BoldUlysses.com

de ses crayons de couleur
ça me suffit
pour dessiner qui je suis
ça me suffit
pour m’inventer d’autres vies

A few months ago I attended a mandatory (yes, mandatory) concert at the college by a pianist who had apparently studied and guest-taught there. It lasted the duration of one chapel session, so it wasn’t long, and the pianist was very skilled. He played a number of pieces he adapted and arranged himself as well as some compositions specifically made to be performed by a piano. I remember sitting in the pew and listening to the music, trying to close my eyes and soak it all in, my mind unencumbered by visual distractions as the pianist’s fingers jumped around the keys and leapt from one chord to the next with dizzying speed. However I tried, though, to relax, to lose myself in the sound, I couldn’t.

There was more at work than the temper or cadence of the pieces he had chosen to play. While I admired his technical proficiency, if I hadn’t been able to see the quasi-athletic quickness with which he played the sequences of notes or had at least a peripheral awareness of the skill it took to wring those chords out of the instrument, I would have thought the whole affair severely lacking in appeal. The music just wasn’t beautiful. In fact, if I had just heard a recording, from my ignorant perspective, I would have honestly thought the pianist was hitting as many wrong notes as right ones.

Call me a philistine, but this mindset made up a large part of my aversion to the classic rock resurgence or even guitar music in general back in the early/mid ’90s. The beauty, the arrangements, the hooks in the music I preferred always trumped the whatever technical prowess was demonstrated by the artists I avoided. Long-winded guitar solos, jam sessions, album-long rock operas… I just didn’t get it. In a lot of ways it didn’t even seem like the music was outwardly focused on communicating anything–the songs seemed like grandiose indulgences or elaborate jokes played on those critics and music buffs who would read into it what they saw fit. In many ways, the appeal for me was in restraint–if an artist could convey more depth of feeling with fewer elements, that was all the more to be admired and appreciated. Less, but beautiful less, was more. Contrast, for example, The Edge’s guitar work on “With or Without You” with any meandering Allman Brothers tune or even Clapton’s musical histrionics. The former had what Bono called “psychotic restraint” in much of his guitar work, serving the beauty and theme of the song at the expense of showmanship, and is to be admired for it, I think.

In some ways my widening understanding of the levels on which music impacts us, and my increasingly attuned ear for the nuances and artistry of initially unappealing arrangements has curbed my aversion. I can feel the ebb and flow of good musical construction now. I can hear a groove, pick up on an undulating bassline or even sense humor sometimes in the juxtaposition of contrasting song segments, all of which was beyond my reach fifteen years ago. On a conscious level really all I heard then was a melody. And what’s more, now I want to understand what makes a piece more technically challenging. When I go to a violin recital, for instance, why do they pick the pieces they do to perform, to demonstrate their skill with the instrument? But after all that, even with the increased emphasis on understanding, you’ll nearly always find me listening to music I love rather than music I simply admire. Travis rather than Radiohead. The Beatles trump the Velvet Underground. Hooverphonic over Portishead. And the list goes on…

* * * * * *

I picked up a book of poetry by Chares Baudelaire at Barnes & Noble last night (I had to get out of the house for a bit). It was called Vingt Poèmes en Prose and it was the only one I could find with the original French poetry on the left page and the (admittedly poor) translation on the right. It was refreshing to read again.

I keep playing with the Leatherman™. I need to put this thing DOWN. Dangit.

Supper time.