Pretention

I'd like to start by broaching the subject of pretention, or pretentiousness. I've often been accused of exhibiting both, and it's led me to wonder what it is about myself and what I say and do that might inspire such an accusation.

The word is often used in a pejorative sense, of someone who aspires to a particular way of being, but fails in at least one crucial and infuriating respect. Let's take, for example, someone who aspires to be a great musician. Such a person, let's call him Alfonso, might on any given day find himself present in a setting that has nothing at all to do with the exhibition of his own personal musical prowess. Let's say, for the sake of constructing an image, this setting is a local bar. Alfonso sits at a table with a number of his friends, who are by some improbable stroke of fortune discussing music and bands they have seen. Alfonso, at a momentary lull in the conversation, notes matter-of-factly that such and such band is actually quite mediocre, and in truth if given half a day he could compose a set's worth of songs that would blow the aforementioned amateurs out of the water. His friends scoff at him, and think to themselves (electing not to speak their minds out of politeness, a grace Alfonso evidently lacks), "What a pretentious dick."

Now, they may well be justified in thinking so poorly of their 'friend'. By all accounts he seems not only to have a tremendous opinion of his own abilities, but is also a shameless braggart. Or is he?

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Alfonso has been playing guitar for a dozen years with a zealous fervour that causes his parents to regret the day they ever bought him that Fender Stratocaster. Let's say he regularly composes set lists in half a day for his own pleasure and amusement, and genuinely believes his compositions to be brilliant, transcendent, and better than virtually all the competition. He considers himself naturally talented, and having no other musicians to play with, but only the tripe he listens to on the radio for comparison, has no reason to believe he is anything other than a modern day virtuoso.

This is a fact, in his mind, and is scarcely open to contestation. So, as it happens, when he encounters his friends he feels naturally compelled to correct their obvious mistaken evaluation of the "Band X" they had seen in concert, and offers -- out of a simple desire to share what he considers to be his personal wealth of talent -- to create and perform for their pleasure and amusement a new and better set list than they have yet heard. For this act of selfless generosity he is rebuffed, perhaps, and certainly in the minds of his friends devalued. Unjustly? That remains the question.

What is Alfonso's crime here? We should assume that, regardless of his intentions, there exists a basic disconnect between the way his friends perceive him and how he perceives himself. It is evident to his friends that the talent Alfonso believes he possesses, namely an extraordinary ability in music, is in fact less than extraordinary, and may in truth be at best middling (if not overtly terrible). Who is mistaken? Naturally, permitting for a fair degree of subjectivity in the evaluation of art, it is probably safe to assume that Alfonso is not the virtuoso he holds himself to be. But if we were to say, once again for the sake of argument, that he is in fact a poorly understood musical genius, does that change the timbre of his boast?

Alfonso, the savant, claims -- correctly -- that he can produce a set list worth of music far better than that of "Band X", presuming there are some quasi-objective criteria for evaluating music that most of his friends hold in common (how radically it embodies the hipster aesthetic, for example, or the number of aleatoric sound samples used, to suggest two possible criteria entirely at random). His friends, not knowing he possesses this talent, will surely scoff at him just as before. Unless they are somehow persuaded of the truth of his claim, why should they think he is anything other than a self-deluded pretentious bung hole?

Let's consider another scenario, then. Alfonso, having produced his Fender Stratocaster from a secret compartment underneath the table, leaps onto the stage and performs ex nihilo an entire set list that completely astonishes the entire bar, and prompts a frenzy of excited cheering and gesticulation. Having finished, Alfonso leaps off the stage onto the adoring arms of his newly won fans, and is lowered gently to the floor whilst garlands of roses are placed lovingly around his neck. Or something. Weeks pass, and Alfonso and his friends find themselves once again sitting around a table in a bar discussing the "Band Y" they had seen two or three nights before. Alfonso, detecting a brief lull in the conversation, once again contributes the information that he could, quite effortlessly, produce a set list superior to such and such band, etc. etc., yada yada, and so on. This time, however, his friends simply nod humble acquiescence and think to themselves, "Yes, it's true, but he's still a dick."

Though not, perhaps, a pretentious one?

To be continued...