Today I learned the origins of the word sardonic1. I got a text comment recently saying "they both suck" where I was jokingly debating and comparing the personalities of Alan Jackson and Travis Tritt. It started because I published a video that had a cover of a Travis Tritt song It's a Great Day to Be Alive2, to which my wife and I started debating the artist. Regardless, I'll skip the trivial details of the debate and focus on the heart of the matter.
My father has quipped on more than one occasion that I'm from the 'everything sucks' generation and I think about that a lot because he's right, maybe not in the sense of an entire generation, but about me for sure. I do think the vast majority of stuff is utter shite. And I do like the word... perhaps it's just the similarity to another word by replacing a letter.
Suck - ( verb ) 3rd person present:sucks3
- Verb: draw in to the mouth by contracting the muscles of the lip and mouth to a make a partial vacuum.
- Informal: bad, disagreeable, or mediocre.
- Interjection Slang: an exclamation of defiance or derision.
In all seriousness, it's easier to be a critic than a creator. For the most part, I generally try to be the later but I value my ability to criticize as a metric tool by which to show improvement. I'm particularly good at criticizing because I spent a long time in art school learning to be quick to accept and give criticism.
Nowadays I'm often a bit more reserved when asked about something unless I know that someone can actually handle my honest feedback. How was your dinner? "It was great thank you" vs. "It sucked quite a bit... tasted like it all just came out of the freezer from when it was put in there a week ago from the distributor, lacked creativity, too much sauce, too much salt, veggies not fresh, terrible rice, and even the crappy tea was overly sweetened." Lots of things suck. Let's face the facts, improve them, and get on with it.
With that in mind, I'm not really a fan of either of the aforementioned musicians. It was just an exercise in criticism and debate. Instead of jumping into the criticisms, I responded to the text with "Ben Harper's new album is good" because my dad was partially right. The kids I deal today with seem to have an even more brutal sardonicism3. They really have no clue what they're up against.
Sardonic: disdainfully or skeptically humorous : derisively mocking
The etymology of the word is dark. It comes from the island of Sardinia where the Nuragic peoples used the Oenanthe plant4 to intoxicate the elderly or people unable to support themselves before they were ritually killed. The plant causes Risus sardonicus5 which is a sustained spasm of face muscles that appears to produce grinning. According to one source6 "laughter accompanying killing transforms death into a new birth, nullifies murder as such, and is an act of piety that transforms death into a new life." And now that I know this, I'm going to try and steer my 'everything sucks' criticisms to being mostly constructive and refer anyone reading along who's overly sardonic to enjoy these lists of last words7 and a good song about them8.
- Sardonicism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardonicism
- Travis Tritt - It's a Great Day to Be Alive - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lODUP2orePk
- Suck ( verb ) - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/suck
- Oenanthe ( plant ) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oenanthe_(plant)#Sardonic_grin
- Risus sardonicus - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risus_sardonicus
- Theory and History of Folklore - Vladimir Propp - https://monoskop.org/images/f/f0/Propp_Vladimir_Theory_and_History_of_Folklore.pdf
- List of Last Words - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_last_words
- Picasso's Last Words - Wings - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NobdV5Kxw8