The Preamble
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned (only on X/Twitter I think) coming across a Nietzsche scholar – Keegan Kjeldsen – who was clearly also a Pirsig scholar, and who happened to be a rock’n’roller in a doom-metal band, from Austin TX. “What’s not to like?” I opined at the time.
X/Tweet 23rd July 2024– Keegan Kjeldsen @untimelysalts is a scholar of Nietzsche and an ex-Doom-Metal rock’n’roller from Austin TX who also highly recommends and provides a fine analysis of Robert Pirsig’s work. What’s not to like?
His recent excellent Pirsig analysis is here on his YouTube Podcast: youtube.com/watch?v=vWSYrq He was blogging since the 2010’s on Blogspot: untimely-reflections.blogspot.com/p/kjlk.html His ongoing Patreon Nietzsche channel (with links to other channels) is here: patreon.com/untimelyreflec And his autobiographical book “THE RITUAL MADNESS OF ROCK & ROLL: AN INQUIRY INTO AESTHETICS” is published here: blackrosewriting.com/biographymemoi #ZMM #Lila #Pirsig #RobertPirsigAssociation robertpirsig.org
X/Tweet 6th August 2024 – Mentioned coming across Keegan Kjeldsen @untimelysalts a couple of weeks ago. I’ve since acquired & read and now about to blog a “review” of his book. It’s very good. Recommended whether you’re a scholarly philosopher who appreciates Pirsig’s work, or anyone who finds lived quality in the visceral immediacy of rock’n’roll. I’m both 🙂 @ZmmQuality @aqualityexiste1 @_artun @goodisanoun
Robert Pirsig’s work on Quality primarily comprises two books, most famously Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM) – 50th anniversary in 2024 – and his follow-up on his Metaphysics of Quality in Lila. One of my main takeaways from Pirsig’s Quality (metaphysical and dynamic) has been that the scholarly considerations must be punctuated – interact dynamically – with the lived experience of embodied quality. If you only have the bandwidth for one, choose the latter over the former. For me personally, as well as the general moral imperative to always pay attention to the world as experienced, more so than the experience of (say) explicit meditative or mindful practices, such attention for me has two outlets. Communing directly in nature on the one hand, and on the other immersion in the visceral experiences of rock’n’roll and/or the poetry of the bards who write their songs. I’ve mentioned and written about all three aspects many time before. Not to mention my experiences of Texas and Austin, but that would be a digression too far.
Slightly less of a digression, the moral imperative is the attention to – the physical immersion in – the experience. Pet hates for me are people who talk with their mates at the tops of their voices or “watch” the performance through their cell-phone cameras, whilst performers perform their art.
The Review
The Ritual Madness of Rock and Roll
– An Inquiry into Aesthetics
Keegan Kjeldsen (Black Rose Writing, Texas, 2024)
The structure of the book is very much that of Pirsig’s work in both ZMM and Lila. The narrative of a road trip (or boat trip in the case of Lila) including some background memoir of the narrator’s life and relationships before the real-time narrative, explicitly interspersed with what Pirsig called chautauquas – little technical “edutainment” essays – on the philosophical topic of aesthetics in Kjeldsen’s case – “An Inquiry into Aesthetics” being his subtitle. A neat twist is the sequential chapters based on the daily legs of the two-week trip, but with sections that intersect the chautauquas as they change topics within any given chapter.
Within that structure it is a story well told. Some metaphorical parallel between the narrative around the geography of the trip and the current state of his philosophical thesis, though not as obvious as in the case of Pirsig’s ZMM. But, possibly more importantly for the reader, the explicit breaking up of the drier technical thesis into bite-sized portions, with the concentration refreshed by the what-happens-next anticipation of the next instalment of the biographical road trip narrative. The trip being his band on the road on a tour of smaller Italian, French and German cities.
Most of the rock’n’roll tour is described in mundane practical terms. The drudge of daily travel in the van, shared with a second band, cramped and sleepless, and all the people relationships that entails. Meals and ablutions. The loading out and in of the van, the venues, the overnight stops and the airports at either end. Very little sensational sex and drugs and … which put me in mind of Tommy Womack’s excellent band-on-the-road memoir “Cheese Chronicles” prompted by Kjeldsen’s mention of the actual cheeses experienced in the assorted European locations. Also very little description of the artistic content of the actual gigs, not the kind of experience that benefits from being put into words, but some, just enough. The Brie Chronicles maybe?
Philosophical analysis of art and the value of artistic content is the primary topic however. Aesthetics in the widest evolving sense, from pre-linguistic communities via Plato’s Republic and the Socratic dialogues to the endless footnotes to Plato we know and … er … love today.
Lots of touch points with Pirsig – eg the whole “rt” root of both art and craft, without needing to go further east than the Vedantic “rta”. Whilst ZMM and Quality (capital Q) are explicitly referenced in a long passage in Chapter 10 – “Dresden”, within which we morph into Section VII – “Chemistry of Concepts and Feelings”, his focus is in fact on the elaborations of the Metaphysics of Quality in Pirsig’s second book Lila.
The aesthetic continuum, Pirsig’s reading of Northrop, within which the quality events occur, including the ones we’d think of as subjective. His use of the old-fashioned word gumption as Pirsig did. A whole chapter on Dresden with no mention of Vonnegut? And earlier describing the traffic jams in 2019 Genoa without mention of the 2018 bridge collapse over Genoa? Tragedy! (*below)
Missed a Nietzschean trick there?
The timeline is interesting for me. This is a 2024 memoir about a 2019 trip by a narrator who, 30 in 2019, was born in 1989? Younger than both our sons and almost exactly 50 years after Pirsig’s timeline. So we have Debit Cards, ATM’s, 4G Cell phones and GoogleMaps – exchanging calls and texts with his wife back home in Austin. And yet, can’t fail to evoke Pirsig’s 1960’s/70’s intellectual journey. A ZMM for our times?
But lots of Kjeldsen’s own telling to appreciate beyond Pirsig. Little references to US vs European cultural differences, the shorter history. The strip malls that get “built” vs rows of shops that “evolved”. Not surprisingly, returning regularly to Nietzsche’s takes on all that had gone before. Felt like a good reading of Nietzsche to me. References to Usener, Cassirer and Hippel all new to me. Positive use of Wittgenstein, the kind I approve, and Tolstoy over Plato’s Socrates. The latter’s fine analysis of what makes for art – its irrationality – but ultimately censoring its actual human value, so that today Socrates, the hero of 21st C rational scepticism, has come to dominate and divorce aesthetic value from rational science. Pirsig’s “church of reason”. And yet, the original positive take on censorship in preserving cultural values – moderation I say.
It’s the same problem still afflicting humanity at increasing pace and severity, but reassuring that newer writing – Kjeldsen’s – is finding the same diagnosis.
“[T]he more deeply you get to know [something] the less needs to be expressed in terms of language. And so it is a communication which is non-conceptual. The deepest communication is [verbally] silent communication. The deepest love is silent love.”
The most fundamental Quality is ineffable.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao.
Freedom of expression is fine, but sometimes we need less of it.
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[Original link above to sourcing Kjeldsen’s book from the publisher Black Rose Writing, as I did, but you’ll now find it on Amazon including Kindle and more.]
[(*) Another musical meme? In the same way I use Aretha Franklin’s voice in R.E.S.P.E.C.T to make good faith in dialogue stick, “Tragedy!” hopefully can’t fail to conjure up those falsetto voices of the Bee Gees.]
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