Hozier: UnReal Unearth

     Hozier is a musician from Ireland. His unique music style and voice have gained him much traction worldwide. His first break-out song was Take Me to Church in 2014. His most recent album has gained him much popularity, love for its lyrics, and focus on reflecting on great work like Dante's Inferno. Hozier's work is often profoundly reflective and sounds like poetry. His work is much loved by people who love looking into the deeper meanings of songs. Much of this work reflects current problems and often works as an activism source. 

    This can be tied into my focus book on Faith Ringgold because she uses her work to raise awareness and speak about her community. She uses outside resources to reflect and talk about different issues and create great art. Both show how art can be used in many ways to reflect human experience and work as activism. 

    Hozier is a great artist and an intellectual; he has found much love for his outstanding production and storytelling. He is genuinely a fantastic artist for this generation. 

Ruel- Creating Experience through Music

    Ruel, a young artist from Australia, weaves his personal experiences with music into a tapestry that resonates with universal themes of love, friendship, and growth. His music serves as a mirror, reflecting on the pivotal moments, such as the first of life's journey to love and the bittersweet parting from friends. While his lyrics are deeply personal, they evoke emotions many can identify with, fostering a collective reflection on shared experiences.

 

    This connects to my focus book as Faith Ringgold talks about how being surrounded by art and great artists at a young age has helped her create great art. Ruel started his career very young and could learn from great artists through touring with them and collaborations. Both his experience and Faith Ringgold's can be compared as they both demonstrate how much their experience with art when they were younger had a significant experience on their art.

 

    Overall, I think Ruel does a great job of creating an experience of growing up and falling in love that many people can relate to, reflect on, and connect to. His music is fantastic in creating a moment in time and having all aspects of the music reflect it. It has been really cool seeing his music change as he has grown up and experienced new things. 

She is just like us- Sort of

    Olivia Rodrigo: we all know her name, I am sure we have all heard our songs. At points, it felt as if we had grown up with her. She was a disney star when we were kids, writing break up songs as we all experienced our first heartbreaks, and went on her first tour as we all began college. Every major part of our lives felt as if in coincided with hers. For that reason, Olivia Rodrigo is almost just like us, but not quite. 

    Olivia grew up in Temecula, California, with a mother as a teacher and a father as a therapist. At age 5, Olivia began singing lessons, inspired from the love of music she had developed from her parents. She started playing piano at 9, and song writing at 10. Olivia didn't come from a family of child actors, just your typical family, and yet her parents had encouraged her, as it had been her dream. At 10 and 12, Rodrigo made her first two big bookings in a movie and TV show. At this point, Rodrigo had to leave her previous "typical life" to grow a bit into the star she would become. 

    Rodrigo since her first gig at age 10 has blown up into being an international star known across continents. However, she simply highlights her creative process to that of a brain dump. She says that once a day, in the morning, dumping every though in her brain into her journal has helped her creativity and word usage in her songs. Rodrigo also highlights "Big Magic" and "The Artist's Way" as developing herself as a creative. She says that they helped her to think without punishment, without fear of judgment, rather than overthinking and failing to make progress every time she attempts to write.

    Similar to Ringgold's book. Rodrigo highlights her culture as much of her initial motivation for getting her voice and art out there. 

    Olivia has put out two major albums thus far, Sour and Guts. The albums, coming about about 2 and a half years apart, show two different perspectives on love and romantic relationships. Her realness and genuinity in her art makes it so relatable to those of us who choose to listen. As she was experiencing different things when she wrote these albums, many of her fans were. She remains on the same page as many of her fans, and for that so many appreciate her creativity. 

https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/olivia-rodrigo-artists-way-big-magic/ 

https://www.biography.com/musician/olivia-rodrigo

Descartes probably wrote like that because his life wasn't the best-

 While not necessarily the stereotype of a 'creative', Rene Descartes did introduce what many honors students have learned is a system of methodological doubt (otherwise known as your first academically fueled existential crisis. Not an academic crisis, or a self-worth related crisis-- those were likely born during a time of reading Homer's Odyssey during our first weeks in Honors. Nevertheless, I digress;)

Descartes's Meditations are important to the western philosophical movement as a whole-- outside of Honors, I've had the fortune of covering the man and his works no less than thrice, analyzing him within a historical context, others through his role in epistemological development, and others by proxy of Descartes' work. Establishing a system of doubt, as I have been taught, was relatively novel for the discipline as a whole, but within the context in which Descartes lived, such doubt was expected.

 A major war was occurring in Europe at the time of Descartes's work on the Meditations. The Thirty Year's War began during 1618, and continued, you guessed it, for 30 years, until 1648. The conflict included religious interests, seemingly between Catholic and Lutheran sects of the church, as well as conflicts within the Holy Roman Empire. Both state and religious authorities would give conflicting messages, and that is the main historical context for Descartes' Method of Doubt-- a deep mistrust in the authority figures surrounding him. 

War and conflict seem to have causes Descartes to isolate himself, but the sociopolitical sphere was not the only influence on Descartes' work. As one honors teacher informed her class, Descartes was also theorized to have frequent migraines, which causes a significant break with reality for him, hallucinations especially. The Thirty Years War made Descartes doubt authority and doubt others, but his own struggles with migraines and possible disability had Descartes distrust his own senses.

This not only results in the distrust that we see displayed throughout the Meditations, but the formation of the theory of mind-body dualism, a theory which has been propelled into the medical field for it's implications.

Descartes is a large figure in philosophy-- there are a number of philosophers that are Cartesian and a number that are anti-Cartesian-- such are the likes of, say, Thomas Reid, who proposed the First Principles, a foundational theory that, in contrast to Descartes' fixation on certain knowledge, was founded on a basis of pragmatic knowledge. Reid's philosophy is commonly seen as 'common sense' philosophy in comparison to Descartes-- Descartes's philosophy is often objected to as a distant, idealized, and unrealistic take on epistemology and experiences, which, given his life experiences, I don't think is exactly fair. Descartes' philosophical work is heavily framed by the circumstances he found himself in, namely those of distrust in both external sources of information and his own perceptions of reality. And there must be something true in that experience which can be generalized to other disciplines and philosophies-- we, as a philosophical discipline-- mustn't through the baby with the bathwater.

Osamu Dazai and Yuko Tsushima -- The Suicidal and His Daughter

 "He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost."(Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human)

“Just as my mother belonged in the kitchen, my father belonged in the graveyard.”(Yuko Tsushima, Of Dogs and Walls)

 

 

It came to light recently that the book I've been reading for this class has done little to capture my attention, and even now, some weeks from where-ever off in the audiobook I was, I dully remember that this artist was not kind to her children. Something about how her children-- who succeeded in life, came to write memiors-- became celebrated people, seemingly at the expense of her mother. I can't say whether or not she was a good mother, that artist-- I think people are odd like that, that they can be a good artist and a good person but a horrid parent. It's not that off, really, that some people succeed in different ways, I suppose it's more strange that someone that we come to idol may have some flaws. Parenting must be difficult, and I don't wish that task upon anyone unless they voluntarily make it-- anyways, all this to say that I can't speak on how she raised her daughters-- I don't know, and I don't really care to know.

There's a theme there, about how we can know someone in certain aspects and not others-- to think of an artist as an artist but not parents. There's also something to be said about how pain travels down generations like that. That is how we come upon Osamu Dazai; suicidal artist, and apparently father.

Osamu Dazai, born Shuuji Tsushima, is considered to be one of Japan's classical modern authors, most notably with his works of The Setting Sun and No Longer Human. Themes in his works often include the decline of the human condition, which reflects the era of Japan he was born and writing in, namely from 1928 (with his college publications of Cell Literature) to 1948 (with his final publication of No Longer Human). His works are popular, specifically among the youth, specifically in times of economic strife, instability, and general uncertainty about the future. That's how many interpret his work, anyways. I myself have only been able to read one of his works, No Longer Human, which is often considered to be Dazai's psuedo-autobiographical and final work before he killed himself. His work does follow a lot of what's reflected in a common reading of Japanese literature; the depictions of the Japanese upperclass during the changing times, often serve as a glimpse into what the world was like during Dazai's life, which include what seem to be the reaching affects of the Cold War (there are bits about joining a communist party, I think?). It's not what I got from the book when I first read it.

No Longer Human sparks a degree of kinship, I think. Empathy. Yozo, the main-character, is jarringly familiar, and is compelling nonetheless. Oh, what am I saying-- this isn't a book review. The plotbeats of No Longer Human follow the general beats of Dazai's life, mostly marked with suspicion, fear, which slowly graduate into self destructive alcoholism. It's steeped with melancholy and misanthropy, and it's hard to imagine that Dazai didn't struggle as Yozo did. Dazai wrote, and pressured himself into greatness, and trying to achieve and maintain that-- maybe the stress got to him. Maybe he felt he achieved all he could. Dazai was inspired by Akutagawa Ryuunoske, author of Rashomon, who, during the early stages of Dazai's writing career, killed himself. Those are Dazai's influences, reflected on his final works.

Dazai exists in a weird vaccuum-- it's probably that I should read more Japanese literature if I want to consider myself well read on this. I didn't consider that he had a child with one of his wives, but he did. And oddly enough, I look to her works now-- partly because this assignment reminded me of her, as did the motherhood-griping-- that yes, one of the saddest authors I've read did have a daughter.

I've only had time for a summary of her works, one being A Very Strange, Enchanted Boy. Within it details what is interpreted as a mother looking upon her son, and there's this argument of interpretation-- whether the mother's expectations on her son is what causes her to worry so much, if her worries are unwarranted in that, if she is the one to blame in that story. I haven't read it; I can't really speak on it.

But it was strange, to think, if Yuko Tsushima had a child-- and her father, who died by suicide when she was young-- to consider how that affected her views on parenting, if she vowed to be more than her dead father in this one case of caring for others and living. It's hard to say-- and given that the penname Osamu Dazai does not reflect the familial relationship between Shuuji Tsushima and Yuko Tsushima-- it's hard to tell how much readers look for her. But I did-- I only know her through her father, and his contributions. In a way, that's a bit of disservice to her, but that's also just what came to be.

Ah, well.

For more information on:
Osamu Dazai and his works:

https://youtu.be/yXATG3NSZjE?si=I7aR_H8EygRP4IBL

Yuko Tsushima and her work:

https://youtu.be/49ZxNCD2jOk?si=u08oLBoj6gbvsRQ1

Will Wood (Is Hard to Crack-- Would You Get Me an Axe?)

 

 Will Wood is -- well, bombastic is a good way to describe the opening of many of his songs. 2econd 2ight 2eer opens with a blaze of trumpets and horns, Laplace's Angel does the same with a descent of brass screams, Willard! with a symphony of woodwinds and other horns. These are not representative of all his work, some songs like Vampire Reference in Key and Cicada Days open with softer guitars, lulling strums and quieter piano supports. But the likes of Willard, Laplace's Angel, Thermodynamic Lawyer and such are the face of Will Wood's work-- loud, sure, if not slightly crazed.

The Will Wood persona follows up and plays into this slight crazed effect he has -- his live shows are described as 'delightfully unhinged', at times intentionally botching his own performances for his intended message to reach the audience. The subject matter of his songs-- brimming with a positive post-modern and sligthly nihilistic humor-- fits with the Will Wood persona, which he describes as playing on questions of the self, how malleable they are, and the impositions of social norms onto the self-- I/Me/Myself is a piece that deliberately plays on gender, and is about his exploration of gender queer identity, before settling on his identity as a man; " I once identified as genderqueer, until I realized that my attraction to traditionally feminine things did not interfere with my identity as a man." Fan reactions to I/Me/Myself is divided because it plays with gender like this, with the resounding message of the song itself being that gendered identities have a certain fictional and twistable nature to them-- the act of self-identification and fluidity of gender makes clear cut gender theory difficult, and the nature of I/Me/Myself is to play on and undercut those expectations. Self-importance plays in contrast with self-deprecation -- The Main Character as compared to Against the Kitchen Floor.

Will Wood's songs speak to alternative cultures, particularly gaining a fandom known for queerness and nuerodiversity, and there is good reason for this-- many find that his songs reflect their experiences well. I/Me/Myself, as already spoken, deals with gender roles and expectations. Willard! speaks especially well to nuerodiverse experiences, expositing a character with incredible empathy as well as incredible confusion at humanity-- their disgust, their social realties.

The lyricism of Will Wood is also simply- incredible. Willard! features a mouse (of which the main character speaks to) named Socrates, as referring to Socrates' allegory of the cave, Laplace's Angel plays on Laplace's Demon, Outliars and Hyppocrates: A Fun Fact About Apples opens excellently on a verse about the apple of Eden, and Black Box Okultra has too many references for me to properly list and name. Not only is everything a reference to another, but they are references they carry well-weight-- the allegory of the cave could refer to those 'enlightened' by leaving the cave becoming social pariahs, outcasted in the same way the narrator of Willard! describes.

Will Wood's process seems just as spontaneous as his songs make him seem, just popping into his head and working with the specific characters of the instruments at his disposal to create the overall feel of his finished works. He works with mania, from smashing his face on his keyboard and dressing up -- that creates his music not simply music, but a kind of performance art as well.

Other resources:

https://americansongwriter.com/will-wood-talks-process-funding-and-new-tune-love-me-normally/

https://nyunews.com/arts/music/2021/12/02/willwoodreview/

https://www.reddit.com/r/willwood/comments/jb97xe/imemyself/

Patrick Starr : Challenging Gender Norms through Makeup

Patrick Starr is a Filipino-American makeup artist who rose to fame around 2015 through his YouTube channel, which challenges traditional views of beauty and makeup. He was born in Orlando, Florida, to Filipino immigrant parents who had pretty narrow views of what was considered "successful". When he discovered his passion for makeup and started his first job at MAC (a popular makeup brand), they were unhappy with his career choice, as they wanted him to go to school to be a nurse. They were not the only ones that did not support his passion for makeup...Starr has revealed that at the beginning of his career, he was bullied and belittled online. When he started his makeup channel, there were very few male influencers in the beauty industry, a traditionally female-dominated industry. It was often scary for him to wear makeup publicly for fear of discrimination, but Patrick was determined to convey the message that makeup has no gender. He curated his makeup channel to be a positive, inclusive space for people of all identities and backgrounds. As a plus-size, gay, Filipino male makeup artist, he was no stranger to negativity and judgment, so he never wanted anyone in his online community to feel unwelcome. 

Today, in the US and beyond, the acceptance of men enjoying makeup and its fluidity is growing. Shows like RuPaul's Drag Race and more inclusive cosmetic campaigns are gradually reshaping the makeup industry. Patrick Starr, along with other influencers, is revolutionizing the use of makeup for self-expression and confidence, moving away from the idea of using makeup solely to conform to beauty standards. His motto, 'Makeup is one size fits all,' encapsulates his belief that makeup is for everyone, regardless of gender or identity.

I watched a few videos on Patrick Starr's YouTube channel to observe his creative process, as I couldn't find a concrete routine he follows online. I noticed that Patrick often uses inspiration from other makeup artists or trends he has seen online. He draws inspiration from fashion, pop culture, seasons, nature, and daily observations. For example, in one video, he made a "spring" look inspired by bright pastel colors. One of the main parts of his creative process is experimenting with looks and revising them to fit the face of the person he is working with. The nice thing about using makeup as an art form is that it is easy to manipulate and change if you want to try something new. In one video, Starr decided that he didn't like the eye makeup he had just done, so he simply wiped it off and started over. 

As a makeup artist, I think that Patrick Starr challenges the gender binary that is mentioned in "The Creative Spark" by Augustin Fuentes. Fuentes writes about how gender has a social and cultural basis rather than biological. Society constructed ideas about how men and women should act and interact with others and the world around them. Throughout more recent Western history, makeup has fallen into the category of "feminine" rather than "masculine," and we often view it as a means to garner male attention. Starr shows that makeup can be a form of art and creativity without gender. This also connects to Chapter 10, where Fuentes talks about humans using creativity beyond practicality. We find beauty in colors, shapes, patterns, and more, even if they do not serve a purpose other than just pleasing the eye. I think that makeup can serve the biological purpose of attracting mates, but it is clear that, as a makeup artist, that is not Starr's goal. He creates looks that serve as costumes or are just fun to look at! 

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/patrick-starrr-beauty/index.html

https://www.glamour.com/story/patrick-starrr-interview

https://people.com/celebrity/patrick-starrr-bio/