I, too, went to the experimental music concert Rob Cohen commented on in the last Argus. (Wespeak, April 30) I agree completely with Cohen’s assessment of the first composition. It was self-indulgent and lacked aesthetic sense. After the first five minutes of dropping marbles, I wondered whether it was actually a behavioral psychology experiment being performed on the audience. Several long minutes later, the piece mercifully ended. I did not applaud.
Next was the piece in which Cohen participated. The “Whistling” piece was, if anything, more insulting than its predecessor, if only because the performers seemed to think they were more entertaining. I would like to say that they were not. What Cohen reports was a “dynamic and responsive sonic environment” for the performers was simply noise to me. No order emerged from this artistic insult. Mercifully, this piece, too, came to an end. I did not applaud. (You can ask Matthew J. Roe—he’ll tell you, it’s true.) It is worth commenting that my time was not wasted by the rest of the show. The piece was based on five online journal entries, performed with more than enough energy and talent to engage the audience, was just shy of brilliant. (The sublimely angry interjections of “insert smiley face” nicely captured the violence to the English language done by the lexical poison of instant messenger sloppiness.)
So there were two poor performances at the beginning. Rob Cohen fears that some may think him to be “one hell of a hypocrite.” Well, alright, I do. So be it. None of this would have prompted me to write a Wespeak.
What bothers me is the poor quality of the arguments advanced in Cohen’s Wespeak and dozens of others recently. How could Rob Cohen think that indulgently clapping for some artsy kid’s misguided efforts in a piece of experimental music has anything to do with the rise of the Third Reich? Just a difference in scale you say? What garbage. Cohen lionizes himself for speaking up “about an issue that troubles him,” chastising those people doggedly resolved to be different in the same way, certainly a group that deserves to be questioned. Unfortunately, by deciding that using profanity, vulgar references, and truly hyperbolic (not to mention simply fallacious) reasoning to make his point, Cohen joins the growing mass of Wesleyan students who submit poorly reasoned, poorly written, poorly rendered Wespeaks, and no doubt pat their own backs for it, too. I would like to briefly address a few.
First, there was Lodro Rinzler’s attack of Ghostface Killah, which indicated a complete ignorance of Ironman’s rapping skills. Ghostface may not be on top of the rap world right now, but calling him names doesn’t change the fact that anyone who wrote, “For cryin’ out loud I’m wild so book me,/ Not long is how long that this rhyme took me” (“Protect Ya Neck”), clearly will bring the ruckus. Then there are the chalking Wespeaks, the main attraction for connoisseurs of dirty words. I must admit, if viewed with a proper sense of irony, most of this “dialogue” is rendered wonderfully humorous. But what about all of these people serious enough to sully their good names? Zach Goldstein, I know not who you are, but you have successfully achieved a dubious infamy. Martin Benjamin’s letter was generous to label your Wespeak “barely coherent.”
Let me get to my point. Yes, we are in college. Yes, we live in a country with free speech. Yes, by all accounts everyone enjoys a fiery, invective Wespeak from time to time. But the lack of simple manners in many recent Wespeaks shows one of two things: poor breeding or poor taste. Cursing the target of your Wespeak, insulting their character, or comparing them to Hitler only serves to expose the weakness of your arguments and the shortcomings of your intellect. What grieves me most is that if someone who knew absolutely nothing about Wesleyan were to judge our university by our recent papers, they would think we were, by and large, a bunch of insolent, angry children. They would see little evidence of erudition or learning, qualities that I hope that at least a large part of our school is cultivating. Wesleyan has a reputation of being leftist, political, and intellectual. I frankly care nothing for the first two (although again, I must admit that all you leftists and politicals do often amuse me). But what has happened, in the paper that we all should admit we read, to the third?
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