There's this scene in Notes From the Underground where the protagonist is talking to a hooker in bed and she says "you talk like a book" and I always think of that right before I open my mouth. I wish there were an easy, conversational way to make comments which aim to analyze complicated structures. I guess that's what I'm trying to do in my poetry, but of course unsuccessfully. So, at dinner just now I was talking over my piano lesson this morning and had a kind of realization that is perhaps relevant to our current debate.
The lesson was on writing periodic melodies: melodies which are structured in a certain way according to rules of composition that have been synthesized from stylistic studies of Bach, Mozart and the gang. My teacher, who's a Mills graduate and a radical at heart, says to me "the rules aren't what's important, they're just a way to learn to hear a certain music with depth. What I've noticed listening to Bach as I get older is this incredible sense of balance in his music, a sense that is not reflected in modern music". We decided this is not a fault, as modern music shouldn't reflect the conception of Bach's day, a conception of a hierarchical world which was created in perfect order on the sixth day.
What we noticed was that modern music, more specifically music of the late Romantic through 20th century, operates in the world of the novel: a post-Darwinian world of development and change and progress. Narratives have a beginning and an end, and after the end, the world is different than it was in the beginning. Music, instead of recapitulating the opening theme, got into a pattern of further and further developing the theme to where it could not be recognized any longer, because it was following after narratives which weren't interested in repeating their earlier elements, but were instead interested in a plot arc- in going somewhere.
Speaking of going somewhere, where the fuck is this going? We're all in despair because things don't seem to change (or maybe because they get worse) yet we have to get up every morning and work at something. And if our work is poetry and we care about the fucked up state of things, where do we get the faith that what we write tomorrow will make any difference. It occured to me suddenly that the despair is engendered in part because we are waiting for the narrative to end- we are waiting for the day when the sun comes out and the dark days of imperialism and neo-conservatism are over. I think consciously or not, we're trying to fit our poetry into that narrative structure, a structure of upheavals, and big, irrevocable changes.
What else are we going to do? I asked that out loud and then got really interested in the assumption behind that question. It looks like its a question at the limits of logic, i.e.: 'either things change or they stay the same', but it's not. The throwing up of the hands in the air at this juncture is at the limits of the narrative. The dilemma itself is created by the narrative, a narrative that understands the world in terms of irrevocable change, an episodic history book. We need a new narrative, or we need no narrative at all. We need a way of understanding the world that is not Bach's world, a world which thought serfs would always work the land while the nobility did fine and good things under God, and not a world of constant revolutions followed by instantiations of equally tyrannical governments (from Robespierre's France to Washington's America), but something else. I don't know what that something else is, but I think poets couold be integral to its writing. Maybe some already are. Maybe Jessea will do it (I think I'm picking up after her thought here anyways)- maybe Erika will. I'm pretty sure I won't, as 'the world as it actually is' is too strong a puzzle for me to get my mind off. But I'd like to think that we have enough imagination somewhere in the minds of the still-here generations of poets to come up with something.
Peace,
Dillon
The lesson was on writing periodic melodies: melodies which are structured in a certain way according to rules of composition that have been synthesized from stylistic studies of Bach, Mozart and the gang. My teacher, who's a Mills graduate and a radical at heart, says to me "the rules aren't what's important, they're just a way to learn to hear a certain music with depth. What I've noticed listening to Bach as I get older is this incredible sense of balance in his music, a sense that is not reflected in modern music". We decided this is not a fault, as modern music shouldn't reflect the conception of Bach's day, a conception of a hierarchical world which was created in perfect order on the sixth day.
What we noticed was that modern music, more specifically music of the late Romantic through 20th century, operates in the world of the novel: a post-Darwinian world of development and change and progress. Narratives have a beginning and an end, and after the end, the world is different than it was in the beginning. Music, instead of recapitulating the opening theme, got into a pattern of further and further developing the theme to where it could not be recognized any longer, because it was following after narratives which weren't interested in repeating their earlier elements, but were instead interested in a plot arc- in going somewhere.
Speaking of going somewhere, where the fuck is this going? We're all in despair because things don't seem to change (or maybe because they get worse) yet we have to get up every morning and work at something. And if our work is poetry and we care about the fucked up state of things, where do we get the faith that what we write tomorrow will make any difference. It occured to me suddenly that the despair is engendered in part because we are waiting for the narrative to end- we are waiting for the day when the sun comes out and the dark days of imperialism and neo-conservatism are over. I think consciously or not, we're trying to fit our poetry into that narrative structure, a structure of upheavals, and big, irrevocable changes.
What else are we going to do? I asked that out loud and then got really interested in the assumption behind that question. It looks like its a question at the limits of logic, i.e.: 'either things change or they stay the same', but it's not. The throwing up of the hands in the air at this juncture is at the limits of the narrative. The dilemma itself is created by the narrative, a narrative that understands the world in terms of irrevocable change, an episodic history book. We need a new narrative, or we need no narrative at all. We need a way of understanding the world that is not Bach's world, a world which thought serfs would always work the land while the nobility did fine and good things under God, and not a world of constant revolutions followed by instantiations of equally tyrannical governments (from Robespierre's France to Washington's America), but something else. I don't know what that something else is, but I think poets couold be integral to its writing. Maybe some already are. Maybe Jessea will do it (I think I'm picking up after her thought here anyways)- maybe Erika will. I'm pretty sure I won't, as 'the world as it actually is' is too strong a puzzle for me to get my mind off. But I'd like to think that we have enough imagination somewhere in the minds of the still-here generations of poets to come up with something.
Peace,
Dillon
<< Home