Howard Zinn and Thom Yorke on artists and politics

Resonance Magazine has set Thom Yorke beside the historian and playwright Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, to talk about the part artists play in politics. The interview, by Sarah Burton, is republished on ZNet, the website of Z Magazine. The two have never met; the occasion is Zinn's new book from Seven Stories Press, Artists in Times of War.

Asked about Picasso's remark that art is a lie that makes us see the truth, Zinn argues that describing the world as it ought to be is a kind of fiction, and that fiction can add up to something important and true. Yorke's answer begins with a laugh at Fox News. Someone needs to tell the truth, but it shouldn't be my job. So I guess I'd be on the lying side.¹

No artist, he goes on, can claim access to the truth, though artists have their work, and music, to give force to whatever they write about. If it takes an artist to liven up political debate, he says, that says something frightening about the debate on mainstream channels.

He finds it hard to argue that Radiohead inspire change. Loosely political lyrics get absorbed and passed on, he says, and people only care what the band think because they still sell records; Picasso could only make Guernica count because he was already a successful artist. John Lennon's “war is over” campaign, which he was obsessed with at college, was the bravest thing, he says. He doubts today's media would let anyone get away with it, and is not sure he would have the nerve.

Yeah, I don't think we are [political] at all, I think I'm hyper aware of the soapbox thing.

Thom Yorke¹

For Yorke the most important thing about music is escape, like sharing a moment at a show with 10,000 other people. Zinn points to Dylan, strongly political and still poetic. Escape need not be bland, Yorke answers, and his example is Donna Summer's “I Feel Love”, which feels escapist and yet has a huge darkness hanging over it.