Monday, February 23, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
"The single idea that resounds on every page of this book is the idea of the infinity of the human spirit, in the individual as well as in humanity. It is a view of the wonderful and terrible disproportion of that spirit to everything that would contain and diminish it, of its awakening to its own nature through its confrontation with the reality of constraint and the prospect of death, of its terror before the indifference and vastness of nature around it, of its discovery that what it most shares with the whole of the universe is its ruination by time, of its subsequent recognition that time is the core of reality if anything is, of its enslavement to orders of society and culture that belittle it, of its need to create a world, a human world in which it can be and become itself even if to do so it must nevertheless rebel against every dogma, every custom, and every empire, and of its power to realize this seemingly impossible and paradoxical program by identifying, in each intellectual and political situation, the next steps." (Roberto Mangabeira Unger, The Self Awakened, pp. 26�7)
Between 4:30 and 5:30 am this morning, lying wide awake in the lucid aftermath of an evening nap and a late-night espresso, I remembered what I love about music. From my bed I listened to the Great Lake Swimmers' Ongiara from front to back, letting it toss me about, sail me through waters new and old, subjecting my whole being to its whims. At times I was struck by what seemed to be the utter mastery of the music: the synergies of mood and emotion created between the tones of the instruments, the words, and the harmonic movement through time; its ability to convey simultaneous darkness and hope; the sum of power afforded by so many carefully arranged details; and above all the sense that its creators had done all this on purpose, as if intentionally manipulating my sensations to match precisely what they had felt at the instant of writing each song and again at the instant of playing it.
This journey brought forth a metaphysical question: are different listeners subject to different experiences, or might music evoke universals of human experience? I think it is the depth and power of that experience, not its universality, that's important. In September, one of my professors told the class that he had chosen his course readings in light of the search for "truth, meaning, and beauty." I have turned to literature many times for liberation of this sort, and not always got very far. But music takes me farther down this path�it reveals something about being human that writing (and other forms of art) cannot easily get at. Whether or not the particularities of that experience are shared by others seems trivial.
I noticed something else, too: I have only felt this depth of emotion while listening to music, never while playing it. As much as I enjoy songwriting, that act has always been more craft than art. And I'm not prone to the reckless abandon that's needed to be a great performer, but I envy those who are. Instead, I am attentive, verbal, suggestible: a much better listener than musician.