Craig Schuftan: Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone (click through for the whole 55-minute program)
Who knew Lord Byron had something in common with My Chemical Romance? Armed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of pop culture, Craig Schuftan traces the history of romanticism in rock and roll, drawing comparisons between 19th century poetic giants and the heroes of indie, glam and emo music.
In this talk with Zan Rowe, Schuftan explores the links between music, philosophy and literature and why nobody wants to own up to being emo.
This is an interesting intro to romanticism for you music lovers. However, Schuftan lumps all romanticism into one kind, saying he can relate but wouldn’t want to live by it. This guy wrote an entire book on the subject and failed to realize there are two kinds of romanticism. One is dominated by ego; the other, by dreams.
He says romanticism and classicism are opposites. It’s true, egoic romanticism and classicism are opposites. For an egoless romantic, on the other hand, classicism is the path of transcendence. I started out as an egoic romantic. Eventually I saw what I was and the shear absurdity of it all, and decided that I was going to apply my romanticism to transcending the very limits of myself. To do that, it only made sense to do the exact opposite — classicism.
That is transcendence in a nutshell. Holding two contradictory ideas in your head at once, and living by them both simultaneously. This is the way of the true romantic.
By Schuftan’s definition of classicism, you admit that you love something even more than yourself, and you use any means necessary to give yourself to it. And that is what being a romantic is all about.
