Let me try again. I'm talking about the way that a piece of art has its own built-in philosophy. Just as, with Marxism, for example, you can guess what its attitude is going to be to any given thing, and the terms it is likely to define it in, I feel that pieces of art have a built-in attitude to the rest of the world.
So you could take "Hit me baby one more time" and ask what its attitude is to the upcoming US elections, for example. In a large number of cases, the answer might be that the piece of art is entirely indifferent to such matters. But I'm talking about the attitudes and world views conveyed by a piece of art (particularly music) which it never directly tried to convey, but are there in such a way that even the artist might not have been aware of them.
Which all stems from my belief that every piece of art is a meta-narrative, or rather that an element of meta-narrative is a criterion for describing something as 'art' in broader terms than just working with paintbrushes.
A philosophy like Marxism is explicit, but art is never required to explain itself explicitly in this way, nevertheless I believe art has the same characteristic of giving a particular overview of the world.
So I'm asking what the themes of a piece of art are in the way that the themes of Marxism are revolution, the means of production, indoctrination etc. [May or not be accurate, please take as example]. But in the sense of its pre-occupations rather than its specific beliefs. So rather than saying that Marxism says there will be a revolution, you might say that Marxism is pre-occupied with the structure of society, for example [see above disclaimer].
Similarly, a piece of music might be pre-occupied with time, choice, change etc. You don't have to draw a picture of someone standing at a crossroads to have a pre-occupation with choice, and you don't need to show a picture of a clock to convey a pre-occupation with time. These things are built in at a level too deep to be articulated in that way. And these themes have to be very broad and meaningful. A piece of music could not have a subtle meta-theme about cheese. It's not possible to have an underlying pre-occupation with cheese, but only to think about it consciously. So meta-themes, or whatever they ought to be called, have to be grand concepts, by definition.
The 'macro' thing is definitely an element of it. I'll have to get back to you on the Wittgenstein bit.
Nrvous - yes, 'fabriation' is a common word. It means 'petty-minded point-scoring'. I'm surprised you've never come across it before. |
But I'll try and help you out...