#howard becker

“La cuestión de hasta dónde está dispuesto a llegar un grupo que intenta imponer sus reglas sobre otros grupos de la sociedad nos plantea un problema diferente: ¿quién puede, de hecho, obligar a unos a aceptar sus reglas y cuáles serían las razones de su éxito? Ésta es, por supuesto, una cuestión de poder político y económico. [...] Por el mornento alcanza con decir que, en los hechos, la gente está todo el tiempo imponiendo sus reglas sobre los otros, aplicándolas sin mayor consentimiento y en contra de la voluntad de la otra parte. En gran medida, por ejemplo, las reglas para los jovenes son formuladas por sus mayores. Si bien los jóvenes de este país ejercen una enorme influencia cultural —los medios masivos de comunicación están hechos a la medida de sus intereses—, muchos tipos de reglas que se aplican a los jóvenes están hechas por los adultos. [...] Esto es visto como algo legítimo, ya que se considera que los jóvenes no tienen ni la sabiduría ni la responsabilidad suficiente para instituir sus propias reglas.

Becker also points out that any social group, insider or outsider, ends by divorcing itself from the group it’s supposed to be serving. “Everyone has an ideal student or audience in mind, and we never get them,” he points out. This makes teachers impatient with students, and jazz musicians suspicious of audiences. Jazz musicians smoked weed to get high, but one of the effects was to set them off from the night-club-going customers they despised. “This insight looks original only now,” Becker says. “If you were playing, that was all you heard: ‘Fucking squares, now look what they want!’ I remember learning to leave the stand quickly, before any one could ask me to play ‘Melancholy Baby.’ That was the stuff of every minute of what you were doing.” He adds, “The originality—I shouldn’t even call it that—was to pay attention to it as something worth talking about.”

In his classic Art Worlds, sociologist Howard Becker shows how many roles are implicated in the creation of art, ranging from the person considered the artist to those who make the paintbrushes to those who curate collections. His point was that the idea of “artist” as a lone genius is absurd. One cannot create 'art' without a web of interconnected people, each serving an essential role that makes it possible and shapes its meanings. Now, as has happened before, upended by technological change, previously distinct roles in musical art worlds have broken down. Artists can, at least in the abstract, fulfill any role themselves. But to do it all, let alone do it all well, pushes the boundaries of human capabilities.

I almost bought a Howard Becker's book about how to smoke weed and have a good "trip" while doing it

The Swiss playwright Max Finch, in his play, ‘Biography: A Game,’ embodied this thought in an interesting dramatic situation. A mysterious stranger (”The Recorder”) appears to the main character, Hannes Kürmann, one day, offering him the opportunity to go back over his life, the details of which are available to him through a computer terminal and operator located stage right throughout the action, and change anything he likes. The hero relives a number of crucial moments in his life. The play begins with him trying to change the episode of the party at which he first meets, and eventually sleeps with Antionette Stein, who, as he knows, he will marry and finally kill. When the taxi driver who was called to take her home from the party rings the bell, they both ignore it. Now, looking back, he wants, instead of getting involved with her, to send her away politely, but finds that he cannot change his actions--his character apparently does not have the will to do it--in such a way as to change the eventual outcome. Finally, when the Recorder asks if he wants to change the murder itself, they have this exchange:

“En medio del océano hay un lugar especial, que es la Puerta del Dragón. Tiene una propiedad maravillosa: cualquier pez que la atraviese se transforma inmediatamente en dragón. Sin embargo, la puerta no tiene un aspecto diferente a la de cualquier parte del océano. De modo que es imposible encontrarla buscándola. La única manera de saber dónde está es advertir que los peces que la cruzan se transforman en dragones. No obstante, cuando un pez la cruza y se transforma en dragón, no cambia de aspecto. Parece exactamente el mismo pez que era antes. Entonces, no podemos saber dónde está la Puerta del Dragón observando atentamente hasta encontrar el lugar donde ocurre el cambio. Además, cuando los peces cruzan la Puerta del Dragón y se transforman en dragones, no se sienten diferentes y, por lo tanto, no saben que se han convertido en dragones. Simplemente son dragones a partir de entonces.” Usted también podría ser un dragón.