Last week, Jean Baudrillard finally returned my email. Months ago I wrote to him, inviting him to contribute to our Said the Guests series, to take some moments and write about a couple favourite songs. It is not an exaggeration (though it is a metaphor) to say than in my first years at McGill University, Baudrillard's writings blew my mind. His work on culture, politics, language and technology had an enormous impact on critical theory in the latter half of the 20th c, and I wasn't the first kid to find himself mesmerised by these ideas.

Of course it's a busy life being an eminence grise of post-structuralism; I wasn't surprised that Mr Baudrillard did not at first return my unsolicited letter. (I still haven't heard back from McLuhan, Foucault, Deleuze or Guattari.) But imagine my delight last Sunday when my mail program went bing-bong and Jean Baudrillard's name appeared in the email byline. "I found myself with some temps libre :*)", he wrote. And so without further ado, in the man's own words...

These songs, each of which has a good tune and rhythm, are entirely unproblematic.

Non, c'est seulement une petite blague pour un petit blog.

Avril Lavigne - "Complicated"

In actual fact, the songs all call to mind the philosophical aphorism ex nihilio nihil fit (nothing comes from nothing). Of this phrase there can be a certain kind of understanding that amounts to not much more than a non-understanding, but constitutes, in fact, the only multi-dimensional interpretation of the maxim as it pertains to what we call the real. This is the non-understanding of Parmenides; a paradoxical cognizance, which appears untenable because it leads to "absurd" consequences, and is the opposite of the Understanding of Bertrand Russell, which obliterates the soundness of the proposition through obfuscatory clarity1. Now, I don't mean to bore you (or myself) with philosophical exercises - I raise this only as an attempt to explain how this song can exist and not exist at once. In truth, Avril Lavigne is nothing emergent from nothing, which is to say she is merely the simulacrum of a simulacrum, two orders shy of real2.

It is obvious enough that Lavigne's insouciant attitude, punk-inspired fashion choices, and nihilistic antics are meant to represent rebellion, yet are firmly entrenched in the vapid mainstream against which she proudly rebels. That she is a fraud is trivial, of course. What's more, when we listen to her song on a CD or mp3 player, or sitting in front of our computer, with headphones on, reading the writings of one Jean Baudrillard; we are not hearing her, or her rebellion, but a simulation of her simulation in which Lavigne, her song, and her pretend rebellion all cease to be manifest. At the same time precisely, however, all that ceases to be takes on a new kind of being, that of the hyperreality of what it fraudulently represents: rebellion. The listener/viewer is presented with the encoded simulations of "Complicated" (both auditory and visual) as "real" rebellion and, if credulous enough (as is often the case), understands it as such. Thus the song is adopted as the model of the phenomenon. Its rebellion is real; Lavigne is no fraud. From the Matrix emerges a new rebellion in place of the old.

(I find the last line of "Complicated" ("Honestly, promise me I'm never gonna find you fake it") - with its implication of prescribed "realness" - funny on SO MANY LEVELS.)

All of the above could be said of this, too.

Lead Belly - "(Good Night) Irene"

Throughout his life, John Lomax sought out the real music of America and found it as much as anywhere in the extensive songbook of Huddie Leadbetter. Leadbetter was as real as a sphere is equally tall in all directions: He was a lowlife; an unrepentant sinner and a murderer. He won more gunfights than he lost but was so often shot in the stomach that he earned the nickname "Lead Belly." He was a gentleman and a gentle man; he wouldn't hurt a fly. He was misunderstood and depressed and drank himself to death, though his tolerance for alcohol consumption was so impressive it earned him the nickname "Lead Belly." Lomax had him released from a prison in which he was never incarcerated for a murder he was guilty of but did not commit, so that he could compose songs (make them real), perform songs (make them real), and record songs (make them real); so that his own realness could persist and intensify in communications from well beyond the conclusion of the flimsiest, most ephemeral dimension of his existence.

Footnotes:

[Jean Baudrillard died on March 6, 2007.]

(Previous guest-blogs: artist Danny Zabbal, artist Irina Troitskaya, artist Eleanor Meredith, artist Keith Greiman, artist Matthew Feyld, The Weakerthans, Parenthetical Girls, artist Daria Tessler, Clem Snide, Marcello Carlin, Beirut, Jonathan Lethem, Will Butler (Arcade Fire), Al Kratina, Eugene Mirman, artist Dave Bailey, Agent Simple, artist Keith Andrew Shore, Owen Ashworth (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), artist Kit Malo with Alden Penner (The Unicorns) 1 2, artist Rachell Sumpter, artist Katy Horan 1 2, David Barclay (The Diskettes), artist Drew Heffron, Carl Wilson, artist Tim Moore, Michael Nau (Page France), Devin Davis, Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear), Hello Saferide, Damon Krukowski (Damon & Naomi), Brian Michael Roff, Howard Bilerman (producer: Silver Mt. Zion, Arcade Fire, etc.). There are many more to come.)