Jan
8
I just read in the New York Times about a pianist who received a most unusual award (the excerpts on the site are amazing, particularly the Bach):
The award, which will officially be announced on Thursday morning, is music’s answer to the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants. And it is something of an anti-Van Cliburn Competition, a tacit rejection of the hoopla, bloodlust and horse-race quality of the international competition circuit.
It is administered by the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo. Nominations are solicited; an anonymous committee sifts through commercial and noncommercial recordings, some of them surreptitiously obtained; committee members secretly slip into dozens of concerts — sometimes keeping to the balcony or hiding their faces with programs — to assess the performers, who are not supposed to know they are under consideration.
It seems to me that a lot of what we give to award merit involves making people who have lives jumping through all sorts of stupid hoops, and consistently fails to do justice to the vast amount of excellence there is out there. I realize I’m talking about what seems to be two different things: firstly, the awarding of honors; secondly, making sure people who are accomplished have serious opportunities that await them. But notice how closely those things are related, and note how we dump those issues under the same class, “giving.” And what is “giving?” Well, there are a million charitable causes, so the same people trying to make a living as an artist are in direct competition in donors’ minds with people who are dying in impoverished countries. And of course, one cannot complain about any of this because “giving” implies that no money or honor ever need be given in recognition of necessity or excellence: our society has a moral right to let the arts wither and children starve.
I sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. I’m more like – something is strange about all this. It’s not that we don’t care, a lot of us do care. And it’s not like we’re simply materialistic and selfish: we do give, we just have weird criteria for giving, notions that don’t look like they’ve ever been rationally accountable. The overwhelming sense I get listening to people that take up more extreme positions as a hobby is that there are a lot of people who really don’t know how to work with others, or what a “social grace” might mean (i.e. making sure when you meet someone they feel welcome, asking them if there’s stuff you can do for them that’ll help, etc.). It’s like a lot of us are really isolated, only developing a sense of what’s happening around one – maybe even feeling like one is “in touch” with others – through media.
- And yeah, before you ask, it is possible to meet people every day and work with them and have no clue how to deal with people. That’s definitely a form of what I’m calling “isolation” above. -
The way the award above was given is an example of something I want to see more of. That’s the world I want to live in, where people watch out for each other in order to do something nice. I could care less for the competition part, although I’m in agreement that this is a good way to foster excellence. I think it’s a good way to foster something more important, a notion where the common good is organic, where people don’t have to yell at each other in order to get basic needs met or prevent their rights from being trampled. One of the things I actually like as a blogger is that one has to beg – you have to make clear to others what your needs are, and be clear how they can help you. In the process, you learn how you can help them and usually end up doing so. That’s not mere “utility,” not in this day and age, given what is communicated.
Nov
21
Martha Argerich is an amazing piano virtuoso – you can read her biography at last.fm for some basic details. Her debut recital, performed at age 24 (!) in 1960 includes a performance of Chopin’s Scherzo No. 3 that is legendary. I bought the Deutsche Grammophon CD of that recital a day or two ago and haven’t been disappointed. In fact, I’m busy trying to get the Brahms Rhapsody Op. 79 No. 2 in shape (this is coming along very slowly); there’s no way I can match her virtuosity or intensity, but I wish I had heard her recording when I first played this piece in high school. Her dramatic pauses and feel for the tension that makes seemingly repetitive passages on paper sing may be unmatched.
And that’s the earliest stuff of hers, I think: the Fantasiestucke recordings sing clearly and wistfully, and I regularly listen to the Bach Toccata BWV 911 to remember just what a long way I have to go in understanding Bach’s voicing. One of her teachers, Friedrich Gulda, is not to be missed – if you’ve never understood what the big deal about Mozart is, give this a viewing and crank up the volume. A lot of people make Mozart dainty and too playful: Gulda brings the energy that gets everyone – even the musicians – into it.
Nov
17
The Weakerthans, “Utilities”
Filed Under music, weakerthans | 1 Comment
Utilities (lyrics from songmeanings.net & theweakerthans.org, song (acoustic) available here)
The Weakerthans
Got this feeling
That today doesn’t like me
Or the air tastes like
Flowers and paint
There’s a sink full
Of bottles and cutlery
And the car
Has got a list of complaints
I just wish I
Were a toothbrush
Or a solder gun
Make me something
Somebody can use
We can wish on
The pop of a lightbulb
Or those photos
Lying yellow and curled
Loose in boxes
Near abandoned electronics
In the corners of the basements
Of the world
Guess our wishes
Don’t do dishes
Or brake repairs
Make them something
Somebody could use
Got a face full
Of ominous weather
Smirking smile
Of a high pressure ridge
Got more faults than
The state of California
And the heart is a badly built bridge
Seems the most I
Have to offer
Doesn’t offer much
Make it something
Somebody could use
Make this
Something somebody
Could use
Comment:
Two themes from this song:
- The feeling of many they have to be loved in order to be whole, in order to be fully useful (“Make this something somebody could use”)
- The fact our emphasis on independence exacerbates rather than mitigates this longing
The song has the feel of the blues and starts with the notion that this is just a mood the speaker is going through (“got a feeling that today doesn’t like me”). He seems to be outside; flowers and paint seem to be descriptive of homes neighbors maintain (the word “home” is never mentioned in this song). Flowers contrast with the bottles in the sink in that water allows the former to grow; alcohol doesn’t quite do the same thing for a person. Cutlery lying unwashed is a far cry from a now-blemishless home. What is “sunk” inside moves to the prospect of getting away, but motion is expensive and for the time being, broken (“car has a list of complaints”).
A “toothbrush” cleans; in ridding bad breath, it gives one the potential to be heard by an immediate audience. “Solder gun” is different from all the images before, echoed faintly in “flowers” and “cutlery” (dining together?): it unites. The speaker wants to be these two things – a toothbrush or a solder gun – for someone else. We might look at his humility as a cop-out; shouldn’t he take on the hard work of cleaning up and finding the right people himself?
Before we can indict him, though, he moves to “We.” “We” wish just as lightbulbs turn on with utmost ease. But break a lightbulb into its composite elements; its yellow light reminds one of faded photos that are themselves products of wishes. The technology of lightbulbs is everywhere, lying neglected in basements of places just like our speaker’s. He moves back to his situation, but this time with all of us joining him: “guess our wishes don’t do dishes or brake repairs.” The implicit counter to all of us who would accuse the speaker of letting his life fall apart is that it’s easy to tell others to make wishes (and make them yourself) when you feel useful. Feeling useful is just that, though – a feeling. All of us have faded photos lying around and electronics in disrepair; we don’t focus on them because we’re preoccupied with a sense of our own accomplishment, a feeling that usually depends on what others think.
The worst part is that our speaker knows things can get worse, are getting worse:
Got a face full
Of ominous weather
Smirking smile
Of a high pressure ridge
Got more faults than
The state of California
And the heart is a badly built bridge
He’s had to turn inside, he doesn’t have the luxury of going to others for justification that’s meaningful. Again, we can accuse him of self-fulfilling prophecy: to what degree is he describing traits – pessimism, cynicism, bad habits that cause quaking of one sort or another – that keep others away? To a degree, he’s accepted this aspect of the critique: “make it something somebody could use” changes to “make this something somebody could use,” with “this” emphatically referring to the speaker’s willingness to turn himself to an object. Bridge repairs can start from one side, sure.
The thing about love that our speaker has touched on, though, is that love has nothing to do with merit or being of use to someone. One is loved because of someone else’s perception of one’s own: they feel they possess you in some way. Being of use to someone else is a plea for love that may not necessarily work. Our emphasis on independence can never truly satisfy human longing because it fails to identify what human longing is. Divinity alone knows how all things work, and puts them to use.
Nov
4
False Media (lyrics from songmeanings.net; song available here)
The Roots
America’s lost somewhere inside of Littleton
Eleven million children are on Ritalin
That’s why I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin’
False media: we don’t need it, do we?
Pilgrims slaves Indian Mexican
It looks real fucked-up for your next of kin
That’s why I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin’
False media
If I can’t work to make it, I’ll rob and take it
Either that or me and my children are starving and naked
Rather be a criminal pro
Than to follow the matrix
Hey, it’s me.. a monster y’all done created
I’ve been inaugurated
Keep the bright lights out of our faces
You can’t shake it
It ain’t no way to swallow the hatred
Aim.. fire… holla ’bout a dollar
Nothin’ is sacred
We gon’ pimp the shit out of nature
Send our troops to get my paper
Tell ‘em stay away from them skyscrapers
Ain’t long ‘fore you get y’all acres
I’ma show ‘em who’s the global gangster
Sentence me to four more years, thank ya
I’ma make you feel a little bit safer
Because it ain’t over
See that’s how we get your fear to control you
But ain’t nobody under more control than a soldier
And how could you expect a kid to keep his composure
When all sorts of thoughts fought for exposure again?
America’s lost somewhere inside of Littleton
Eleven million children are on Ritalin
That’s why I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin’
False media, we don’t need it, do we?
Pilgrims slaves Indian Mexican
It looks real fucked-up for your next of kin
That’s why I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin’
False media: we don’t need it, do we? (repeats several times in different ways)
Comment:
It’s been a while since I’ve listened closely to any hip-hop or rap, and The Roots are exceptionally literate – “Game Theory” (the song) is over my head currently, I’m not sure who the speakers in that song are addressing at what moment and why. “False Media” is the first song on the album Game Theory and I think accessible enough (“I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin”): our interest is the view of politics and media espoused.
The most notable line is before the song even begins in earnest: “I don’t think old men ought to provoke wars for young men to fight.” There’s a litany of Leftist complaints within the main body of lyrics: poverty and opportunity (“me and my children are starving and naked”), conformity at the expense of identity (“to follow the matrix”), power that isn’t accountable (“I’ve been inaugurated… lights”), hate (“It ain’t no way to swallow the hatred”), environmentalism (“We gon’ pimp the shit out of nature”), greed (“Send our troops to get my paper”), imperialism (“I’ma show ‘em who’s the global gangster”), jingoism (“Tell ‘em stay away from them skyscrapers”), the injustice of justice as a system (“Sentence me to four more years, thank ya”). The complaints – some of which are far more serious than many things in our political discourse currently, and yet still not taken seriously despite a host of radical academics and NPR and all sorts of crap meant to make us go on guilt trips – end with these lines:
See that’s how we get your fear to control you
But ain’t nobody under more control than a soldier
And how could you expect a kid to keep his composure
When all sorts of thoughts fought for exposure again?
The build-up to the full import of these lines begins with all of us being “lost inside of Littleton.” That “we” in the first refrain definitely contains the “I” who rhymes: the implication is that we don’t need false media because we can assume unity. There are other radical thinkers who do not think minorities can assume themselves to be an accepted part of something; the tragedy here is that there is a basis for hope – note “Pilgrims” in the list of the (in their case, once) persecuted – and that basis has been eclipsed by “false media.”
So what is false media about? “If I can’t work, I’ll rob and take it” – this might as well have been from the movie “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,” based on a true story. “Starving and naked” recalls the many images of African children in poverty that are inescapable. “Matrix” moves us entirely into a movie setting; the monster that can’t stand light sounds like Frankenstein – we don’t see individuals anymore, we piece them together from media, from information about them lying about in the world. This creates something strange: the lyrics move from “I/me/my” as an actor to “I/our/you:” we’re all pieced together from media, everyone’s responsible for this mess, including our speaker (“I’ve been inaugurated”). We note that our speaker, before his “inauguration,” declared himself willing to rob to feed himself and his children (note that he doesn’t say “family”), and that descended into “be[ing] a criminal pro” for the sake of being an individual: power is the only way we understand survival or freedom or even ourselves.
How does power involve false media? We have to read a bit into this:
Keep the bright lights out of our faces
You can’t shake it
It ain’t no way to swallow the hatred
Aim.. fire… holla ’bout a dollar
Nothin’ is sacred
The monster – an actual construction from information – can’t handle truth. The power is ours: we create illusions and mask our own prejudices. We use the fact we have to survive – that we would do anything to survive – to justify what we would otherwise call hate. The trick is to recognize that this is a passive form of hate: yeah, most people aren’t skinheads. But does one need to be a skinhead to not care that the people next door are tearing each other to shreds? “Nothin’ is sacred,” but our speaker is more balanced than I am: “you can’t shake it:” this might be a necessity of political life.
Still. The next movement is to “we/our/my,” with “my paper” being the end. The implicit hate drives a search for comfort in the world, for identity raises some thorny questions. Again, who’s to blame? You can try and read this as a simple indictment of the Bush administration, but it doesn’t work: the speaker calls himself the “global gangster,” and makes it clear this is happening because all of us have a problematic conception to begin with. We think crime is divorced from us and try not to think of it at all except in cliched, trite ways – i.e. “prisons should be horrible so people want to stay out of them.” This is a hugely problematic attitude for a people who claim to be self-governing: you can’t just set prison budgets to zero and not look at the bills and the paperwork: if we were truly a democracy, every single person would know what goes on in a prison and hold themselves accountable for what went on in there. We would all be caretakers of justice, because that’s implicit in creating a government from the words “We the People.” “False media” – again – allows us to cut ourselves into parts and divorce ourselves from who we proclaim ourselves to be. There’s violence inherent in false media. To go back to the lines that matter most:
See that’s how we get your fear to control you
But ain’t nobody under more control than a soldier
And how could you expect a kid to keep his composure
When all sorts of thoughts fought for exposure again?
We’re finally in a position to see what this fully means: “it ain’t over” spoken from the mouth of the sentenced prefaces it, and what’s curious is that it’s not a threat. It’s an explanation and a genuine question. The speaker says he figured out fear, but someone else is in the position of being not only more in control, but completely out-of-control of his own life – the soldier. How does one know false media is false? Just look at how a soldier could make no sense: he’s a kid, and yet he’s fully composed. But what about “all sorts of thoughts” within fighting for their exposure? What about simply growing up and being independent?
May
15
Love and Truth in a Material World: The Weakerthans, “None of the Above”
Filed Under music, weakerthans | 4 Comments
None of the Above (lyrics from theweakerthans.org / song available here)
The Weakerthans
All night restaurant, North Kildonan.
Luke warm coffee tastes like soap.
I trace your outline in spilled sugar,
killing time and killing hope.
This brand new strip mall chews on farmland
as we fish for someone to blame.
But we communicate in questions,
and all our answers sound the same.
Under sputtering flourescents,
after re-fills are re-filled.
Negotiations at a stand-still,
spoon and rolling saucer stilled.
If you ask how I got so bitter,
I’ll ask how you got so vain.
And all our questions blur together.
The answers always sound the same.
We can’t look at one another.
I’ll say something thoughtful soon,
but I can’t listen to the quiet
so I hum this mindless tune
I stole from some dumb country-rock star.
I don’t even know his name.
It’s like my stupid little questions:
the answers always sound the same.
Tell me why I have to miss you so.
Tell me why we sound so lame.
Why we communicate in questions
and all our answers sound the same.
Comment:
“Tell me why I have to miss you so” is missing from the version of these lyrics on the website, and I suspect that was done on purpose. The entire song depends on that line – it is the only thing implying something better could be felt, perhaps even had. Without that sentence, this may only be a tune from a “dumb country rock-star” used to eliminate “quiet:” both missing someone and silence are negations that are not necessarily bad.
The song offers a third sort lacking affirmation: every stanza ends with “questions.” The first and last has our speaker and his audience “communicate” in them with “the answers sound[ing] the same,” implying we’ve come full circle at the end of the song (contrast with “Left and Leaving”). The second talks about their blurring, and the third mentions “stupid little questions:” the general seems to be composed of many small, almost insignificant particulars.
But the last stanza tells us the “stupid little questions” – why do we love? What makes us unique? Why do we ask questions, expecting better answers each time? These add up to form a whole: if you can get a grip on any of them, you can consider your life to be well-lived.
That’s what this song is about – in a multiple-choice world, where everything is a test, can we really fall in love? I like to say sometimes that thought is the ultimate form of love: if you really care about something, you think about it. The objection that there are people you love whom you don’t obsess over only demonstrates to me that thought has depth. Quality matters, not quantity.
The details within the lyrics imply another, buried world. “All night restaurant,” when considered with the paternal threat of washing one’s mouth out with soap, the farms and fisheries of a world where economics had its original meaning of “household management,” is most significant. This is a world of junk food in more than one way: the family is gone, mealtime is gone. There was demand for “spilled sugar” and now it is supplied readily.
The second stanza is almost abstract, except for “flourescents,” “spoon” and “rolling saucer.” The emphasis on “fill” and “still” makes one think of a glass, and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see emptiness. I think that’s what’s happening with bitterness and vanity: we didn’t grow up properly nourished. Now we have nothing to offer each other except our own desires.
From articulate speech (“ask”) we move to sight (“we can’t look at one another”) and nameless tunes. This is the deepest problem with a world centered on materialism – we say we want stuff so that way everyone has a chance, a slightly easier life. That’s all well and good, except for one little problem: if that specific intent is lost for any reason, it is impossible to recover wisdom generally. After all, the only logic left is that of appropriation; we can’t look at each other because we want to look in ourselves; we want to spend more time regretting and dreaming of something better than actually dealing with another person. Nameless tunes strongly imply that learning is just taking: everything is worthless unless it comes in contact with us, and our ability to assess value is itself dubious.
That the last stanza is more specific – that the questions can be articulated, even in a cynical, inverted way – shows there’s hope. But getting to hope is going to involve a kind of courage few know. We’re going to have to stop lying to ourselves, and start answering our own most serious questions.