Last week was a pretty turbulent one, as in pretty AND turbulent. I attended two concerts in a row in the same city, and the contrasts were quite remarkable. Jónsi in Paradiso (the ‘Pop Temple’, mostly for indie music) vs. Rufus Wainwright in Carré (massive, rather high-brow, think opera and plays). One general admission standing, one seated in plush. Different audiences, age wise and otherwise.
Different also from the opera I attended in London last April. Very, very different from the concert in London that was cancelled (and is still eagerly expected in September), the idiosyncratic Whale Watching Tour. I feel like a chameleon.
I am always very apprehensive of ‘recommendations’ – if you like this, you might like this as well, or – people who bought this, also bought this. It’s even worse when friends do it. I hate to disappoint them because apparently music comes in clusters for them and you just have to choose which one fits you.
Music doesn’t fit me, I fit into music and somehow I fit into lots of different music. I guess the common denominator for me is not genre based. Then what is it based upon? I will try to tackle this issue from different sides.
Firstly, music is not just notes to me. Just like the books I care to read are not just words and the art I like to watch is not just paint on a canvas. I can (and do) find music in my books and words in the paintings I love. The thing I’m looking for is not media specific, if that makes any sense.
Secondly, I don’t care for things that are pleasing to the eye only, or to the ear only. Or things that touch the mind / soul / body only, for that matter. How can anything be perceived as ‘beautiful’ if only one sense, one part of your being is involved? Think about it. It seems such an obvious thing to say but it sums up my life. And it’s not easy if you feel that way, trust me.
Above all, I seek intensity in life. What a strange paradox, somebody hypersensitive craving sensory overloads. But with the above in mind, imagine what it feels like for me when all senses are involved, when my whole being is touched by something or someone. It happens and most of those instances turn out to be intertwined in some way, convincing me it’s not just a personal thing. Francis Bacon talking about his paintings and Ben Frost talking about his music are almost interchangeable. Ben using metaphors from visual art with the same impact. Rufus reaching over the ages by setting Shakespeare’s timeless sonnets to music. Nico Muhly contributing to both Jónsi’s and Rufus’ last albums, touring with the Whale Watching Tour, while being a classical composer. Intertwined on many levels.
I agree, that does make me seem blasé a lot of the time because I perceive many things as superficial that others marvel about. They seem to be able to find joy in fleeting fancies, which is all right of course – just not for me.
And then John Adams, on his highly recommendable blog 'Hell Mouth', writes as follows:
The critic and aesthetic philosopher Walter Pater, who lived at roughly the same time Flaubert flourished (around the middle of the 19th century), talked a lot about the “sensuous material” in a work of art, i.e. the pure sources of stimulus before they’ve been processed in the viewer’s or reader’s or listener’s mind by intellection. This “sensuous material” is for Pater the most important element in a work of art.
The aesthetic experience for him is a kind of three-fold process that begins with the sense organs receiving an impression (a sound, a visual image, a tactile or even olfactory stimulus). Then the intellectual process kicks in, analyzing the stimulus and processing the data, comparing it with previously stored experience. This is the cognitive state. Finally a third, synthesizing activity that Pater calls “imaginative reason” goes into action. “Imagination” in the sense that Pater uses it is a higher, more sophisticated process than either mere perception or “mere” intellectual reasoning, being a sort of fusing of both the sensory experience and its intellectual, analytically derived interpretation.
If this process is successfully carried out a kind of sublime meta-experience takes place, producing a situation in which the “sensuous material” is experienced as pure form. If I understand him correctly, this then would be the essence of the aesthetic encounter.
Lovely. More to follow on similarities in art. Wait for quotes by Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko, coupled with quotes by Ben Frost. Remarkable stuff, I promise!
