Notes From The Pop Underground: Part II (Michael Peppe)
This is the second part to a post I did in May: Notes From The Pop Underground: Part I. Here's another summary of an interview in Peter Belsito's book about underground artists.
Michael Peppe
I can barely find anything on the internet about Michael Peppe today, but I did find that up until 2005, he was still doing his thing. Back in the 80's, Peppe began a unique kind of experimental performance art based on the ideas that "all human behavior is musically composable" and that "our definition of music is merely a cultural definition." He calls it "Behaviormusik," and it consists of words in foreign languages, poetry, prayers, impressions, comedy, dialects, movie cliches, facial expressions, gestures, dance, chants, jazz, rock, pop, hymns, TV themes, "facemusik" (mouth noises, like whistling and nonsense babbling), and whatever else he throws into the mix. Behaviormusik has no overall meaning or theme, but is "tied together in a stream-of-consciousness" and "constructed in a way so that it reaches certain musical, theatrical, choreographic, and poetic climaxes."
Unlike film, a poetry reading, or opera, Peppe doesn't attempt to force an emotional response or point of view onto his audience. Each individual's reaction should be a purely subjective experience. He was obviously influenced by the Absurdist art movement. "No matter how abstract you make something, no matter how random you make it appear, people will always get meaning out of it." If you've ever seen Waiting for Godot, you have a good idea of what Absurdist art is about. Absurdists will do just about anything and call it art, and if you don't understand it, it's because it's purposefully meant to be meaningless, which makes it absurd...and that's the point.
I just listened to one of Peppe's performances. At first, I found it amusing and thought absurd was a good description of it. Then I started finding it interesting...but not really in a good way. If you try to listen to it like it's music instead of spoken word, you kind of get a feel for what he's trying to do. You have to find the rhythm. But, after awhile, I had to turn it off because it got annoying. It sounds like he's improvising, but he has it rehearsed down to the tiniest detail. He even created a system of notation for his motions and expressions, which is similar to the way music is scored.
Here's a Real audio file of Michael Peppe from May 2005. The first 6 minutes is just setting up, so fast-foward through that. In case you don't get enough Michael Peppe from the first link, here's another one with more of his stuff.
When the interview turned to his ideas about nuclear war, the discussion got much more interesting. These comments were made during the 80's when the cold war was still taking place:
"People don't want to face the ugly, unpleasant truth that there is not going to be a nuclear war! And the reason that the culture is collectively dreaming of this nuclear war scenario is because, consciously or unconsciously, there is a moralistic kind of death-wish in culture."
"...they feel the culture is evil, that the people in power are evil-they're polluting the earth, raping the countryside, making various species extinct, building nuclear weapons, creating this unpleasant world. Nobody wants to take responsibility for creating the world themselves, and so there's this feeling that the world deserves to die."
"But the fact of the matter is that the world is too mean and ugly to die. The human race is too tough--we're like cockroaches, we're going to survive no matter what. If there was a nuclear holocaust and everybody had one leg and three arms and half their head blown off, then we would still drag ourselves through the rubble and smoke and survive."
"There could be nothing better for the Russian government than to have the American government acting belligerent and rattling the sword, and building up arms and making a lot of noise like they are going to start a war. And there's nothing better for the American government than if the Russians do the same, because both sides are interested in the same thing. They're interested in creating an atmosphere of terror for their own populations so that they can be seen as protectors."
"...In the case of Reagan, he can say to the American people, 'You people are in dire danger. There's this big Russian bear...and he's going to destroy you if he gets half a chance, and the only person who can protect you is me, 'cause I'm tough, and big, and I'm a cowboy, and I talk about nuclear weapons, and I build up the military'..."
Even though I can't get into Micheal Peppe's art, I still like the idea that he threw away the rule book. He does something completely original and outside the limits of what defines art. He believes that an artist can only create for himself--not for others, or else it ceases to be art. That's a refreshing view compared to what defines art today. It seems like there's no difference between art and fashion anymore. Art itself has become trendy. People are more concerned about becoming the next fashionable artist, then they are about the concept of pure, raw self-expression; regardless of what critics think.
