A reader asked Rod Dreher for his thoughts on a “theology of engagement with rock and rock culture,” prompting these ruminations on the ethics of art:
[W]hen I listen to the Rolling Stones sing in “Sister Morphine” about the desperate haze of drug addiction, I don’t take it as a recommendation to inject morphine, or to introduce myself to “sweet cousin cocaine,” but rather as a darkly potent representation of the power of drug addiction to consume a life — something that Keith Richards knew about. Similarly with the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin.” Neither are moralizing songs; they just describe the experience, and draw a kind of beauty from the bleakness. …
The danger here is that you might also come to sympathize with the sentiment, seduced by aesthetics, and thereby be corrupted. There is no way around this risk, not with real art. It is also possible that genuine art that embodies and communicates the Good could “corrupt” a soul, and lead them toward goodness and light. That’s what the art of the Chartres cathedral did for me. So, when I consider what my “theology” of engaging with rock music might be, or ought to be, I consider that to encounter true art always involves the possibility of conversion, one way or another.
Millman responds by riffing on a 2010 interview Jay-Z did with the Wall Street Journal:
WSJ: What would you change about hip-hop if you could?
Jay-Z: We have to find our way back to true emotion. This is going to sound so sappy, but love is the only thing that stands the test of time. “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill ” was all about love. Andre 3000, “The Love Below.” Even NWA, at its core, that was about love for a neighborhood.
We’re chasing a lot of sounds now, but I’m not hearing anyone’s real voice. The emotion of where you are in your life.
“The emotion of where you are in your life” – that isn’t always love, and may not always stand the test of time, but it’s something we, as a species, are not very good at living in. If great art enables us to do that, connecting us more deeply to ourselves by connecting us to somebody else who has connected deeply to him- or herself, then I’m for it. And if we can’t make moral sense of that experience, well, sometimes it’s hard to make moral sense of life. But we can’t escape that problem by not living.
The Dish 