In his seminal (and admittedly half-serious) article “On Advancement”, Chuck Klosterman defines “Advancement” as:
“A cultural condition where an Advanced Individual – i.e. a true genius – creates a piece of art that 99 percent of the population perceives as bad. However, this perception is not because the work itself is flawed; this perception is because most consumers are not Advanced.”
“Now, do not make the mistake of inferring that this means that everything terrible is actually awesome, or vice versa; that kind of contrarianism has no place in Advancement Theory. The key to Advancement is that Advanced artists (a) do not do what is expected of them, but also (b) do not do the opposite of what is expected of them. If an artist simply does the direct opposite of what is anticipated, they are classified as “overt”… The bottom line is this: when a legitimate genius does something that seems crazy, it does not mean they suddenly suck; what it means is that they are doing something you cannot understand, because they have Advanced beyond you.”
Later in the essay, Klosterman quotes one of the two so-called Advancement Theory founders, Jason Hartley: “I find Sting unlistenable. But I know that Sting is Advanced. He must be super-Advanced, and I just don’t understand him. It’s kind of like when Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity – there were still parts of that theory that even Einstein could not understand. Those concepts were left for future generations.”
Well, say what you will about Advancement, but here’s my favorite Sting song, the overtly religious (and skeptical) “All This Time”. I believe he wrote it right after the death of his father:
I looked out across
The river today
I saw a city in the fog and an old church tower
Where the seagulls play
I saw the sad shire horses walking home in the sodium light
I saw two priests on the ferry
October geese on a cold winter’s night
And all this time, the river flowed
Endlessly to the sea
Two priests came round our house tonight
One young, one old, to offer prayers for the dying
To serve the final rite
One to learn, one to teach
Which way the cold wind blows
Fussing and flapping in priestly black
Like a murder of crows
And all this time, the river flowed
Endlessly to the sea
If I had my way I’d take a boat from the river
And I’d bury the old man,
I’d bury him at sea
Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth
Better to be poor than a fat man in the eye of a needle
And as these words were spoken I swore I hear the old man laughing
‘What good is a used up world and how could it be
Worth having’
And all this time the river flowed
Endlessly like a silent tear
And all this time the river flowed
Father, if Jesus exists,
Then how come he never lived here
The teachers told us, the Romans built this place
They built a wall and a temple, an edge of the empire Garrison town,
They lived and they died, they prayed to their gods
But the stone gods did not make a sound
And their empire crumbled, ’til all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found
And all this time the river flowed
In the falling light of a northern sun
If I had my way I’d take a boat from the river
Men go crazy in congregations
But they only get better
One by one
COMMENTS
3 responses to “The Advancement of Sting”
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I'm still a Sting fan but the Johnny Cash version of "I hung my head" is way better. Also, it's in 4/4 time instead of String's distracting 5/4.
Sting has always had a weakness for clipping a beat or adding a beat to phrase structures just to get an assymetric meter. It's one of the things I've never liked about him. He's a competent songwriter but I'd have to say that Cash improved on his song. Then again Cash could take pretty much anyone else's song and improve on it. I saw Johnny Cash and Ray Charles as both being performers who could so mutate the works of others that they pretty much owned them. And Sting has tended to be in the category for me where if OTHER people are performing his work you can get a sense that he is, despite his often overly slick productions, a decent songwriter. Plus compared to other rock stars tackling classical music in older age his Dowland album can't be as bad as McCartney's oratorio or as tepid as Billy Joel's piano work.
I also love Cash and will look up the versions mentioned here. But I don't think that the world is a worse place for having Sting make music…I love his version of I Hung My Head, although I agree that Cash can sing that with more weight and meaning. I think the statement 'Sting is unlistenable' , though, is kind of interesting in the sense that if Sting is unlistenable…who is listenable???? Sting produces serious music in the midst of o lot of non-serious musicians…I would certainly give him that.
What comes to mind for me is the general concept that art is appreciable only to the degree that you have knowledge of it. So, by that line of thinking…Matisse is a moron, Bach is a windbag and wine tastes like vinegar.
I love the Sting video here and referenced it here…
http://gratiafied.blogspot.com/2009/01/doubt-disappointment-and-flowing-river.html