On Art and Loving Your Neighbors

I.

Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Matthew 22:36–40

II.

The essence of art is communication. At least, that is what Leo Tolstoy proposed in his 1896 essay, “What is Art?” Art allows the artist to communicate their feelings and emotions just as speech and writing allow people to communicate thoughts. Tolstoy wrote, “Speech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men, serves as a means of union among them, and art acts in a similar manner.” He called art a condition for human life; I do not disagree. I think art is inseparable from one of the unique traits of humans: namely, the ability to create, convey, and understand symbols. Without the capacity for art, there is no speech or language, no civilization or science; without art, homo sapiens is just another primate. The ability to create and appreciate art is at the core of humanity and communication is at the core of art.

Good artists are master communicators; they infect the minds of the receivers with their own states of being. Tolstoy believed infectiousness of art was both the mark and measure of real art. Per Tolstoy, art is infectious to the degree which it is:

1. Individual. Communicating an individual “state of soul” or emotion means more infectious art.
2. Clear. Transmitting feelings with clarity increases the connection of the consciousnesses of artist and receiver.
3. Sincere. The more an artist himself feels and believes in the communicated message of the art, the greater the attraction of the receiver.

Tolstoy was most focused on the third tenet of infectiousness: sincerity. He believed that exhibiting the third tenet meant an artist would invariably exhibit the first two: individuality and clarity. “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity,” George Orwell remarked in Politics and the English Language fifty years after Tolstoy. Orwell also sensed that clarity follows from sincerity. Subconsciously, I imagine all consumers of art (i.e. everyone) understands this statement to be true as well.

Insincerity is a form of deceit, and so insincere art is counterfeit. It communicates muddy messages of vague emotion, if it communicates anything at all. Counterfeit art can still be pleasing or even beautiful, but the counterfeit lacks the infectiousness of the true. Art without the union of minds between the artist and the receiver, no matter how powerful the prose, beautiful the brush strokes, or sublime the sculpture, fails the test.

Not to be a cranky curmudgeon, but I think the label “counterfeit art” applies to much of the popular art consumed today. This pattern is especially clear in pop music. Bo Burnham, a genius social commentator, said it better than I could when he sang about how marketing teams and corporate-owned pop stars abuse puberty and low self-esteem to produce popular media; this content is not art, because there is no sincerity.

Somewhat surprisingly, I find myself thinking differently about user-generated content on social media. The viral memes, TikToks, and YouTube videos are not all sincere. A surprising amount of this content, however, seems to be made by creators who are effective communicators that grasp unique, relatable states of consciousness and can reliably induce the same feeling, with clarity, in others. Is it sincere? I’m not sure. I’m not calling for memes to be put into the MoMA yet (YET!), but on the spectrum of counterfeit art ← → art, memes are certainly closer to art than Disney Channel pop music.

III.

Your Neighbors, the musical project of Walker Robinson, excels at clear and nuanced communication. Through the band’s twenty singles and lone EP released since 2017, Your Neighbors has crafted a sound which is not limited by any one genre. Trite a statement as it may be, listening to the song “Smacked” will drive home the point that Your Neighbors is doing things differently. In typical self-deprecating style, Walker notes in the band biography, “If you don’t like the most recent release, don’t worry! [Your Neighbors] will probably do a 180 and ruin another genre for you next month.” Far from “throwing anything and everything at the wall hoping something will stick” as noted later in the bio, over the past four years Your Neighbors has been pursuing the essential tenets of art: individuality, clarity, and sincerity.

Walker’s self-deprecation and humility hides the fact that he has organically built an international base of listeners, with almost no advertising or touring to grow it, of hundreds of thousands of people. What is it that drives this success? Surely this music is not the same formula creating the popular music of the traditional industry. No doubt, Walker would say that Spotify’s algorithms have been kind to him, which is at least partly true.

Listening to his music, however, I can’t help but think that his style would not be a safe or natural suggestion for Spotify’s algorithms. Songs regularly start or end with cacophonous, even disturbing, intros and outros or dramatically shift across styles of music normally considered incompatible. Songs often include samples from random bits of foreign languages, boring local news segments, and, at least once, pornography.

Yet many fans, through Instagram and YouTube comments, through emails and TikTok, have said that they discovered the music through playlists curated by both humans and algorithms. Why is this music so infectious when it’s so hard to even find information about Your Neighbors — until yourneighborswebsite.com launched a few weeks ago, there was no website, no media coverage and nowhere to buy merchandise. The only exisiting information sources were a Youtube account that uploads each single and an Instagram account.

I posit that Walker’s grassroots success stems from his supreme ability as a communicator. Fortunate for Walker, the algorithms promote that which people like to listen to, and when people do find Your Neighbors, the music seems to stick. Often, his music’s themes focus on the macabre problems our culture is collectively facing: loneliness, self-doubt, heartbrokenness, drug abuse, even death. Walker combines these topics, normally hard to address, into a collage of accessibility, musical skill, and singularity that creates empathy and understanding. Certain songs naturally will speak more to you than others based on their subject, but it is plain that the experience of listening to a Your Neighbors song infects the listener’s mind with the idiosyncrasies of the mental state that Walker created. Your Neighbors produces art.

This art is sincere. Walker is making himself vulnerable and putting out the music that is real to him, trusting that others will understand what he is communicating. This is sure art: delivered from the mind of the artist, uncensored to fit the demands of commercial interests or the prevailing knowledge of what works. Walker often stresses the concerns of working with a label or publisher, afraid of their impinging upon the creative process. He puts in the eclectic, disturbing, and funny intros and outros to his songs. He combines styles without concern for the established order. He puts out the music he wants to create and hopes that others will empathize with it; fortunately, they do.

After years of movement-building, it comes as no surprise that Your Neighbors’ debut album, Love Your Neighbors, continues developing the sound that has coalesced around the project over the marathon of singles and years since the band’s first release. Released on May 7, 2021, fans will be delighted by the nods to the existing discography even as they enjoy the experimentation with new sounds in the seven-track album.

Walker has stated to me many times that sometimes he wants people to be scared when listening to his music. He wants to evoke fear. “Rx”, shrouded in a shiny pop exterior, delivers some fear, especially if you’re used to the plucky lead single version that was released at the start of 2021. I won’t spoil anything, but when it hits, you’ll know. Rx, with similar themes to the similarly-titled “Ex”, is one of the standouts on the album for me because of the juxtaposition of the dark subject matter of drug abuse to the poppy, upbeat tone of the song. Other songs cover topics like dating anxiety and communication (“Eggs”, a thematic and titular nod to the single “Chicken”), fate (“Polaroid”), politics and [social] media (“Pseudo”), paranoia and superstition (“Track 3”), love and loneliness (“Alice”), and, finally, uncertainty and how to handle it (“Hallmarks”).

After listening to this album a lot (and plugging it, as any of my friends will quickly point out), I think Walker’s message is clear. This album speaks toward the mundane, constant struggles that the everyman faces in modern society. The title of the album, Love Your Neighbors, other than a play on the name of the band, speaks to the only way we can overcome these ubiquitous struggles. I relate to it; I’ve spoken to friends and strangers who relate to it. This is art in its definitional form.

As noted by many a musician: you’ve got your whole life to make your first album, but only six months to make your second. While I know Walker is already back on the grind with his talented crew of producers and musicians, I hope that he took a moment to step back, take a breath, and be proud of his accomplishment. Making individual, clear, sincere art is hard, and as his friend, I am immensely proud of him for doing it. Great work man.

Thanks to Shreyas Hariharan for thoughts and encouragement.