Of my two best stories, you're the one that I don't tell --
So I'm currently procrastinating on an art paper for tomorrow (about bronze vessels from the Shang and Zhou dynastic periods, boooooo! aksd;jfksdl;gjka;as) and a midterm on Wednesday. And I figured .. what better time to put down some thoughts? They've been floating around for awhile, and they're pretty jumbled -- apologies in advance. Apologies, also, for forgetting how to make lj-cuts ..
---
"Hey, what's that Green Day song?" Jent, casually slouched down low on the couch, starts to strum the air, humming along to some melody in his head. I watch, head cocked, silently observing.
"You mean 'Basket Case'?" His bandmate Sandy pipes up. She starts singing a few bars, expertly blending in her bright, clear voice into his lower tones.
"Ooh, that one," you say. You, with the actual guitar, begin to play, deftly weaving your fingers in and out of the strings, laying out the base chords perfectly, as Jent and Sandy build on it with their voices. Soon, the whole room's singing Green Day -- I am one of those melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it -- but all I can do is sit there and smile mutely.
It'd been an okay night, all in all. It wasn't my element, certainly -- amongst your friends, the ones who actually said things like "down with the Man" and "gnarkill," the ones who judged the merits of Bach and Debussy based on their diminished chord progressions, the ones who deconstructed every song into its most basic elements and then built it back up again, piece by tedious piece, I was decidedly out of place. I felt keenly the prepster vibe I gave off, the one of pretentious academia (sadly, the word "antidisestablishmentarianism" kept repeating itself in my head -- how much more arrogant could I get?! It's the longest traditional word in the English language. And it doesn't even fit the context --), a vibe that, thankfully, no one gave me grief about. My years of music theory did nothing for me, and my tone-deaf ear certainly didn't help amongst these musicians. And the only thing I had to say about the Bach v. Debussy debate was -- that I hear God in Bach. How would that have gone down?
So I sat, and stayed, and kept my mouth shut. I was content, anyway, to just watch you play.
---
I have to say, I'd never bought into the whole musician deal. I'd never before been impressed by someone's ability to hold a wooden box and stroke some strings, never before found it worth listening to or watching. And yet -- as you played on and on, now gently strumming, then crescendoing into a twanging climax of chords, then bringing it down again -- I found myself more and more drawn in by your skill, how you melded in so easily with the rhythms and harmonies you played, until I couldn't look away.
I traffic in words and feelings. And, more lately, impulses and whims. I don't understand the finer points of art and architecture, music and melody, no matter how hard I study them -- and, I don't think I want to. I don't want to look at Sargent's Madame X or Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (two of my favorite paintings!) and think about the form and line, about Seurat's reasoning behind pointillism or about Sargent's stint in Paris.
I want to look at Madame X, and think of the last time I saw her -- a cool and refreshing panel of dignity and grace in a ridiculous powder blue room in the Met. She hangs commandingly at the end of a hall, framed by arches, drawing your eyes immediately to her flawless alabaster skin and the sharp black ridges of her dress, and the wistful expression on her face. (The last time I was there, this little Asian man, with a clunking black camera, asks: "Who is she looking at?"
"I have no idea," I reply. "But I love it just the same -- "). I want to remember how it made me gasp -- even though I'd seen her before -- how I'd looked up and admired the elegance she radiated, how I'd guessed again at who was on the receiving end of her gaze (a child? A lover? Or no one at all?). I want Seurat's riot of color to please me every time just as much as it did the first time, to look so hard at it that all strokes lose shape and meaning, until the colors finally blend in to form a complete, dazzling whole (to, essentially, appreciate what Seurat was trying to accomplish with his technique, but I'd never admit to that!). Sadly, I've only seen studies of Seurat's, not the real thing -- which resides in the Art Institute in Chicago -- but that's certainly on the list (Chi-town for the win!)
I don't think of the world in E-flats and dominant seventh chords. I look at things -- the rusted, green pipes of scaffolding on Broadway and 12th that smell of urine and filth, the scaffolding that holds up this city, and holds it together -- the smoldering gold rings that form the metronome in Union Square -- the brightly flashing lights of cabs fading into the smoky dusk at the end of Fifth Avenue, the point where the street and the buildings blend into one infinitesimal speck on the horizon, a dot that holds color and life and yet nothing at all -- and I hear words, I remember feelings. It's a far more traditional way to perceive and process the world around us, but it's the only way I have (since, sadly, I seem to be stubbornly resistant to learning new methods). And yet -- however we may circumnavigate, on our own twisted paths -- we seem to arrive, always, at the same destination. So I guess I'll just wait until next time, when I walk the Brooklyn Bridge and hear major thirds --
Then we'll talk. In your language or mine, or in some crazy hybrid of auxiliary verbs and inverted triads and cadences and clauses --
then, we'll talk.
---
"Hey, what's that Green Day song?" Jent, casually slouched down low on the couch, starts to strum the air, humming along to some melody in his head. I watch, head cocked, silently observing.
"You mean 'Basket Case'?" His bandmate Sandy pipes up. She starts singing a few bars, expertly blending in her bright, clear voice into his lower tones.
"Ooh, that one," you say. You, with the actual guitar, begin to play, deftly weaving your fingers in and out of the strings, laying out the base chords perfectly, as Jent and Sandy build on it with their voices. Soon, the whole room's singing Green Day -- I am one of those melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it -- but all I can do is sit there and smile mutely.
It'd been an okay night, all in all. It wasn't my element, certainly -- amongst your friends, the ones who actually said things like "down with the Man" and "gnarkill," the ones who judged the merits of Bach and Debussy based on their diminished chord progressions, the ones who deconstructed every song into its most basic elements and then built it back up again, piece by tedious piece, I was decidedly out of place. I felt keenly the prepster vibe I gave off, the one of pretentious academia (sadly, the word "antidisestablishmentarianism" kept repeating itself in my head -- how much more arrogant could I get?! It's the longest traditional word in the English language. And it doesn't even fit the context --), a vibe that, thankfully, no one gave me grief about. My years of music theory did nothing for me, and my tone-deaf ear certainly didn't help amongst these musicians. And the only thing I had to say about the Bach v. Debussy debate was -- that I hear God in Bach. How would that have gone down?
So I sat, and stayed, and kept my mouth shut. I was content, anyway, to just watch you play.
---
I have to say, I'd never bought into the whole musician deal. I'd never before been impressed by someone's ability to hold a wooden box and stroke some strings, never before found it worth listening to or watching. And yet -- as you played on and on, now gently strumming, then crescendoing into a twanging climax of chords, then bringing it down again -- I found myself more and more drawn in by your skill, how you melded in so easily with the rhythms and harmonies you played, until I couldn't look away.
I traffic in words and feelings. And, more lately, impulses and whims. I don't understand the finer points of art and architecture, music and melody, no matter how hard I study them -- and, I don't think I want to. I don't want to look at Sargent's Madame X or Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (two of my favorite paintings!) and think about the form and line, about Seurat's reasoning behind pointillism or about Sargent's stint in Paris.
I want to look at Madame X, and think of the last time I saw her -- a cool and refreshing panel of dignity and grace in a ridiculous powder blue room in the Met. She hangs commandingly at the end of a hall, framed by arches, drawing your eyes immediately to her flawless alabaster skin and the sharp black ridges of her dress, and the wistful expression on her face. (The last time I was there, this little Asian man, with a clunking black camera, asks: "Who is she looking at?"
"I have no idea," I reply. "But I love it just the same -- "). I want to remember how it made me gasp -- even though I'd seen her before -- how I'd looked up and admired the elegance she radiated, how I'd guessed again at who was on the receiving end of her gaze (a child? A lover? Or no one at all?). I want Seurat's riot of color to please me every time just as much as it did the first time, to look so hard at it that all strokes lose shape and meaning, until the colors finally blend in to form a complete, dazzling whole (to, essentially, appreciate what Seurat was trying to accomplish with his technique, but I'd never admit to that!). Sadly, I've only seen studies of Seurat's, not the real thing -- which resides in the Art Institute in Chicago -- but that's certainly on the list (Chi-town for the win!)
I don't think of the world in E-flats and dominant seventh chords. I look at things -- the rusted, green pipes of scaffolding on Broadway and 12th that smell of urine and filth, the scaffolding that holds up this city, and holds it together -- the smoldering gold rings that form the metronome in Union Square -- the brightly flashing lights of cabs fading into the smoky dusk at the end of Fifth Avenue, the point where the street and the buildings blend into one infinitesimal speck on the horizon, a dot that holds color and life and yet nothing at all -- and I hear words, I remember feelings. It's a far more traditional way to perceive and process the world around us, but it's the only way I have (since, sadly, I seem to be stubbornly resistant to learning new methods). And yet -- however we may circumnavigate, on our own twisted paths -- we seem to arrive, always, at the same destination. So I guess I'll just wait until next time, when I walk the Brooklyn Bridge and hear major thirds --
Then we'll talk. In your language or mine, or in some crazy hybrid of auxiliary verbs and inverted triads and cadences and clauses --
then, we'll talk.