trumpet fight is a 2013 video that depicts a small man yelling at a trumpet player. It is a very funny video. We are going to analyze it.
In a surprise to many, the trumpet player’s choice of location is, in fact, offensive. He is playing outside of a Holocaust museum. Many can understand why this would make Levinson — whose name and physical appearance is overtly Jewish, specifically of the type found in Eastern Europe, a classic Judeo-Slav — irate. Yes, New York City (the most important city in the world, we are told) is loud, but perhaps Levinson is right. Perhaps silence, where it can be found, ought to be respected. I am reminded of Wittgenstein: “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.” To fill silence is a declaration, an act of aggression. To fill it with bad trumpet playing is unforgivable. Levinson is only matching the energy he is being given. Using the courtyard of a Holocaust museum to practice the trumpet is, to put it plainly, offensive. Millions of people were murdered. By taking away the silence of this space, which ought to be used in contemplation of the immense, world-shattering cruelty that occurred from 1939 to 1945, you are, in essence, destroying the memory of the eleven million people who were killed.
It may surprise you to learn that Levinson has gone on the record to say that he didn’t really care that the guy was doing it outside of a Holocaust museum. (I guess his philosophical convictions are just that strong.) You may also be surprised to learn that Levinson is a founding stock Anglo-American who’s only half Jewish.Levinson himself. Who is this man? What does he look like? It’s worth pointing out that some viewers are confused by Levinson’s physical appearance and assume that he’s an old woman, but he isn’t. His outfit is inoffensive, if a bit high on the “I am an elderly man” scale; blue shirt, black paints pulled up to his breasts, sneakers…
And a black garbage bag. The garbage bag is an enigma. Levinson has never once spoken on what he had in that bag, but whatever it is, it can’t be that delicate: he gestures with it, he swings it around, and at one point, he dramatically tosses it to the ground. Just what is in that garbage bag? Is he taking out his trash? Some have theorized that they’re clothes — work clothes, specifically, with the implication that Levinson is in such a foul mood because he just got off work and now he has to listen to this schmuck’s flat trumpet playing. I don’t think this is true. I doubt Levinson has a job, at least in the traditional sense; his family’s wealthy. We can safely assume that he doesn’t work for a living, hence why he seems undisturbed by the virality of this video. No one can call his boss and try to get him fired for being a bit of a dick because he has no boss. Douglas Levinson is accountable to no one.The first line. “Who the hell do you think you are? You’re any kind of artist? Anybody know who you are?”
Three questions; first, Levinson asks for the man’s conception of himself. This is a linguistic trap, but it is one that the trumpet player does not fall for: it is made clear that Levinson has no regard for the man before him, that what he sees himself as has no bearing on how Douglas Levinson sees him, that he is, simply put, a non-entity to him, something less than human. The next question, spoken aloud, represents such a monumentally pointed question that I have trouble imagining it escaping the mind and signaling the vocal chords to vibrate at just such a frequency that it enters into the air. “You’re any kind of artist?” And we know the answer, or at least as Levinson would have it: no. You are no artist. You are nothing. “Anybody know who you are?” We do not know this man; Levinson does not know this man; the cameraman, silent, unjudging, a man whose presence is more defined by a lack than anything else, does not know this man.The next sentence. “This is one of the most important places in North America and who are you? Who are you? You miserable presumptuous no talent. You’re no artist.”
Accusations. Allegations. The trumpet player’s mediocrity is an attack. It is an assault upon not only Levinson, but upon the most important place in North America. This place is New York City. Who are you? Why are you here? What have we done, what great crime have we committed to deserve your presence, your lack of talent as a punishment? Who are you? You are miserable. You make others miserable. You presume that you deserve to subject us to your misery, but you are wrong. You are no artist. There is no meaning to your misery, to your mediocrity, it is a crude joke, something like a flimsy wooden sculpture fashioned by a deranged sex offender in an insane asylum, phallic, violent, utterly lacking in meaning but by sight (and here, sound) alone representing an unhinged and unpleasant assault on bystanders.
You’re no artist.“An artist respects the silence that serves as the foundation of creativity.”
You do more than subject us to your filth; you yourself are an attack upon others, a thing that violates something so holy, so foundational as silence. Something so simplistic. I am reminded of Saint Juan de la Cruz. “Silence is the language of God.”
You are profane.“You obviously don’t have the talent. You don’t have enough respect for yourself or other people or know what it means to respect yourself. In music or any other form of creativity.”
Or any common sense. Otherwise, you would not subject us to this, this horrific reminder of the median, the average, the sub-par. Nothing you create is sublime. It is a cruel joke inflicted upon others because you are in deep pain and, in the depths of your sadism, want to inflict your pain upon others. You embarrass yourself. You embarrass others.“I’m an NYU film school graduate. Sukkah! And the School of Visual Art in the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.”
Almost no one understands this line or, rather, sequence of lines; in them, Levinson (I am beginning to think of him as Douglas, as though he were a close friend) lists his credentials: he is an NYU film school graduate. He has been to art school in San Francisco. His mind goes back to his youth, to the days he attended NYU, when he was in art school on the west coast during one of the most vibrant periods of our cultural history, so full of promise, when the work he and his fellow students (surely, certainly) must have felt meaningful, important, real. This is a man who has nothing to grasp onto. 2013 is not 1975. 2013 is not 1966. He is a prophet, a Jeremiah. He has seen the future: he knows that what lies ahead is, at best, deeply unpleasant. It overwhelms him. He longs for an escape.
The second line, sukkah, may be one of the most misunderstood lines spoken by any character in any film. He is not (as many assume) saying sucker in a New York-inflected tone. He is saying sukkah, סוכה, the word used for the huts built and used during the Jewish holy day of Sukkot. Levinson is referring to the fact that we are interstitial, in a permanent state of transit, that we require a shelter in the wilderness; we have escaped Pharaoh but dwell beneath the open sky, like animals, cut off from God’s will, cut off from aestheticism, cut off. Sukkot was, it must be noted, the time in which the Jews would make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. We are going towards God, towards Jerusalem, but we will never arrive, not in our present state.
Not when you’re fucking flat.“You suck. You’re no talent. If you really have talent, go practice and then get yourself a gig, instead of ruining the day for everybody down here.”
He is overwhelmed at the cruelty of the world, at the cruelty of God, at the cruelty of talentless trumpet players. Down here does not mean New York City. Down here means everything under the sun, under the eyes of God.
And you are ruining everybody’s day.“You disgrace.”
Such immense, grinding hatred from Heaven. Such absurdity in the eyes of God. Disgrace. Dis-grace. From the 15th-century Italian dis and the Latin gratia, dis itself stemming from an identical Latin prefix, meaning to separate, to tear apart, to remove, with an alternate form, dif, meaning utterly and exceedingly. We are reminded of the city of Dis in the Divine Comedy, where Dante and Virgil are set upon by demons, the first true moment of danger in Inferno, but the city’s name does not stem from the Latin, at least not directly: it is the city of Dis Pater, Pluto, the Roman god of the dead, Dis in this case being a crude contracted from of divus, meaning god-like or of god.
In other words, we are already in Hell.“You are everything that’s gone wrong in this world.”
An insult, but one that belies the insane hopelessness that lives within Douglas Levinson in this moment, so confronted with the world’s absurdity, its meaninglessness, its pain.
Levinson, perhaps after saying this, thinks of the famous quote “there is great chaos under Heaven — the situation is excellent.” Mao Zedong. There is hope.“You’re a self consumed, no-talent, mediocre piece of shit. And I’ve earned my right to say it. Okay? In 1975, I walked Bob Dylan up on stage. Who the fuck are you? I knew the Grateful Dead from 1966. Who the fuck are you?”
He has earned his right to say these things. He has earned his right to indict modernity, of which the trumpet player is only a vessel. He has stood in the presence of artistic greatness, of the sublime, and he finds our world wanting. It is not that the trumpet player is nothing: we are all nothing. Who the fuck are you — we — to presume the right to inflict ourselves upon the world?“You’re nothing. You are nothing. And you will never be anything. Never.”
I will let this line stand alone. It needs no explanation.“How dare you? You miserable, mediocre nothing. Shame on you. You crack a stupid little smile, you little pimp. Go learn to play. You’re flat. You can’t even carry a fucking note. I don’t care about your little horn lip, it doesn’t mean you know how to play. You’re flat. I’ve trained classically, I’ve trained contemporaneously, and you suck.”
How dare you. How dare we. We mock Levinson, but it is the same mockery the prophet Elisha heard. God will punish us for this. (Perhaps He already is.) We crack a smile at his insistence upon standards, but we are stupid. I am reminded of the last words Nietzsche spoke before, perhaps, responding (over a century beforehand) to Levinson’s charges: “Mother, I am dumb.” He never spoke again. The trumpet player’s condition of being unable to carry a note is a universal condition. It is one that we all suffer from. Our scars mean nothing or, rather, as much as what our “art” means: nothing. They do not mean we know how to play.
Douglas Levinson has seen the future and it sucks.