writing up that hill....

[gravende@epas.utoronto.ca (David Gravender)]

In re: the comments of Messrs. McMillin and Drukman concerning my bit
of kritical musings the other day on the point of this thing called "magic":

First off, i'd like to make it clear between us all on the outer
bounds of my remarks and speculations. Mr. McMillin made the
observation the gist of which was that writing about music is a very
difficult, problematic thing, but more than that, that the analyzing
done in that sort of writing runs the very real risk of obscuring
rather than enlightening, e.g. the anecdote of Plato analyzing humour
and putting his audience to sleep. It is a point well-taken, although
it was not my intention to imply by my words or my tone otherwise.
There is certainly an ineluctable quality to music and its enjoyment
that a body can't ignore or discount.

Having said that, however, i still feel compelled to 'persist in my
folly', :) as i still am persuaded of the at least partial efficacy of
the sort of critical approach i was trying to outline whta i thought
the basics of in my previous post. Just because we cannot perhaps know
EVERYTHING about our experience of KaTe or music or art, does not mean
therefore that we are obliged to throw up our hands in a sort of
solipsistic despair and completely abandon our understanding to
subjective, inarticulate emotion or feeling. IMHO. :) That is, to the
extent that we wish to understand and also communicate to others some
measure of that understanding about what makes this or that music
great (or not so great), i think it possible and, indeed (emphasising
here again the context, the limits, of this), _necessary_ to attempt
to articulate what aspects or qualities of the matter we can
articulate. What i am NOT saying is that this is necessary for ALL or
even perhaps most appreciation of KaTe or whomever, nor even that it
will necessarily move a 14 year-old to cease liking the New Kids and
fall head over heels for KaTe (as desirable as we may feel that to be!
:)). The point is merely that once the question is brought up, "So
what IS it anyway that is so fabulous about KaTe (or Happy or the New
Kids etc), what IS this magic i think i have experienced?" then, and
assuming we desire a serious, thoughtful reply, we are compelled to
analyze the "strange phenomena" as best we can, and only after that
leave it to personal circumstance or whimsy. All of us who tune into
Love-hounds obviously have had and continue to have some strong, positive
responses to KaTe's music and 'theatre', responses that have placed
kaTe for us in a singularly prominent position--we may like other
artists, but usuually not nor even approaching to the same, well,
fervour. This bespeaks a high respect and admiration, something at
least well out of the ordinary of (pop) musical reaction. And no doubt
most of us have had occasion to play KaTe for friends or
acquaintances, with the hope that they too will "feel" what we feel.
Some do: then again, there are those who don't. For these latter, i
think it natural enough on our part to want to explain the grounds for
what may seem to them a rather excessive or even misplaced admiration,
juts as we might want to explain why we believe Candidate X a good
choice for a certain position. Or maube we would just like to satisfy
our own personal curiousity. In any event, it seems a basic human
tendency to want to understand well those things which we highly
prize, those things which add significantly to our experience of life,
and to explain to others our reasons for so highly prizing them. It's
all part of living in a society, and not alone each on our own
separate islands--as distinct and unique as we all are, we still share
and i believe want to share a great many of our responses and
experiences. Life would be a terrible lonely & poor if we could not
EVER do more than say to one another about, say, KaTe, 'Boy, isn't she
great' and only get in response either a grin and vigourous nod of the
head, or a blank, uncomprehending stare.

R.L. McMillin writes,

"...but remember, art should also be judged on its aims, as well. New
Kids don't make transplendant (sic) promises with their works, or at
least, none are expected of them. Without being presumptious (sic)
with regard to Ms. Bush's intent, I suspect that she has loftier goals
than thos set by the managemant of the New Kids."

He was responding there to this from my post:

"There seems to be a uite distinct difference between KaTe and, say,
the New Kids on the Block which makes me think that the "experience of
Kate is and can be shown to be different in quality from the
"experience of the New Kids"--that is, to be perhaps more clear about
it, that there exist objective critical (i.e. aesthetic) standards
which can show the one "magic" true (i.e. well-grounded) and the other
a delusion (insofar as it purports or is purported to be a "magic" of
the first-oreder, which is the kind we are concerned with here)."

I think my comments in parentheses at the end address just the point
R.L. McMillin makes (that KaTe has or sets higher musical/artistic
standards for herself than do the New Kids), albeit elliptically--so i
thank him for filling in the gaps. :) However, i do wonder whether it
is uite so obvious to everyone what the 'aims' of a given work of art
are, and if indeed it is helpful to assume we know a work's 'aims'
before we begin to probe and understand our experience of it, or
rather, how the work 'works'. I do agree that the artist's aspirations
for her art will have a decided impact on the character of the art
when produced, but that doesn't guarantee the quality of the impact,
which is what i think we are primarily after getting a hold on here.
To put it another way, i think 'high aims' in art are necessary but
not sufficient conditions for great art--for all we know, maybe the
New Kids DO entertain high aspirations for their music. What we want
to be able to say with some confidence is why their aspirations work
out in such a hugely lesser manner, while KaTe's work out so
fabulously well. :)

And then there's the question. what does 'higher' or 'loftier' in this
context mean, and then what about the response of the listener who may
think quite otherwise, that it is the New Kids who have the higher or
better musical goals and KaTe the lesser--does their opinion vitiate
our own seemingly self-evident one (as Jon Drukman seems inclined to
believe, owing to the understandable trauma of watchng his very own
sister fall under the spell of the New Kids while having all the while
the influence/presence of KaTe all about her in the person of himself :))?

Before i tackle that question, however, i would like to quote Mr.
McMillin once more; he writes, continuing on from the above quoted remarks,

"I also reject, at least partially, Schiller's precept that. 'The
right Art is that alone which produces the highest enjoyment.' I'll go
along with that--as long as you're talking about your aesthetics, for
your own enjoyment. Lots of people like--gag--Guns 'n' Roses, but from
my own perspective, they are just so much forgettable sound and fury.
For Axl Rose fans, perhaps, G'n'R is Art."

We seem to be talking at cross-purposes here, as i see it, and the
problem appears to lie in part in not being as clear as we ought in
our definition of terms, and being a little too quick to concede the
point of, say, Guns 'n' Roses' music being Art on some sort of par
with KaTe's, or whosever's you will. On this latter issue, i am quite
willing to concede the point that a considerable amount of
entertainment value is derived by many from such groups, even though i
personally am usually unable to share in that enthusiasm over it. And
yet--and i think Mr. McMillian would agree with me--i would resist the
claim that this music is capital-A Art, notwithstanding the possible
claims of their fans. If for these fans that music is Art (in their
minds, i mean), i would--if there were some need--ask them for reasons
why i should consider it Art, not because i'm setting myself up as
some sort of arbiter of artsistic taste but because i honestly don't
see any reason right now to grant them IN MY MIND such a status. If
their aims are only to entertain, and they say as much, then that's
something else (but see my remarks on 'aims' above). Now when we talk
about something like 'The right Art is that alone which creates the
highest enjoyment,' we need to be clear on what the last two words
mean, 'highest' and 'enjoyment'. To be brief, i take 'highest' as
referring to the peak of emotional AND intellectual (and spiritual,
yes) satisfaction, and 'enjoyment' as denoting a pleasure both
physical and mental--moreover, i take them together to refer to some
more or less objective state, that is, not simply that which I in my
unique subjectivity arise to. Let me see if it can make that last
thought clearer. There is, i am supposing, a personal 'highest' and a
communal, societal 'highest'--the former i am sole judge of, whereas
of the latter something beyond, outside, larger than me is the judge.
For example, i can say that i get the 'highest enjoyment' out of
watching The Simpsons every Thursday night, and yet no reasonable
person would think that therefore one way--or _the_ way--to get the
'highest enjoyment' out of life is to watch The Simpsons every
Thursday night. No, more likely and more rightly such a reasonable
person would conclude that i am very lacking in experience, knowledge,
and aesthetics--and she would be right. :) This is not to say that i
am actually getting NO enjoyment out of watching The Simpsons, but
rather that while it may be the highest _I_ can attain to, it really
isn't very high at all in the big scheme of things. So we could say to
a Guns 'n' Roses fan who claimed a 'highest enjoyment' from their
music--perhaps highest for you, but not for me nor for the world at large.

But we may want to say something of that order of magnitude about
KaTe, especially when we look at the effect he music and being has had
on our repective lives--we do seem convinced that she has "the face of
genius" and that her music attains to a rather rare level of
excellence, and not just as 'pop music'. Although it seems that her
music being 'pop music' has a large role to play in explaining Why
KaTe for us? Why not Mozart? or opera? etc. Putting aside for the
moment the question of the particular qualities of Kate's music that
are so exceptional, i'd like to digress for a moment on the point of
our particular _responses_  vis-a-vis the "magic". Part of it very
likely is that for us 'pop music' is 'our' peculiar entertainment, and
so we were more predisposed to like KaTe than say our parents or those
of an older generation. We could more readily discern perhaps her
uniqueness or excellence by comparing her to those of her peers we
knew, and seeing/hearing how significantly unlike, richer and more
stimulating her music is--phrase it how you will. Yet as important and
formative as thatmay have been, it does not mean that the "magic" does
not mostly inhere in KaTe's music itself--it can be helped along by
certain "superficial" (meant very relatively!) conditions of time &
place but it begins and flows from the music and performance. That the
world has not already "beaten down her door to find the Cathy Demos"
(as Jon Drukman puts it) by no means invalidates this--there are ,many
other salutary things the world has not rushed right up to and
whole-heartedly embraced, and yet that does not diminish their
intrinsic merit and power. Or to put it another way: a genie in a
bottle (supposing such a being exists! :) ) is not the less magical
for being stoppered up inside. We all are responding to some degree or
another to the same basic features, qualities, essences,
what-have-you, of KaTe's music, and all i am trying to do is
understand what precisely they are, or rather, understand how to
understand what they are.

Thus my "gemerality" and abstraction, the lack of particular instances
or examples. Those will come, but i felt the more pressing 'need'
(given that the issue had been raised by others) to attempt to clarify
the general principles of the proceedings, so that the particulars
could be offered most effectively. I do believe Art (the great stuff)
has some metaphysical resonance, that it can suggest the POSSIBILITY
of God--and i wonder which is the more fanciful, _that_ possibility or
describing KaTe's effect as one which "makes my eyes glow and my teeth
revolve" (Jon Drukman)? :) :)

And while i agree with Mr. Drukman that the appeal of music is
"timeless", i nevertheless maintain that the truly worthwhile musical
experience IS quantifiable (if not completely so) and is NOT wholly
unique from person to person (for the reason adduced above). If the
words to Suspended in Gaffa (to cite the song Jon cites) were along
the lines of "Out in the street there's a brand new beat..." etc--i.e.
that they were vacuous--i think that the song would not make you want
to weep. Similarly, if the music were different, more conventional,
the words would not redeem that lack. In either case, however, you CAN
point to the failure--and do we really want to say that no, we really
can't do that? Art IS an experience, true enough, and not a
proposition to be debated--but like any experience it needs to be
interpreted, and interpreted rightly or else be wasted. And then Art
is essentially a human product and a craft, although not merely
that--yet to the degree it IS a craft, it has a conscious, deliberate
sensibility behind it, and the greater that sensibility in the way of
recalling and expressing emotion & experience in formal terms, the
greater the artistic experience will be. THOSE are the things i want
to understand, and think it possible _to_ understand.

So that is what i have to say in terms of general principles. Next
lecture: PARTICULARS! :) :)  That is all. :)

A note to R.L. McMillin before i go. You asked about Matthew Arnold,
whom i quoted in my previous post. I'm afraid a lazy typing error may
have led you astray into linking him somehow with e.e. cummings--Mr.
Arnold was not one given to eschewing normal capitalization. :) As i
said before, he was a poet and critic in the 19th century in England
(a Victorian, in other words), and a very significant one for his age
and subsequent ones in terms of criticism and the principles behind
it. I happen to be studying him and his contemporaries in a class i'm
taking now, and that is why his words came so readily to mind on this
subject.

________________________________________________________________________

david gravender  <gravende@epas.utoronto.ca>

"i'm doing it, can i have it all NOW?"