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Content warning: Mentions of abuse and suicide.
It has happened again. And so again, I perform my little ritual: I lock the door, sit up on my bed, put my earbuds in, take out my phone and begin to dig. I dig into my music apps folder to open SoundCloud, dig past the prompt to pay for their premium plan again, dig until I find the still dirt-covered gem I was searching for: a full upload of McCafferty’s debut EP “Moms+Dads.” An ambient fuzz creeps into my ears as I hear Nick Hartkop — the band’s frontman and (at the time of recording) the only member of McCafferty — take a short breath as he starts: “Well I hate talking about dorm rooms, and movin’ out / I hate talking about the future because the future is right now.” This EP and the rest of Hartkop’s work has changed my life for the better, and I don’t know who I would be right now without it. McCafferty is one of my favorite bands of all time and Hartkop is at the center of it — and I hope he never reads this. I hope I never have to interact with him. I hope the same for everyone he has hurt.
What’s the value of art? Or, more precisely, how do we measure the value of art? Let’s choose three barometers: the aesthetic value, the ethical value and the thematic value. In other words, we can measure art by how well it’s constructed, its societal impact and the ideas presented. You’ll note that these three modes don’t exactly stand at odds with each other; art can be ethically powerful through its themes or thematically powerful through its aesthetics, but then the largest question we raise is how do we judge art that has sacrificed its ethical value? Aesthetically, the skill of an artist could eclipse its ethics based on their separation, but can the themes of a work still resonate or, in fact, increase in value at the expense of its ethics?
Hartkop continues, rhythmically strumming: “But I was desperate for your love, / you were desperate for attention / We were destined to grow up, / but I was scared without direction.” McCafferty — named for a cook that Hartkop once washed dishes with — exists with the rest of the Midwest emo canon as mundanely emotional small town/suburban stories with folk punk and math rock influences. These were elements that the band would incorporate into later releases, but right now, Hartkop just has his guitar and his voice. He sounds like a hometown friend’s older brother who’s sat us down to show off his skills. Something else is revealed in the process: “Got a call from your mom, / she said your brother hung…”
“Failed himself,” I cut in, not meaning to censor but to taste the lyrics in my mouth, to see how they fit in my world. I continue, keeping my voice an octave down from his, trying to echo his tired, raw monotone instead of the pitch-accuracy-striving tone years of choir instilled into me: “He said he couldn’t take his life / And he couldn’t find himself / And I got scared.”
After a break, Hartkop starts the second stanza, “I found a picture of my dad … ”
“As a baby,” I interrupt, providing (in my opinion) a better internal rhyme and a more tragic comparison to the lyric after: “This is stupid and it’s sad / That he is aging.” My voice breaks for a second as my eyes water. I went home this weekend to celebrate my dad’s 50th birthday, several months after we celebrated the same number for my mom.
Some of the only mentions I can find of Hartkop’s parents are posts he made on his website following statements from his bandmates and former loved ones on his alleged long-running pattern of abusive behavior. He writes on how his parents allegedly did nothing for his teenage suicidal ideation. He addressed part of this later statement to them: “I want my father to know I think he is a good man who gave me the best life he could, and I want my mother to know I forgive her and love her deeply.” That was in 2022. Hartkop from a decade ago sings on: “But I can’t stare in his eyes without feeling alive / Without begging for time I think I still need his advice.”
The act of separating the art from the artist has been discussed to the death (of the author), but obviously art is not born in an abyss and released into a vacuum — both the creator and creation have material impacts. Keeping that in mind, our measurements of aesthetic, ethical and thematic value are not barometers we separate but, in fact, these scales have to function holistically. Between ethics and art, there is a Greimasian semiotic square with axes of artistic merit and ethics, where the extremes would be ethically enhanced art, unethically sabotaged art, unethically enhanced art and ethically sabotaged art. Let’s stop speaking in theory for a second and provide examples with an infamous case: Kanye West.
We can find three extremes from three of West’s tracks: “Hey Mama,” “Jesus Walks” and “Runaway.” The first is a tribute to West’s mother Donda, who the artist cited as a constant positive force and did much of his philanthropic work in her name following her death in 2007. In this case, knowledge of the artist’s actions make the tribute to his mom that much sweeter. “Jesus Walks,” on the other hand, is simpler to see the contradiction in, as its existence as an anti-racist anthem is devalued by West’s actions against the Jewish community. Finally, “Runaway” is one of the only songs where West is seemingly apologetic over his actions — especially to the women he’s hurt — lamenting his spiraling existence and that he likely won’t be able to change his ways; the only advice to give is “Run away fast as you can.” As time goes on and West’s actions spiral more and more out of control, the song’s power only grows. Staying with West’s work, the last extreme — ethically sabotaged art — could find an example in his earliest, unreleased work trying to break into the rap industry by following its hardcore and gangsta genre trends. Complex ethical discussions of these artists’ associated activities aside, we can see that West’s middle-class background never put him in the place to make an ethical decision concerning gang activities, and this actively harmed the artistic value of his earliest work. To be clear, these are the values in art that the artists themselves hide away with their own problematic actions. But given that, what is the responsibility of the audience in unburying that value, in how that art is engaged with?
Without even taking a breath, he sings the next verse, “I knew a guy who knew a guy that killed … ”
“Hurt a girl,” I replace again. Among the allegations of inappropriate relationships with fans, and abuse toward bandmates, the treatment of his former and current partners rank the worst. I let Hartkop continue by himself: “He said he didn’t mind the way / That she would breathe / He said he didn’t mind the way / That she would laugh at them / But he couldn’t take the way that she would speak.”
I wonder for a second how much Hartkop might empathize with his subject.
“Oh, how she spoke … ”
The first action, in my opinion and decisions, would be cutting off monetary support to unethical artists. I personally use Spotify’s “hide” function for this, and for selected works that I still believe hold aesthetic and thematic value, I find ways to listen without financially contributing to the creators. But there’s a trap in that: What about the art’s influence in its consumption, the material effect it still possesses after being separated from the artist? After all, art is ideology. It would be obviously reductive to imply that listening to enough Kanye West will make one hate women. But one has to stay constantly critical of their consumption — we cannot ignore even the imperceptible effect that the art we engage with has. By doing so, we can see that unethical art, while buried and hidden by their artists’ actions, can still undergo metamorphic processes by the weight of their sins into gems.
Hartktop reprises for his chorus, and as my voice keeps breaking and the tears roll down I jump an octave to match him, testing and minding my vocal capabilities when I haven’t sang for an audience in years: “Well I hate talking about dorm rooms, and moving out / I hate talking about the future because the future is right now / But I was desperate for your love / You were desperate for attention / We were destined to grow up / But I … ”
“Am scared without direction,” I rewrite a final time, again flexing the words in my mouth to see how it fits my world. I found McCafferty at my lowest during the COVID-19 pandemic as a virtual college freshman, and here I am again back at the beginning having recently graduated. Coming back to these songs, to this band — especially after finding out about Hartkop — feels like I’m picking at a wound that I won’t let heal. I’m revealing this artist, unburying this gem because I polish it until it becomes a mirror. Whether it’s hearing his accent and knowing he’s from the Midwest, the obvious vocal strain at the highest notes, the stories of pain that he tells — I see the best and worst about myself reflected in Hartkop. Some of my favorite songs are about the cycles of abuse and hurt sung by a man who hasn’t escaped that cycle himself.
In Claire Dederer’s “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” for the Paris Review, she writes, “I suppose this is the human condition, this sneaking suspicion of our own badness. It lies at the heart of our fascination with people who do awful things. Something in us—in me—chimes to that awfulness, recognizes it in myself, is horrified by that recognition, and then thrills to the drama of loudly denouncing the monster in question.” McCafferty evokes inescapable, nostalgic images for me: endless cornfields, suburban warmth, quaint downtowns, sharing drinks while staring at the stars on a trampoline, the people that feel like warm hugs and apple pie and small “opes” when you pass them by. McCafferty evokes inescapable, traumatic times for me: the cornfields of Asphodel, suburban abysses, crumbling downtowns, the depressing connotation of staying out of your parents’ house to drink to forget, the people that you want to bump into again so you could have some opportunity to lash out and hurt them the way they hurt you — even after all these years. I listen to these songs and remember that despite everything, I’m just a shitty little kid from a mid-sized Midwest town that the sun has set on.
I cut the track off early. I don’t need the rest of it. I go through these tracks not out of fear but for catharsis — to see what I hate about myself reflected so I can scrub away until I’m better. These songs have changed my life for the better, and I will always be indebted to them for that — and there is that question, for what we would have done if we hadn’t found that art that saved us; would we have survived another way? Sometimes we survive to experience art and survive because we experienced art, so which came first? Does it matter? Dederer ends her essay with a quote from Hemingway’s partner, Martha Gellhorn: “‘A man must be a very great genius to make up for being such a loathsome human being.’ (Well, I guess she would know.)” There is some dark romance to the idea that even at our most irredeemable, we can be of some use — some kind of gem — to others through art. When I have felt irredeemable, this idea has helped me. I can say right now that thankfully my life is the most perfect it has ever been, and that I am the best version of myself because of what I went through and because of this art, or in Hartkop’s words later on the record: “And I am sorry, that I am not the same kid I was / Back in school, but I have finally changed / It took a long, long time and I lost most my friends, but I am / never coming back home” I didn’t just bring back memories from this weekend trip home, I also brought the instruments I stopped playing after high school, the ones I’ve never had the space or time to practice with in college. I text my band about a new idea for a cover. I want to stop hiding and make some gems of my own.
Fuck you, Nick Hartkop. Thank you, McCafferty.
Daily Arts Writer Saarthak Johri can be reached at sjohri@umich.edu.
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