immortality

One of the most unsettling aspects of a life in art is the rapid change of its underlying assumptions. It can take more than a lifetime for one's artistic abilities to mature, but an artist who strives for, say, beauty may find, just as she achieves this goal, that beauty is no longer of interest, and that the world of art has moved along to some other metric of artistic goodness, such as the current favorite of preaching to the choir.

There is no end to the cranky rantings of elder composers who decry the loss of interest in whatever they think is still important, even though they were happy to kick in the teeth the motivations of those who came before them. John Adams, who complained early on that the Pulitzers were not inclusive enough, has criticized the more recent Pulitzer winners for being the product of the times, where we are between times of high art, sounding not unlike those uptowners who complained about composers like him.

I wonder - who is it who decides on these metrics of artistic goodness?  Is it simply fashion, like hemlines?  The standards by which art is judged seem to seem so obvious to those in the middle of it: cleverness, social justice, glorification of the almighty, prettiness, commercial success, shocking la bourgeoisie, the latest gizmos, mastery of craft.  We the artists try not to pay attention, but we all crave the pat on the back and the envelope of cash that comes with timely success. And if one lives long enough, will one eventually be able to retrieve that old checkered sport coat from the downstairs closet and have everyone tell you how cool it is?  Maybe, but most likely your own tastes will diverge ever more from those of the perpetually reinvented artistic community. How lost would the revivified sculptor of any culture a thousand years ago be in an art world where, as shifting phenomena become frozen through emergent and personal practice, the viewer is left with a hymn to the possibilities of our culture?

But still there is a desire for immortality, artistic or literal. Both are impossible to control. Several therapists ago, I mentioned how my tech colleagues seemed to be racing to develop a literal immortality for their own bodies, and he guffawed at their credulity. How much the same is this desire to that which has always been, only now clothed in the lab coat of scientific and technological singularity? A case in point: the Totentanz at Mrtvaški ples. The latest desire for immortality through technology is no different than the seeking of comfort through religion, the contentment that comes from ignoring the truth, until it can no longer be ignored.

There are no rules

There are no rules. Really, there are no rules. It's a hard thing to accept, but it's true, and the difficulty of accepting this simple truth is because most of us really do want there to be rules, and that maybe by following those rules we will insure that everything works out OK.

I'm sitting downstairs on the patio at the Empress's parents' home looking out over the harbor, a cool breeze blowing off the water, activated by the wind so that it sparkles in the sun, the slight tang of diesel, the planes rocketing off in their high-G noise abatement pattern while her father dies upstairs. When someone dies, there are always questions: how old is he, what did she die of, did they eat too much meat, did they drink too much, did they love the wrong person, attempts to look for answers that will give us the rules of life that will guarantee that we never ever die.  My mother believes it, that she won't really die. At 95, she believes she will see my father again, and I don't know what that would be like: an eternity where there is no hope for the future, no ambition, no pain, no fear of death.

When a beautiful piece is made, there are always questions about process, about the tools used, about how to analyze the sounds or the chords or the way the melody peaks or troughs. These questions are an attempt to understand what makes something good or bad or effective or full of longing.  We hope that knowing the answers will give us the rules that will help us create, but they don't.

The Empress says I would be a bad teacher because, being in close contact with a class full of fresh-faced and excitable young people I would surely be arrested for something. But I know I would be a bad instructor because I would stand at the front of the lecture hall and simply say "Hey, guess what, there are no rules" and then I would sit back down and wait for something to happen, and that's not what they are looking for.  They want someone to be their guide, to help them through, and I suppose I do know something: I can tell them if they want to sound exactly like someone else to study what that person does or did and to imitate it.  That works, and it's what harmony and counterpoint books assemble: simplistic and descriptivist rules developed after the creative act, that explain some small average aspect of the group behavior of a set of composers culled from a particular time and place, aspects that are actually unimportant, beside the point, at least when it comes to the Ineffable Wonder of Composition.

Really, I'm serious, there are no rules, say it to yourself 100 times each day.

The glistening perdition

Lynne Rutter, a woman of such great pulchritude that she outshines her utterly splendrous works and inspires envy in those who behold her, seems  so very bewilderingly happy with her lot, as much as I try to convince her that she is simply incorrect.

I know with certainty that life is and is intended to be a struggle against forces that overwhelm, an unbending fatigue coupled with an insomnia bred of fear and agitation, a hunger for successes and joys that slip through one's net no matter how well deployed nor tight the weave, an uncountably infinite unspooling résumé of failures failing comprehension or categorization, of hopes unfulfilled, of plans and intentions washed out in the face of sputtering walls of deficiency that strike in wave after inordinate wave, a sullied haberdashery selling bent needles, buttons unthreadable and ties pre-stained, whose tutelary spirit is condemned to a perpetuity of vain efforts and ripping frustration in payment for her hubris, a dream of fame and triumph that awakens to a dimly lit room smelling of must, a race unwon, a frenzy of pathetic ruttings sparking little heat and ending not in promised refulgence but in pain, sorrow and regret ending only when the curtain falls and the audience leaves and, each finding her or his car, turn on the radio, the slight amusement dispelling the memories of what once was.

But somehow one fails to learn the simple desperation of an existence beyond repair.  One dresses in the morning while scrutinizing the status updates of others seeming somehow less pathetic and is snookered in.  Oh, one says, maybe I really could do better if I just worked harder, maybe I could have a brighter future like everyone else, maybe I don't have to play Mr. Lamentable Worm dressed in these ill-fitting and not-quite-matching clothes. And with that, one begins again the process, putting in one's oar or, more appropriately, applying the shoulder and rolling, rolling, rolling the enchanted stone to its place up at the top of the hill.