No Shit Nothing: Jack White and Nihilism, on Record Store Day

Sometimes the world makes you sick. Record, what is a record. A music disk, then being the best or most or least at, then the act or thing of taking something down into some kind of writing. So this article is the third of the second of the first. Record, the word has resonances of Recall. These are quintuple memories, for hau(ghts)ntological nostalgia act Jack White to make an artifact, for record books themselves unread, and for the dead-form music charts newspaper. Record, also has resonances of wreck. Because that’s all Jack White has gotten done here.

Look at Records in the second and third senses. Measurement of best, okay, the taking something down into writing, okay, but these aren’t different words, of course. The record book keeps all the mosts and leasts from the other recordings. It is a meta-document to give us the extremes of possibility. If I need information, what is the speediest bird, smallest portrait, etc., I turn to this record.

Only, there is something gone terribly wrong here. The record of records is a deception, because record doesn’t just mean the the existence of a largest or fattest, but the purpose of that record. Think about dates, names, times of a record. If I want to know the speediest bird, I want to know because I want avoid it, to do so I mark the maximum of a natural and general condition. You don’t care what the bird’s christian name was, or when it flew this fast, you need the speed and the species. Opposing this, if I want to know the smallest portrait, I want to know who was so motivated to excel this way, how long has the peak of small portrait technology remained stable, the size of this peak, etc. The record is then a spur to its own creation, or it records its own effect. Put finally the right way: no tiniest painting painter doesn’t know if it’s the tiniest painting, no speedbird ever noticed its name in a book. Either the impetus for the record lies elsewhere, so the measurement is declarative, or the impetus for the record is immanent to the record itself.

Records contain both all the time, so these two notions are poles at the end of a spectrum. Better, this spectrum is sharply pointed in the middle, meaning that anywhere but dead center on the line, if a record leans toward one or the other, it increases that tendency over time. The outward impetus, our speedy bird just noticed a time-sensitive squirrel to eat, is not only extensive but extending, outward focuses pressing further out. It leans toward the aggregation, the community, the whole, macrodisciplines, and the tendency toward the past, pure fact and the quality of measurement. The immanent impetus, our tiny painting and painter, leans toward the one, the individual (with a name), a specific moment or day, microdisciplines, and the tendency toward the future, the invention of new behaviors and the alignment of the world vis a vis the single.

Given these, it is obvious this is the second kind of record. What is the answer’s environment, what am I asking and why? I have a record, how quickly can I get it pressed, I am thinking about the past, how long did things take then. The quickest time from record recording to release, I concoct an image of the record company man and the musician, exhausted after sending out the last of the new single through the mail, just in time to enter the big contest. One of them looks up and says to the other, I bet nobody ever put out a record as fast as we just did. They pull down the book, they find out, they give each other congratulations. Now compare with Jack White. By conflating the two kinds of records, by treating this record as his for the taking, by putting his mind to it (in the worst Hegelian way), he doesn’t remake the world in his image. He puts a hole in our ability to understand it. This was a fact of the world once, and he’s purpled it into an art. This is nihilism; the only accomplishment is to render meaningless the measure he supposedly achieved.

This is the function and nihilism of a virtue; An idea can compound, become more ideal, and more true to itself by becoming pure understanding. But a virtue isn’t an understanding or a knowledge, thinking about it doesn’t become a kind of doing it. It’s a way of being good and the only way to do it is to be the kind of good it demands. When I note or think my virtues, I am other than being virtuous toward them, and when I define them, I remove them from their context and start their long dessication from meaningful fact to void and doodad. Jack Whites of the world never understand this, they are consumers, consuming themselves and their own identity. Let’s say outloud then, this record of quickest record was a waste of fucking time and badly accomplished.

Jack White, Jack, jack is nothing, white, white is light, illumination, jack white, absence of illumination. Jack White, resonances of Jack shit, jack is nothing, white is shit, no shit, nothing: because that’s all Jack White has gotten done here.

  1. scoreadirecthit reblogged this from jackwhitelove and added:
    People really love to dislike Jack White. I just don’t get it. I don’t spend time writing crap about someone I don’t...
  2. jackwhitelove reblogged this from illllllllllllli and added:
    Well if this isn’t the most pretentious BS I’ve ever read. Save your pontificating for the 10th re-write of your college...
  3. illllllllllllli posted this