temperaments play out in ideologies.) If one “creates” and there is no public applause, that only highlights the condition we are in anyway. I will never sit across from another person who is as dedicated as I am to what I find worth doing. When I give my best, people are pointedly unconvinced by it—finding it baffling, or wrong-headed and mischievous. The work is not just boring and pointless to other people. In many cases, it would be disapproved. I have no work that is worth doing that unites me with other people. Every work that is worth doing isolates me. For me, the problem solves itself; the answer is easy. Negligibly little in this public arena is healing or dignifying or ennobling—in fact, these ideals are derided to death in our milieu. (To be precise, the culture’s high priests deride human dignity—while demanding that others extend the utmost courtesy to them and theirs.) The content which is my joy in life is rebuffed by the public, or cannot be shared with the public for one reason or another. If I confined myself to what could be popular, there would be nothing healing or dignifying or ennobling in my life. If I refuse to hate myself and destroy myself, then I must devote myself to unrecognized work. Nothing that is important to me, nothing I want to do, is socially applauded, at least not commensurately, not enough to provide a livelihood. If I didn’t do what was not recognized, then there would be no time when I worked for my own satisfaction and euphoria. If one made conviviality or fellowship the test of how one would occupy oneself, one would not do anything worthwhile. One must work alone—all the more, with respect to that which has to be kept in confidence. One does it for oneself, to mold, to cultivate oneself. One is self-occupied because one is not being recruited for anything worth doing. As well, there are profound reasons for doing the best you can, for extending yourself. Even if nobody asks you to, even if you are not applauded—I do not rule out having to store work for years because the time has not come to make it public. Precisely because you go where “one shouldn’t go,” you have to be able to give the best account of yourself. You cannot afford to know yourself to be a panderer, or to be careless, irresponsible. You need the self-assurance, you need to stand in confidence—you need to to be reconciled with yourself. I need to be able to say, ““I’m doing the best I can, I’m not playing to approval”—and I hope it means something to somebody besides me. One should try to inch one’s way forward in unwelcoming circumstances—granting that the work can only be inserted in the record by insinuation, indirection, and so forth. What does it mean when one fights to get something in the record in spite of its not being understood and not being approved? It is a tribute to the searing power of truth, to the truth that burns like a branding iron. When one utters the truth, one changes the world unilaterally. (As if one had left state secrets on a seat in the subway. The truth in that case being that the state holds those things secret.) It is quite distinct from seeking to exchange ideas with people. “I choose to talk at you; I do not wish you to talk to me.” Of course the renunciation of the exchange of ideas assumes the worst case—but that may be all the situation warrants. • Postscript: the brend theory A milieu in which art is traditional and aristocratic—which offers, for example, a vicarious encounter of grief conjured up with tones, and thereby a healing or remediation—does not push us in the direction of the brend critique. Only when the European avant-garde empties art out do we start toward the brend criticism. Only then do we notice that the value I ascribe to art depends on its pleasing me, or affording me a rewarding experience which is self-complete (never mind if it impels me to behave in some manner afterwards). Then there is something out of whack with embodying what pleases me in an object and exchanging it. There is something out of whack with pouring my imagination into inherited forms. There is something out of whack with the injunction to “purchase and consume my self-expression to be yourself.” Because of the complexity of sociality, there are borderline cases where the brend theory comes across as rigid. (Our desire for vicarious experience. Or architecture: the inescapability of collective taste or public taste.) Nevertheless, the brend theory remains the most important lesson which aesthetics refuses to learn—and it applies to traditional art even if the application is far more tangential than it is in art whose abusiveness has reached crisis proportions.

ART or BREND? Henry Flynt 1. Perhaps the most diseased justification the artist can give of his profession is to say that it is somehow scientific. ... It is the creative personality him- or herself who has the most reason to object to the "scientific" justification of art. Again and again, the decisive step in artistic development has come when an artist produces a work that shatters all existing "scientific" laws of art, and yet is more important to the audience than all the works that "obey" the laws. 2. The artist or entertainer cannot exist without urging his or her product on other people. In fact, after developing his or her product, the artist goes out and tries to win public acceptance for it, to advertise and promote it, to sell it, to force it on people. If the public doesn't accept it as first, he or she is disappointed. He or she doesn't drop it, but repeatedly urges the project on them. People have every reason, then, to ask the artist: Is your product good for me even if I don't like or enjoy it? This question really lays art open. One of the distinguishing features of art has always been that it is very difficult to defend art without referring to people's liking or enjoying it. (Functions of art such as making money or glorifying the social order are real enough, but they are rarely cited in defense of art. Let us put them aside.) When one artist shows his latest production to another, all he can usually ask is "Do you like it?" Once the "scientific" justification of art is discredited, the artist usually has to admit: If you don't like or enjoy my product, there's no reason why you should "consume" it. There are exceptions. Art sometimes becomes the sole channel for political dissent, the sole arena in which oppressive social relations can be transcended. Even so, subjectivity of value remains a feature which distinguishes art and entertainment from other activities. Thus art is historically a leisure activity. 3. But there is a fundamental contradiction here. Consider the object which one person produces for the liking, the enjoyment of another. The value of the object is supposed to be that you just like it. It supposedly has a value which is entirely subjective and entirely within you, is a part of you. Yet--the object can exist without you, is completely outside you, is not your or your valuing, and has no inherent connection with you or your valuing. The product is not personal to you. Such is the contradiction in much art and entertainment. It is unfortunate that is has to be stated so abstractly, but the discussion is about something so personal that there can be no interpersonal examples of it. Perhaps it will help to say that in appreciating or consuming art, you are always aware that it is not you, your valuing--yet your liking it, your valuing it is usually the only thing that can justify it. In art and entertainment, objects are produced having no inherent connection with people's liking, yet the artist expects the objects to find their value in people's liking them. To be totally successful, the object would have to give you an experience in which the object is as personal to you as your valuing of it. Yet you remain aware that the object is another's product, separable from your liking of it. The artist tries to "be oneself" for other people, to "express oneself" for them. 4. There are experiences for each person which accomplish what art and entertainment fail to. The purpose of this essay is to make you aware of these experiences, by comparing and contrasting them with art. I have coined the term `brend' for these experiences. Consider all of your doings, what you already do. Exclude the gratifying of physiological needs, physically harmful activities, and competitive activities. Concentrate on spontaneous self-amusement or play. That, is concentrate on everything you do because you like it, because you just like it as you do it. Actually, these doings should be referred to as your just-likings. In saying that somebody likes an art exhibit, it is appropriate to distinguish the art exhibit from his or her liking of it. But in the case of your just-likings, it is not appropriate to distinguish the objects valued from your valuings, and the single term that covers both should be used. When you write with a pencil, you are rarely attentive to the fact that the pencil was produced by somebody other than yourself. You can use something produced by somebody else without thinking about it. In your just-likings, you never notice that things are not produced by you. The essence of a just-liking is that in it, you are not aware that the object you value is less personal to you than your very valuing. These just-likings are your "brend." Some of your dreams are brend; and some children's play is brend (but formal children's games aren't). In a sense, though, the attempt to give interpersonal examples of brend is futile, because the end result is neutral things or actions, cut off from the valuing which gives them their only significance; and because the end result suggests that brend is a deliberate activity like carrying out orders. The only examples for you are your just-likings, and you have to guess them by directly applying the abstract definition. Even though brend is defined exclusively in terms of what you like, it is not necessarily solitary. The definition simply recognizes that valuing is an act of individuals; that to counterpose the likes of the community to the likes of the individuals who make it up is an ideological deception. 5. It is now possible to say that much art and entertainment are pseudo-brend; that your brend is the total originality beyond art; that your brend is the absolute self-expression and the absolute enjoyment beyond art. Can brend, then, replace art, can it expand to fill the space now occupied by art and entertainment? To ask this question is to ask when utopia will arrive, when the barrier between work and leisure will be broken down, when work will be abolished. Rather than holding out utopian promises, it is better to give whoever can grasp it the realization that the experience beyond art already occurs in his or her life--but is totally suppressed by the general repressiveness of society. Note: the avant-garde artist may raise a final question. Can't art or entertainment compensate for its impersonality by having sheer newness as a value? Can't the very foreignness of the impersonal object be entertaining? Doesn't this happen with my "Mock Risk Games," for example? The answer is that entertainmental newness is also subjective. What is entertainingly strange to one person is incomprehensible, annoying or irrelevant to another. The only difference between foreignness and other entertainment values is that brend does not have more foreignness than conventional entertainment does. As for objective newness, or the objective value of "Mock Risk Games," these issues are so difficult that I have been unable to reach final conclusions about them. published 1968

Henry Flynt "Token" (2011) In the branch of linguistics called pragmatics, the distinction is made between type and token. The token is the concrete occurrence of a sign; the type is the design or geometry that makes occurrences copies of a given sign. Thus, the letter 'o' is a type. As a token, it is a particular inscription of a circle. There is a hidden assumption here. While one is normally aware of a token via vision, the assumption is that vision detects a material object, typically ink-marks on paper. That is where the word "token" comes from. Note that a circle is itself a "type" when it is considered a geometric abstraction. I show that I want an inscription to be considered a token by surrounding it by a box. When a document is created in multiple, a boxed inscription is still the very inscription on that sheet even if there are many copies of the sheet. It is a rather tricky convention. "Token" consists of a boxed stroke-numeral (cf. David Hilbert) shown on an Internet document. Suddenly we can see what we would see on a page, an array of vertical line-segments surrounded by a box. But where is the token?

MY NEW CONCEPT OF GENERAL ACOGNITIVE CULTURE Henry Flynt [This essay was written c. May 1962 and published in décollage No. 3. This transcription serves to correct the typographical errors. Footnotes are written in 1992.] Of the adult (human) activities I discredit explicitly, consider pure mathematics (and structure art and games of intellectual skill), and Serious Culture/all art/literary culture/science fiction/music. I show that these activities (as such) should be repudiated. Now humans are likely in any case to resist this radical idea of repudiating these major institutionalized activities; but especially if nothing were to take their place, if the idea were negative only. Even when the activities' Serious Cultural pretensions have been discredited and repudiated, and their obvious confusions of purpose have been noted,[1] humans are likely to be interested in them still, to like them in at least one respect: for their entertainment, recreational value; for their value as "ends," in themselves. (And are thus likely to fear that to repudiate these activities without anything's taking their place would be to give up all recreation, doing things "just for fun," doing things just liked.) Now this chapter will be first, an analysis of the concept of entertainment, recreation, of doing things just liked, which will criticize the activities even as just entertainment. (And will discredit my own initial notion of "acognitive culture," as not going far enough.) I discredit these activities, show they should be repudiated, for "everybody," adult humans and creeps. Now since I am a creep, my primary constructive concern is to point out something rather than these activities, for creeps: my new concept of "creep acognitive culture." However, I am going to "do adult humans a favor" in the hope that it will keep them from just changing the discredited activities into something no less wrong and confused, and will encourage them to repudiate the activities. "Creep acognitive culture" is, to speak generally, a concept of "recreation" (resulting from analysis of the concept of recreation) for conscious organisms. Part of it is applicable for adult humans (as well as creeps), in replacing the discredited activities for them. I am going to give that general part here, in this book[2]--my new concept of "general acognitive culture." (The specialization for creeps I will give in Creep.) The specialization of this concept for adult humans I will leave to them, since that is their concern. Incidentally, even though generally applicable, the characteristics of general acognitive culture may be reminiscent of creepiness, but they will not in any case embarrass mature adults, which is where I draw the line between the adult human and the really creep. To give a better idea of the major area of life, "recreation," I am concerned with here, let me mention, along with the activities mentioned above: games, possibly athletics "for fun," conventional entertainment and recreation, and children's play. Or "acognitive culture" in my initial sense. Further, let me suggest the area with respect to its place in (adult) human life today. Naively, a worker has a job, job hours, an occupation, does work (which produces material wealth), to obtain his means of consumption. His job is a "means"; even though he may like it he is pretty much forced to do it. This can be extended to apply to the whole area of his responsibilities to society. Then he has after-hours, time when he doesn't have to do anything, and does what he does more as an end, in itself, "for fun," because he likes it: here is where recreation is included. This is when workers listen to music, read science fiction, play games, and the rest. A thing is more purely recreational the more it is done just "for fun," the more is it is not an extension of the job, a means. This can be extended to apply to the whole area of what he does just because he likes it; and the area can now be conceived as existing (presumably as a matter of course) side-by-side what he does "for society." All this can be said about recreation today. To arrive at the preliminaries of my concept of general acognitive culture, a certain concept of "recreation" applicable for any conscious organisms (my initial notion of "acognitive culture"), let me give some characteristics which the activities I have listed, in their recreational aspect, have in common, which would apply for any conscious organisms. No one of the activities is biologically necessary (or biologically harmful) to the organism. Probably no one is necessary for society, co-operation among the organisms. They are not technology (although they may use it). As ("mere") recreation, they are not supposed to have cognitive value (and in particular are without associated cognitive pretensions, so that they cannot be Serious Culture). (They may use believings, especially wrong ones, as "experiences," but these are not claimed to have cognitive value in any way.) They do not involve anything, in particular sensuous indulgence, which has sophistication-proving significance. And of course, they are entertainment, recreation, are things just liked. These characteristics are the preliminary, initial determination of the parts of life, of any conscious organism, which I am selecting out to consider as one area, a unity, that of acognitive culture. Having located and initially determined the area of life I am concerned with, I will now analyze, explicate the concept of pure entertainment, recreation, doing things just liked (with respect to the individual); and at the same time elaborate my new concept of general acognitive culture. Consider, for contrast, work, or the cognitive. With respect to these, there are "objective" or "intersubjective standards of value," for ex., whether a table top is level, or whether many people like a thing. One may well make a contribution to these areas even if one doesn't like the areas, or one's contribution; one can make a level table even if one dislikes the table and finds making it tedious. It makes sense to specially exert oneself to contribute to these areas, to drive oneself to work in them even though one would just as soon do something else. Now 'recreation' connotes, "general acognitive culture" is defined to be, exactly the opposite. One does the latter because one likes it (now), for no other reason. It doesn't make sense to try to do acognitive culture as objectively valuable, in conformity with objective standards. If one doesn't like what one does, it can't be acognitive culture. One can't create acognitive culture as a profession. It is obvious, then, that Serious Cultural institutionalized activities, doing things in Serious Cultural institutional Forms, such as the Fugue, cannot be recreation, acognitive culture. What is not obvious, a point of this analysis, is that the whole institution of society's providing Forms (for the individual to do things in) supposedly for his recreation and self-expression, such as Science Fiction and Pole-Vaulting (or my Linact[3]), is absurd. The notion that the Forms are the real right ones, represent the real right thing to do, are objectively valuable, inevitably grows up around them. As an example, consider the Form of "Composition," as any writing of specifications of activities (supposedly) for others to do as recreation. Compositions are primarily the writings, as opposed to doing the activities specified; their existence begins when the writings are completed. They are for "others" to do (and may never be done by anyone), showing that they are thought to be objectively valuable. The tendency is to turn out and store up quantities of them no matter whether the composer or anyone else likes them. Recreation, acognitive culture, cannot include Composition. Then there is the notion that given a Form, such as I am considering, one should do things in it whether one likes to or not, until one "understands" the Form, because one will like to then; and that the Form is objectively good if this happens. This has no place in recreation, acognitive culture. People who do things in these Forms all do so largely because they have acquired the notion that the Forms are the real right ones, are objectively more valuable than just anything. A proof of this is that the Forms are so extremely "objective," common, impersonal. This is why one can be unable to tell anything about the people themselves from what they do in the Forms. People have no idea of the extreme extent to which they are socialized even in what they do for recreation, self-expression. Even being a writer of any kind, a maker of objects, a creator of works, in the traditional, established, and common sense, is already extremely objective, impersonal, and indicates that one is extremely socialized. (This is what was wrong with my initial notion of "acognitive culture.") The reader may ask, if these Forms are so impersonal, what a personal Form will be like, how personal one can get. The answer will be given below. Thus, an excellent determining principle is that it's pure recreation, acognitive culture only if it's what one would have done, would do, are doing, "anyway"; "prior" (to being "advanced" enough) to "know" the real, right, objective, the impersonal things to do, not from trying to contribute to an established real, right Form. Acognitive culture is not created by special exertion. One does it "anyway" "first," and "then" it turns out to be in the category of "acognitive culture." In fact, the concept of acognitive culture is only used applying retroactively. One doesn't set out to produce so many units of acognitive culture; one realizes that what one did which one would have done anyway was acognitive culture. What, then, is the reason for making the analysis, having the concept at all? Conscientious persons who have suspected the impersonality, of established Forms supposedly for their recreation and self-expression, have had great difficulty in repudiating the Forms, in not being ashamed of not contributing to them, not feeling that they have stopped doing anything. The reason for making the analysis, having the concept, is to help these persons with this difficult step, and to show those who are to give up the discredited activities what replaces them: to show that in giving them up they have not given up doing things just liked. So that they will "take seriously," pride themselves on what they do just "for fun," doing what they like, would do anyway; rather than being ashamed because they do not contribute to the discredited activities. The analysis, concept, is to make possible an attitude so one can thoroughly, consciously do things just liked. Since acognitive culture is what one would do anyway, does entirely because one likes it, is for one's liking, it excludes entertaining others, conforming to another's likes--which are an intersubjective standard, making entertaining work. Further, on analysis, being entertained by another, another's creation, becomes questionable. Can the "creation" of another be liked by oneself, be for one's liking, represent oneself, as well as the "creation" of oneself? One may admire work by another, with respect to an objective standard, as being better than one's work with respect to that standard, but all that is irrelevant to acognitive culture. If it fits oneself who's doing the liking, if one allows oneself one's likings, then oneself is the source of value and, it would seem, will as a matter of course like one's creations best. Does it make sense for me to appreciate "great" chess players, poets, pole-vaulters (if their activities are to be regarded as recreation)? My point here is quite radical, but would seem entirely plausible. To go back, analysis of the concept of entertainment shows that separation of entertainer from entertained is incompatible with a thorough-going concept of pure entertainment; entertaining as work is discredited. This does not exclude every kind of involvement of others in one's recreation. All this leads to the idea of (one's) acognitive culture as a part of oneself--as within oneself, at least so far as specifications are concerned. This would seem to be the opposite of contributions to impersonal Forms. Acognitive culture (being what one would do anyway) would not, it would seem, consist of artifacts built up outside of, separate from, oneself, to be gone back to (for ex. recordings, writings); or specifications one would have to be concerned about remembering. If one is wanting "what one likes, would do anyway," one will have it; one shouldn't have to be concerned about retaining it. The reader may have been asking, 'But may not merely what one would do anyway be less interesting than the pseudo-recreation which is created by special exertion, such as Flynt's "Reproduction of the Memory of an Energy Cube Organism"?' Strictly speaking, this question doesn't make sense: how could anything be more interesting to oneself, likable, than what one just likes, than what one would do anyway "prior" to "knowing" the real, right thing to to? However, I will give a heuristic answer to the question. Asking the question shows that one has as yet no idea of what specific doings would be included by the category of "acognitive culture" as I have defined it. They may well be so different from the discredited activities, the traditional, established, common real right Forms supposedly for recreation and self-expression, as to be irrelevant to them, so to speak. They are going to be indefinitely[4] more "new," "different," interesting, just as individuality is more so than anonymity. It is a matter of one's realizing that what fulfills the supposed function of the discredited activities are things one would not have thought of as replacements for them. All this will become obvious, when one considers what specific doings of oneself meet all of the specifications, are included by the category of "acognitive culture" as I have defined it. It may further be asked whether doing just what one would do anyway won't lead to a nihilism of acognitive culture's becoming indistinct, being absorbed in undistinguished personality, life, leaving only "nature"; or a nihilism that if acognitive culture needs to happen it will just happen, a nihilism of not doing anything. Well, something disappears, namely trying to do things just liked as a real right objectively valuable Form, a profession, by special exertion. However, acognitive culture doesn't disappear, because conscious organisms in any case just do anyway things just liked, which are distinguished, and which are "then" included by the category of "acognitive culture," "people have their recreation"--the category of "acognitive culture" represents a selecting out of things which presumably the life of any conscious organism will include, for which there will presumably be a place in any life. As I have mentioned the possibility that the reader may as yet have no idea of what specific doings would be included by the category of acognitive culture as I have defined it, it might seem in order for me to describe some examples of such specific doings. Actually, however, it is just not in the spirit of acognitive culture to try to describe such examples. Real acognitive culture is not likely to lend itself to reduction to words. And trying to describe examples of acognitive culture cannot but be a tendency to make them into works; actually, there is no reason why one's acognitive culture should mean anything to another, or even to oneself at another time. Thus, although I might informally describe examples in conversation, I am not going to try to write any up. The reader who does not yet understand what specific doings are included by the category will just have to study the specifications of acognitive culture some more, and then consider what specific doings meet all of them. When the reader does understand, then he can discover the parts of what he does anyway, already does, that are included by the category of acognitive culture: they are his acognitive culture. This completes the elaboration of the concept of general acognitive culture. My proposal can now be seen to be plausible, that one give up the discredited activities, all established real right activities which would otherwise be retained as quasi-recreation; and have in their place "nothing," except one's acognitive culture, or rather recognition of it. Now this chapter is relatively short, and the ideas in it are intrinsically simple. At the same time, it is of major scope; and it is socially radical, counter to major entrenched interests, institutionalized chess, institutionalized art, Olympic games, and the rest. In the past, there has been a tendency for people to read, but not "notice," such writings. I want last to say something to counter any such tendency with respect to this chapter. This chapter may be short and simple, but it is what I have been led to, my complete conclusions, after years of contributing to art and post-artistic activities and thinking about aesthetics and post-aesthetic fields (in an attempt not to waste time as a result of taking the wrong things for granted). Further, it will be outrageous if this chapter is ignored, just bypassed, merely because it discredits major entrenched interests while being short and simple.

Henry Flynt ESSAY: CONCEPT ART [As published in An Anthology (1963). Errors are corrected and punctuation is normalized.] "Concept art" is first of all an art of which the material is "concepts," as the material of for ex. music is sound. Since "concepts" are closely bound up with language, concept art is a kind of art of which the material is language. That is, unlike for ex. a work of music, in which the music proper (as opposed to notation, analysis, a.s.f.) is just sound, concept art proper will involve language. From the philosophy of language, we learn that a "concept" may as well be thought of as the intension of a name; this is the relation between concepts and language. The notion of a concept is a vestige of the notion of a Platonic form (the thing which for ex. all tables have in common: tableness), which notion is replaced by the notion of a name objectively, metaphysically related to its intension (so that all tables now have in common their objective relation to `table'). Now the claim that there can be an objective relation between a name and its intension is wrong, and (the word) `concept', as commonly used now, can be discredited (see my book Philosophy Proper). If, however, it is enough for one that there be a subjective relation between a name and its intension, namely the unhesitant decision as to the way one wants to use the name, the unhesitant decisions to affirm the names of some things but not others, then `concept' is valid language, and concept art has a philosophically valid basis. Now what is artistic, aesthetic, about a work which is a body of concepts? This question can best be answered by telling where concept art came from; I developed it in an attempt to straighten out certain traditional activities generally regarded as aesthetic. The first of these is "structure art," music, visual art, a.s.f., in which the important thing is "structure." My definitive discussion of structure art can be found in "General Aesthetics"; here I will just summarize that discussion. Much structure art is a vestige of the time when for ex. music was believed to be knowledge, a science which had important things to say in astronomy a.s.f. Contemporary structure artists, on the other hand, tend to claim the kind of cognitive value for their art that conventional contemporary mathematicians claim for mathematics. Modern examples of structure art are the fugue and total serial music. These examples illustrate the important division of structure art into two kinds according to how the structure is appreciated. In the case of a fugue, one is aware of its structure in listening to it; one imposes "relationships," a categorization (hopefully that intended by the composer) on the sounds while listening to them, that is, has an "(associated) artistic structure experience." In the case of total serial music, the structure is such that this cannot be done; one just has to read an "analysis" of the music, definition of the relationships. Now there are two things wrong with structure art. First, its cognitive pretensions are utterly wrong. Secondly, by trying to be music or whatever (which has nothing to do with knowledge), and knowledge represented by structure, structure art both fails, is completely boring, as music, and doesn't begin to explore the aesthetic possibilities structure can have when freed from trying to be music or whatever. The first step in straightening out for ex. structure music is to stop calling it "music," and start saying that the sound is used only to carry the structure and that the real point is the structure--and then you will see how limited, impoverished, the structure is. Incidentally, anyone who says that works of structure music do occasionally have musical value just doesn't know how good real music (the Goli Dance of the Baoule; "Cans on Windows" by L. Young; the contemporary American hit song "Sweets for My Sweets," by the Drifters) can get. When you make the change, then since structures are concepts, you have concept art. Incidentally, there is another, less important kind of art which when straightened out becomes concept art: art involving play with the concepts of the art such as, in music, "the score," "performer vs. listener," "playing a work." The second criticism of structure art applies, with the necessary changes, to this art. The second main antecedent of concept art is mathematics. This is the result of my revolution in mathematics, which is written up definitively in the Appendix; here I will only summarize. The revolution occurred first because for reasons of taste I wanted to de-emphasize discovery in mathematics, mathematics as discovering theorems and proofs. I wasn't good at such discovery, and it bored me. The first way I though of to de-emphasize discovery came not later than Summer, 1960; it was that since the value of pure mathematics is now regarded as aesthetic rather than cognitive, why not try to make up aesthetic theorems, without considering whether they are true. The second way, which came at about the same time, was to find, as a philosopher, that the conventional claim that theorems and proofs are discovered is wrong, for the same reason I have already given that `concept' can be discredited. The third way, which came in the fall-winter of 1960, was to work in unexplored regions of formalist mathematics. The resulting mathematics still had statements, theorems, proofs, but the latter weren't discovered in the way they traditionally were. Now exploration of the wider possibilities of mathematics as revolutionized by me tends to lead beyond what it makes sense to call "mathematics"; the category of "mathematics," a vestige of Platonism, is an "unnatural," bad one. My work in mathematics leads to the new category of "concept art," of which straightened out traditional mathematics (mathematics as discovery) is an untypical, small but intensively developed part. I can now return to the question of why concept art is "art." Why isn't it an absolutely new, or at least a non-artistic, non-aesthetic activity? The answer is that the antecedents of concept art are commonly regarded as artistic, aesthetic activities; on a deeper level, interesting concepts, concepts enjoyable in themselves, especially as they occur in mathematics, are commonly said to "have beauty." By calling my activity "art," therefore, I am simply recognizing this common usage, and the origin of the activity in structure art and mathematics. However: it is confusing to call things as irrelevant as the emotional enjoyment of (real) music, and the intellectual enjoyment of concepts, the same kind of enjoyment. Since concept art includes almost everything ever said to be "music," at least, which is not music for the emotions, perhaps it would be better to restrict `art' to apply to art for the emotions, and recognize my activity as an independent, new activity, irrelevant to art (and knowledge). Copyright by Henry A. Flynt Jr., 1961 Editorial notes on the text a.s.f. abbreviation for “and so forth” The 1963 printing may have had the word ‘intesion’ which was a misspelling of ‘intension’. Philosophy Proper. Published in Blueprint for a Higher Civilization (Milan, 1975). “General Aesthetics” A manuscript which Flynt worked on in early 1961. Flynt did not preserve the manuscript as such. Some of the material was transferred to later manuscripts in the “aesthetics” series, such as From Culture to Veramusement. The section which is germane here is “Structure Art and Pure Mathematics.” That survives and was published in Henry Flynt: Fragments and Reconstructions from a Destroyed Oeuvre (New York, backworks, 1982). “Cans on Windows” by La Monte Young. The embracing title is 2 Sounds (1960). “my revolution in mathematics” When Flynt submitted “Concept Art” for publication, he did not include this appendix. The argument of this revolution was transferred to Chapter 5 of the 1963-64 anti-art manuscripts (survives in holograph, was never published), and in “1966 Mathematical Studies,” etc., in Blueprint for a Higher Civilization. Academic notice of these claims appears in Graham Priest, “Perceiving Contradictions,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, December 1999.