so. on this website i've chosen to focus on the discussion of music, as it is my art medium of choice and the one i'm the most well versed in, but this piece is more so about a phenomenon i've observed in art itself, across all its media.
let's be honest, i'm a pretty lenient guy. i believe pretty much anything has the capacity to be or to become a masterpiece. it's like mr. ratatouille said, "not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere"
and i took that and ran, i wholeheartedly believe that sentiment. but conversely, i think it takes more than just a masterpiece to really reach the pinnacle of artistic expression. yes, i believe there is an echelon above the title of masterpiece. there's a video on the 2019 videogame outer wilds called "a campfire at the end of the universe" by the youtube channel thane bishop which brilliantly points out:
"i'm not sure if i've ever seen a game be so revered by its community as outer wilds. the game is currently sitting at a 95% positive review over all time on steam, and that alone is a pretty big thing when you think about it! elden ring and its new dlc are sitting at 92% and 71% respectively. and for all of my love of cyberpunk 2077 it has certainly earned that all-time rating of 83%. the only game i've really known that beats out outer wilds in the review category is stardew valley with a hefty 98%. but there's still a difference in that "reverence" vibe. stardew valley is a comfort game. it is a game to relax with. it is a game to get sucked into on a long holiday weekend when work was too much that week. outer wilds changed people. people like stardew valley. people like elden ring. but people revere outer wilds"
i will not be talking about outer wilds very much in this article. not because "this article isn't about that" or whatever, this article is about whatever i say it is. however, outer wilds is not just "a game best experienced blind", a sentiment you might have heard about the likes of undertale and such. no, this game's entire POINT is to be experienced blind, because learning about it is its entire selling point, and the very thing that makes it click as a work of art. that video i just mentioned is something i forbid you from watching if you haven't played outer wilds, and subsequently order you to go buy it (or pirate it, i'm not judging. but if you have the money, it really does deserve to be bought) and play through the whole thing immediately.
what little i will say about it, is that i agree with this sentiment. outer wilds is, unequivocally, undeniably, one step beyond a masterpiece. i already had a couple of works in my mental library that i considered to also be "one step beyond a masterpiece", whatever that means, which for the longest time, and mostly out of obsessive tradition keeping, i placed slightly above everything else in my personal podium. but when i finally got around to playing outer wilds for the first time, i was sure about it: not every work i consider to be a masterpiece is quite the same as this. this goes even further beyond.
so, to stop fucking around and just get to the damn point already: what the fuck really defines a magnum opus, as i've come to call this category of art piece? well. i'm glad i asked.
it's... really wishy washy honestly. earthshattering. lifechanging. life-affirming. mind-altering, melting, warping or boggling. larger-than-life. transcendental. it's mostly just a feeling, which will of course be subjective from person to person, but the way i see it, there's some pieces of art that touch on themes of transcendence, the human experience, philosophy, that really question the hard hitting topics, like religion, morality, prejudice, what it really means to be human, works that were pulled directly out of an artists soul to draw you into a certain feeling of "ascension". i find them to be the sort of art piece that gives me full body chills, makes me cry, gets me to see the entirety of life in a different light after i'm finished consuming it. but most importantly, it gets you to see it for yourself. art does not need to be perfect, but it does need to get there.
say what you will about the movie interstellar. sure, it has some corny lines in there. i won't deny that. but leaving aside its flaws, when it does indeed get there, it touches on themes that genuinely blow my mind. correlating the indomitable human spirit and whatnot with the literal exploration of space out of sheer survival, because it's all we have left, guided by love the entire way, which appears to be so miraculous to the characters they even theorize it to be a fourth dimension of sorts, which could be measured empirically. transcending the human body to become one with the stars. you can think it's corny if you want. i think turning the "the real magic was love all along" cliché into asking if love could literally be a higher physical dimension, as a metaphor for love being the one thing that guides us to strive for better things, better worlds, a better life for the little ones coming after us, is something mind-blowing that i would have never thought up.
take a movie i don't need to fight for my fucking life like i'm in the trenches of world war ii to speak in favor of: i haven't heard a single person in my life say something negative about don hertzfeldt's "it's such a beautiful day". it fits exactly into this narrative of "people like 12 angry men. people like the godfather. but people revere it's such a beautiful day". it's not simply a perfect movie, although it is also that. it is a perfect movie that touches on what exactly it is that drives us all to do the things that we do, what we get to see, and what we're leaving behind. it's stylistically exaggerated to convey a specific vibe and emotion masterfully, it's got an ending that will see you levitating out of your chair, walking outside after it's over, just to look at the leaves and marvel at the greatness of it all in motion and shit. it's not simply very good. it's above greatness. it's a magnum opus. it transcends the medium of film, to be crowned in the grand pantheon of masterworks in the history of human art. the art that speaks out into the void, of what we are as a species. what we represent, or once represented. what we felt, where we were, where we may be going.
which is why i felt so frustrated the first time i looked at the rateyourmusic charts. a supposedly semi-objective record of the greatest human works of music in history, and the absolute greatest album you could think of, ever, is fucking (at the time i first saw the charts) radiohead? ok computer? half the people who think of it as their favorite album are just calling it the second coming of dark side of the moon?!?!?! just give the crown to dark side of the moon and go?!?!?! which i consider to be a much better and (topically) more transcendent album which i would not fault anyone for considering the greatest of all time?!?!?!
of course, i no longer feel that strongly about it. nowadays the number one album is kendrick lamar's to pimp a butterfly which, while i don't consider it a magnum opus, is absolutely a masterpiece and wouldn't fault anyone for putting it above even that. even if it wasn't, it's really not that important. there is nothing objective about any ranking of art, ever, because the medium of art defies simple classification like that. however, if it were up to me, here are some works of art i would rank highest above all others, since i think of them as some of the grandest expressions of human emotion and reaching the transcendence of the flesh to become one with universal energy itself yes that good:
- toby fox - undertale (videogame)
- mobius digital - outer wilds (videogame)
- hideaki anno - evangelion, end of evangelion (anime, movie)
- fishmans - 98.12.28 otokotachi no wakare (music)
- don hertzfeldt - it's such a beautiful day (movie)
- porter robinson - nurture (music)
- parannoul - after the night (music)
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - le petit prince (book)
- za/um - disco elysium (videogame)
- christopher nolan - interstellar (movie)
- godspeed you! black emperor - lift yr skinny fists like antennas to heaven! (music)
- hermann hesse - siddhartha (book)
i would be remiss to yap about transcendent media in the music section of my website and not to mention what i consider to be the greatest album ever made: 98.12.28 otokotachi no wakare (meaning something like men's farewell/a farewell to mans?), the last goodbye of the japanese dub band fishmans, containing also what i consider to be the greatest song ever made, the live rendition of their (hilariously creatively named) studio album "long season", itself an extended version of a previous one of their singles by the name of "season".
i have a thing for live music. i have a thing for final albums. i definitely have a thing for final live albums. there's just something about getting the band back together for one great, big, last concert that seems to wring out the rawest emotion from artists who could be fighting for their lives at the edge of their careers' ends. many of the best albums ever made are last live concerts.
the album itself is fine. ok no, it's not fine. it's fucking fantastic. it features songs from all across the fishmans catalog and improves upon all of them, massively. even some of their best songs get fully revamped and overhauled, the quality of the sound is straight up amazing for an album recorded live in the 90s by a band that couldn't have had more than a couple thousand fans, the lyrics are heartfelt, the music is unbelievable, the vibe is impeccable, and i love this band so much that seeing them play all together one last time like this is a completely comforting experience for me. but the second disc is where the real show starts. oh ho ho, when the last chord of "melody" hits, and a cold wind rushes upwards, flinging you at incalculable speeds out into the stratosphere, that's when you know you're in for something showstopping.
16 minute long epic yurameki in the air is a great track. fantastic, otherworldly experience that will indeed find you shimmering in the air, as the name implies, disintegrating and blowing away into the breeze with the music itself, melting into it, one of the best songs ever in its own regard. but it's after ikkareta baby, their most well known song at the time and a fan favorite, that you get what you came here for.
i've noticed that some albums feature a sort of "victory lap" or "encore" celebratory song after its emotional climax, to sort of lighten the mood and allowing you to take a breather to ease you back into the real world before the album is over, like compton in good kid m.a.a.d. city. well, not this one. ikaretta baby subverts that concept, coming after what you think is going to be the emotional climax of the album in yurameki in the air, making the attendants think the concert is going to end soon. little did they know, the show still had over forty minutes to go, and what they were about to witness was what is, in my opinion, the greatest human work of music ever put to tape. long season, live.
i really don't look forward to writing about this at all, honestly. it's a monumental task. there is zero way to describe in words the feeling of listening to the live rendition of long season. it's an absolutely colossal mammoth of a track. it's kind of cheating in a way, but not really, because long season was always meant to be one song, just really fucking long. it's longer than most swans tracks, longer than many albums. it deservingly clocks in at a whopping 41½ minutes long, and it does not waste a fucking second of them. one second shorter, and the whole thing falls apart. one second longer, and it would drag too long. with exactly 41½ minutes, they managed to make it feel like 10 at most.
suffice it to say, get ready for the last 10 minutes or so because it's going to make you cum at blistering speeds. you will never want sex again after discovering this album. the last time i heard it i arched my back so hard i thought i was gonna snap in half, and i had to take a walk outside just to admire how incredible life is. i do not cry to music very often, and i almost never cry to the sound of music itself when it's unconnected to any strong emotional lyricism or anything like that, just the raw auditory waveform. this is one of the few songs that i can consistently cry to, made up of almost nothing but notes and chords.
it's split up into sections, which feel like entire eras of human history. i could describe what each of them sound like, but not only is that not fun at all, it's really not that important. it was never about the sound. it was always about what shapes the sound into what it does become. the gargantuan force uniting these people together to sing and play for you, whenever you need to hear it, making the ground beneath you vibrate, convincing the very beat of your heart to struggle for breath rushing up to synchronize with it.
they weren't going to break up at first. this was never meant to be their last album. it was just meant as a goodbye to their bassist, who had been there from the beginning, and was now leaving the band. but, as fate had it, main vocalist and frontman shinji sato passed away only a few months after the concert. he had to take oxygen sprays in between breaths during this very show. he had been dealing with respiratory issues for some time, until he finally shimmered away into the air, to join the beautiful music he conjured. i don't know if this is a sensitive question but i must ask. did he know this would be his last? did he know he had to give it his all, now or never?
hearted track(s!!!): yurameki in the air, long season
mostly arbitrary qualitative tier assesment (M.A.Q.T.A.): 100/100 (magnum opus)
