What I was glad of in Matías Rodríguez Mouriño’s lecture, Post Desire: On Sound, Ruin & Masculinity, was the opening acknowledgment of the vulnerable place the world is in. We’ve all known this for years and years, particularly in reference to climate collapse, but in the wake of Trump’s recent reelection, lethal flooding in Valencia, and ongoing genocides, things look bleak. It’s been uncomfortable pretending art is all when people are truly suffering and dying horribly. Indulgent, privileged self-discovery feels a little nauseating and dispensable as of late. As does weirdo avant-garde academic conceptual art. Anyway.
Mouriño was expressly interested in the ruined piano as a fulcrum of an intersectional study of acoustic ecology. Playing a piano ruined by the non-human processes of time and weather removes the player’s improvisational comfort, engendering truly unpredictable playing by removing “go-to musical language”. He cited a Ross, an octogenarian Australian pianist, and played a recording of his playing the ruined piano. The playing itself was somewhat underwhelming, as a piece itself, but I loved its textural possibilities. I think the ontological study itself was primarily the conceptual focus in this case. What struck me most, however, was Ross’ laboured breathing poignantly dominating the recording.
In all honesty, this lecture was highly cerebral and made complete sense in the moment as Mouriño assuredly flowed from point to point, but trying to reconstitute it now, it’s falling apart in my hands. The key hinging ideas that I want to believe is a part-way acceptable boil-down of his talk, was the nature of human interaction or intervention with non-human processes, and the ontology of listening.
He soundly conveyed his belief in the wrongness of reducing ideas down to a single word or phrase, the violent, inhumane notion of assigned meaning, which I have always strongly agreed with.
Similarly, I am interested too in the strange hinterland in the human/non-human interaction; less in terms of datasets and how many Lactobacilli are on the piano, but in a woollier, more ill-defined mystic fog way. Human knowledge is insignificant and will never catch up with the vastness out there, despite our arrogant assertions. Tiny things connected to big things. I also deeply resonated with how he drew a circular comparison between the (literally) visceral animal beginnings of the piano, made from gut and ivory, and the returned state of the ruined piano.
Listening alleviates barriers, cultivates stronger ways of loving each other, as he put it. Thinking about it now, I believe this epistemological view of listening is how we ended up on the odd, misandrist patch of the talk; to Mouriño, the male’s historically-inherited, belief in autonomous thought closes him off, makes him refuse to listen.
In my own life, as a cishet, white, working class man from the economically advantaged rural south east of England, my privilege is deeply ingrained and undeniable. It’s safe and reasonable to lay the blame for the world’s horrors at men’s feet, I would and do.
Mouriño, who made it clear he too was a cis man, outright stated that certain masculine traits should be destroyed and were “nothing good”. I feel sensitively about that, in an unresolved way I haven’t fully squared yet, and I hesitate to voice the slight thorniness I feel about this because of the dog whistles associated with it. I thought it exceedingly interesting when a masters student questioned what other posited alternatives to toxic masculinity were, beside simply examples of perceived feminine or LGBTQ+ traits. Mouriño deftly parried by stating he could only relay his personal experiences. True, but too easy, given how he derided the masculine and upraised the feminine in so binary a fashion throughout his lecture. In many liberal arts circles’ discussion of masculine issues, this oscillation between distain, sympathetic infantilisation, and disparagement I find can contain the potential for unnuanced toxicity in and of itself.
I think it relates to my construction experience, and again to how these spheres of human experience don’t quite touch. Years of my life have been spent around complex, problematic, very vulnerable men. I have seen some toe-curling racism espoused, homophobia, embarrassing machismo and outright aggression. There’s no end to the bullying, hazing, self-destruction in the working class world. I would like to state that while I don’t participate, I understand how that mind works.
Mouriño said, “masculinity is an improvisation through vulnerability”, which was a succinct and genius sum-up of how I see the cis male experience, and sometimes the experiences I encounter. I carry my masculinity gently like a tool, and I think a lot of physically labouring men do the same. It’s a mask necessary for survival. The uncomfortable reality outside this professorial field, is that survival of fittest still rules.
When pressed to expand on what male behaviours he would eliminate, decrying as evil and destructive, Mouriño only really referenced men “revving their motorcycles” and “shouting outside pubs”. You can scan the headline news to find a few choice examples of masculine, suicidal, genocidal endeavours. I don’t know about you, but I can live with lad culture.
He ended his lecture on the notion of love. Listening cultivates stronger ways of loving, and men need to talk about love. How do I talk about love? I don’t in this context much at all. I often sit down to write and this thorny, belligerent voice I pretend not to know sneaks onto the page. Where does love come in? In Mouriño’s spirit, I give up a self-interested list:
- I love my family
- I love my home
- I love my fiancé, ㅎ
- I love making art
- I love excessively long walks, taking all day alone
- I love those garbage, watery Saint-Bertin lagers from Lidl (I have brain damage)
- I love airports (complicatedly)
- I love that sound frozen lakes make when you bounce rocks off them
- I love not speaking for a while after long phone calls
- I love doing household chores in solitude
- I love my dog
- I love when birch seeds float in the open window in late spring and get everywhere
- I love the shrimp from Cozy, this one inauthentic Mexican restaurant in Busan, Korea
- I love showing love, however private
- I love scaring myself with dark imaginings in unfamiliar forests at night
- I love geese, all kinds
I’m not sure why this lecture provoked so much writing, but I’m grateful for the stimulation.