Okay, today
is blog action day, in which bloggers around the world post on one subject –
this year, the environment. I’ve been thinking of blogging on more serious
issues so this is perhaps the moment to start. However, I want to keep the
loose Metal/Jewish crossover theme going. After all, how many of the 14,000+
blogs registered for blog action day will take this angle? So here goes…
I’ve been
intimately involved in both the Jewish world and the Metal world for many years
now (admittedly more intensely in the former than the latter). Over the years a nagging concern about both
worlds has been hanging around my brain; a concern that I’ve found hard to
articulate till fairly recently. I suppose that this concern boils down to one
phrase: what’s the point? What’s the
point of Metal? What’s the point of Jewishness?
I have to
immediately qualify this by saying that this nagging question has never
undermined my love for both Metal and Jews/Jewishness/Judaism. Both are central
to who I am and what I do. Of course that love can be ambivalent and I can be
intensely critical of both Metal and Jews, but in my view ambivalence is the
mark of an adult kind of love rather than a teenage infatuation.
The
question ‘what’s the point?’ doesn’t stem from some existential crisis or a
jaded lack of interest. Rather, it stems from the perilous gap that sometimes
seems to open up between the macro-political concerns that I have and the messy
details of my life in the Metal and Jewish worlds. I know that I rarely share
it on this blog, but I am a very politically-minded person, a news junkie and
almost obsessively concerned with the ‘big issues’. I try and bring these
political concerns into my Metal life and into my Jewish life. My book tried to
bring a political awareness into Metal, to relate the micro to the macro and my
work in the Jewish community is increasingly about the politics of Jewish
life.
It’s
certainly true that Jews are in the eye of the storm in terms of global
politics at the moment. The Metal world may not be of the same level of
world-historical significance as the Jewish world but in its own way it has
explored the possibilities and tensions of globalisation and the problematics
of artistic practice in ways that are far from trivial.
Yet if you
look at the everyday lives of most Jews and most Metallers, this wider
significance often seems to disappear from view. The life of the more involved
Metaller is one of a succession of
mundane practices: buying or downloading music, listening to it, writing to
other scenesters, rehearsing, recording, performing etc. The life of the
involved Jew is also an intensely busy and organised one: praying, studying,
socialising, volunteering etc. The question is how does the micro relate to the
macro? Can we read off from this mass of practices a ‘higher’ rationale, an
overarching theme, a wider significance? This question is perhaps most pressing
in the Metal world. Is involvement in Metal fundamentally any different from,
say, being involved in civil war re-enacting societies or the rotary club? Insofar as Metal has a unifying ideology, its
answer is clearly ‘yes’. In my book I argue passionately that the Metal scene
(or the Extreme Metal scene at least) offers an important and challenging set
of practices and aesthetics (I’m not going to summarise my argument – buy the
book instead). Similarly, there are
legions of Jewish thinkers, from orthodox theologians to secular ideologues,
who argue that the involved Jewish life is one of meaning, significance and
purpose.
I don’t
doubt that Metal and Judaism have incredible things to offer. The involved
Metaller’s daily life may at times be mundane and boring, but the occasional
gig can offer the possibilities of transcendence within the ecstasy of the
communal. The Jew’s life may involve a potentially mind-numbing series of
prohibitions and intricate routines, but it also offers the joys of Simchat
Torah or Purim and the awe-inspiring majesty of Yom Kippur. But what I doubt is
whether the ultimate meanings and purposes are experienced frequently or fully
enough. The experiential ‘peaks’ that Metal and Judaism offer may provide
regular if infrequent reminders of the benefits of staying involved, but how
far does the magic and transcendence seep through into everyday life? For some,
it probably does. But what I worry is that for many, perhaps most, the mass of
mundane practices that make up the life of the involved Jew and the involved
Metaller can provide a barrier to a wider understanding of life. I worry that
Metal and Judaism can be a bulwark against the world, rather than a way of
transforming it or seeing it in a new light.
And here we
come to the environment. The challenge of thinking about the environment is
making the leap between our imminent experience of it and a wider consideration
of the planet itself. It’s not easy for humans to appreciate being part of the
planet as a whole. Much easier to stay inside one’s present reality. So the
environment as a whole too often appears an abstraction, something only
notionally related to one’s own environment. The question for anyone concerned
with the condition of the planet, is how to make our overarching reality as
‘earthlings’ (pace Bruno Latour) seem
as imminent and pressing as the lives lived within a radius as short as that
encompassed by our bodies’ sensory mechanisms.
My nagging
‘what’s the point?’ question arises when I consider the sheer magnitude of the
questions we are facing as a species at this moment in time, and then see the
sheer unbridled busyness of the lives
that we involved Metallers and Jews lead. The more involved one seems to be in
a particular religion, culture or music scene, the further the rest of
existence seems to recede. Paradoxically this seems to be the case even for
those who are most ideologically committed. Metallers have sung about the
apocalypse as an artistic theme for years, but few seem to have much genuine
concern or interest in the environment. I never cease to be amazed at the sheer
lack of interest in environmental issues by the Jewish communal leadership in
the UK
.
This is not
meant to be a ‘j’accuse’-type blog post. The person I am addressing the most is
myself. I have spent my professional and much of my personal life busily
engaged in the politics and poetics of Metal and of Judaism. I’ve managed some
modest achievements and have a very limited degree of influence in both worlds.
I’ve tried to retain a sense of the big picture. But when I look at the
magnitude of the problems that the world faces as it tried to address the
issues caused by global warming, I sometimes feel that everything I’ve done is
basically trivial, rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. The feeling soon
passes. I remind myself that I can make a difference in a small way. But still
the thought nags…
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