Aaron Parks · 1,266 followers
5 hours ago via mobile ·
Oh boy. Be forewarned, this is gonna be a long one. Read on at your own peril.
Yesterday, on a flight from Munich to Katowice, I read a remarkable
essay by Jane Hirshfield: "The Question of Originality," from her book
"Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry." She's been one of my favorite
poets for a few years, but the lucidity of her prose comes as something
of a revelation to me. I'm finding her perspective on the elusive
subject of 'originality' to be particularly resonant; I've been thinking
a lot about this topic recently and it's quite serendipitous to stumble
upon such a well-researched and beautifully articulated investigation
of it. She's ostensibly writing about originality in the art of poetry,
but it seems worth considering how her thoughts could be relevant to
music and other art forms as well.
Btw, I'm going to quote
from the essay rather liberally, so in the unlikely event that either
Ms. Hirshfield or someone from HarperPerennial comes across this post
and is displeased by it: please forgive me! I'm just interested in this
stuff and am aiming to stimulate some thoughts and spark discussion. And
I really hope that some people go to check out the book; it's a very
worthwhile read.
That said...here's some words from her:
"Any thinking about originality needs first to acknowledge its two
faces. When we call a work 'original,' we point to the way it is
irreducible and creatively itself -- individual, recognizable, and
distinct. Sometimes, though, we use the word to refer to innovation, to
some quality within it previously unseen, while at other times we mean
more the idea of authentic presence -- the idea that a work, like a
person, is original not because it is new in subject matter or technique
but because it has the uniqueness that moistens and flares in all
embodied being. These aspects of originality are not entirely separate,
but they are also not the same. From its beginning, the concept reaches
in both directions.
The word 'original' comes from the Latin
verb 'oriri,' "to rise," which refers especially to the rising of the
sun and moon; but it reaches English through the noun 'origo' -- the
rising of a spring from its source in the earth. Each root contributes
its flavor. The first is intermittent and repeated, the second a
continuous flow. One offers a sense of time that is cyclical, arriving
and leaving; the other is timeless. One tells the old debate of light
and darkness; the other murmurs of a sustaining essence, water's steady,
unaccountable emergence from rocky earth. The paradox of originality is
that it points both to the newly appearing and to a continuance free of
time and says within itself that they are one."
It's very
interesting to discover this subtle duality existing in the origins of
the word itself, and also the sense of 'rising' inherent in both roots.
But I'm most struck by the inclusive definition of 'originality' in this
first paragraph. I find her point of view to be really refreshing. It
seems we often focus on and celebrate forms of originality which exhibit
"the quality of being novel or unusual" and neglect other forms of
originality which might be less immediately apparent but can be just as
significant. She offers some nuanced words of caution about the
potential dangers of becoming overly fixated on the former and seeking
individuality by being different just for the sake of being different:
"New writers soon learn Ezra Pound's injunction 'Make it new,' which is
itself a variation of Tolstoy's 'Make it strange.' Both are useful
phrases, pointing to the necessity for a vision and language stripped
clear of convention. But 'make it new' leans too strongly, perhaps,
toward the idea of innovation; a writer ripens by developing a richer,
more complex sense of the original and its ways.
American
culture loves change; both supermarket and art gallery equate the new
with the improved. Improvement is modernism's project; the driving force
of Western thought since the Enlightenment, in many realms it has
served humankind well. But Bernard Berenson, in 'Italian Painters of the
Renaissance,' warns of what he calls a 'secret preference' in Western
culture for what is new, individual, and one's own, over even the
beautiful and the good. Such an attitude, he points out, leads as
readily to artistic decline as to achievement."
Now,
Hirshfield's indictment of Western culture for what might be called its
"fetishization of the new" isn't itself a new idea; the concept has
certainly been around for a while. But I've rarely seen it expressed so
clearly or with so much compassion.
It's interesting to think
about how this can relate to music. I recall the twin commandments of
the mainstream j*zz education system when I was growing up, repeated ad
nauseam and seemingly at odds with each other:
"Learn The Tradition."
"Find Your Own Voice."
What to do with these two imposing yet semi-contradictory imperatives?
Faced with this apparent dichotomy, some young musicians make a
conscious choice to follow one path at the exclusion of the other,
either delving single-mindedly into tradition and attempting to master
its vocabulary and dialects, or rebelling against it completely and
trying to create a unique and entirely individualistic way of
music-making. Good music can come from both of these approaches,
certainly, but since there's an underlying selection of 'this' and
rejection of 'that' in both approaches, they can be isolationist (or
even separatist) to a degree and both run a certain risk of calcifying
into prisons of unconscious habit if taken too far. There's many ways of
playing mechanically, and running from the past can be just as much of a
trap as chasing it.
So if neither way on its own necessarily
leads to wholeness, perhaps their combination can help. Perhaps the
contradiction between "learn the tradition" and "find your own voice" is
illusory. Many musicians today take this less extreme and more
embracive approach: studying history but not held hostage by it,
learning from the past in order to have a foundation to 'move forward'
from. I'd say that this sort of language about music is fairly common
these days.
But that phrase "moving the music forward" is an
interesting one, and the fact that it has become accepted as something
to aspire to reveals a lot about our Western bias. First of all, what
does it even mean? Forward, okay; but toward what? What if there's a pit
of quicksand or the edge of a cliff ahead of you? Each step you take
forward is technically 'progress,' but is that necessarily a good thing?
Seems that in this situation you'd be better off turning to the
left/right, dancing in place, or somersaulting backwards, no? Who
decided that 'progress' was supposed to be the goal of art?
Okay, that was a slightly ridiculous metaphorical detour, but my
questions remain. Why is it that a person who makes overt 'innovations'
in music is often seen as having found "an original voice" but someone
with 'authentic presence' is not? Why is the mind elevated above the
heart or the body? These are systemic questions, and I'm not sure there
are easy answers. But they've been on my mind for a few years.
When I think about the music which I love the most, yes, it is usually
deeply rooted in one or more traditions, and yes, it has also risen
beyond its historical context to become something personal or
idiosyncratic, but that isn't the end of the story. There's something
more at play which is hard to name. Hirshfield, again:
"Part of
any good artist's work is to find a right balance between the
independence born of willing solitude and the ability to speak for and
to others. Neitzche's 'Three Metamorphoses' offers some insight into how
this is done. The philosopher describes three stages through which the
spirit must pass before it can truly serve. First it must become a
camel, then the camel a lion, and finally the lion a child. The camel,
who feeds on acorns and grasses and the hunger for truth, is a being who
has agreed to bear the weight of the world, to carry the difficult
forward by her own obstinate strength. For a writer, this stage
represents the willingness to be instructed by things as they are, to
enter into tradition and culture and be affected by the issues and
hardships of common human life. Having accomplished this task, Nietzche
writes, the spirit needs to turn lionlike and slay the dragon of
external values, whose every scale is a golden plaque reading 'Thou
shalt.' Here, a writer steps outside received opinion and enters
creative freedom, beginning to find his resources within. It is a stage
described also in a saying from Zen: 'If you meet the Buddha on the
road, kill him.' But rebellion and independence are still not enough.
The lion too must give way, and become a child: only in a child's
forgetting and innocence can a truly new spirit come into the world.
This is the beginning of genuinely original creation, the moment in
which the writer can turn at last toward the work without preconception,
without any motive beyond knowing the taste of what is."
I love this.
Anyway, I think I'm done for now. Wow, that was even longer than I
expected! I guess this is what can happen on a solo piano tour with some
time off in Poland. Ha!
Hope you're having a good Tuesday. I'm curious to hear some of your thoughts on the matter...
Yesterday, on a flight from Munich to Katowice, I read a remarkable essay by Jane Hirshfield: "The Question of Originality," from her book "Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry." She's been one of my favorite poets for a few years, but the lucidity of her prose comes as something of a revelation to me. I'm finding her perspective on the elusive subject of 'originality' to be particularly resonant; I've been thinking a lot about this topic recently and it's quite serendipitous to stumble upon such a well-researched and beautifully articulated investigation of it. She's ostensibly writing about originality in the art of poetry, but it seems worth considering how her thoughts could be relevant to music and other art forms as well.
Btw, I'm going to quote from the essay rather liberally, so in the unlikely event that either Ms. Hirshfield or someone from HarperPerennial comes across this post and is displeased by it: please forgive me! I'm just interested in this stuff and am aiming to stimulate some thoughts and spark discussion. And I really hope that some people go to check out the book; it's a very worthwhile read.
That said...here's some words from her:
"Any thinking about originality needs first to acknowledge its two faces. When we call a work 'original,' we point to the way it is irreducible and creatively itself -- individual, recognizable, and distinct. Sometimes, though, we use the word to refer to innovation, to some quality within it previously unseen, while at other times we mean more the idea of authentic presence -- the idea that a work, like a person, is original not because it is new in subject matter or technique but because it has the uniqueness that moistens and flares in all embodied being. These aspects of originality are not entirely separate, but they are also not the same. From its beginning, the concept reaches in both directions.
The word 'original' comes from the Latin verb 'oriri,' "to rise," which refers especially to the rising of the sun and moon; but it reaches English through the noun 'origo' -- the rising of a spring from its source in the earth. Each root contributes its flavor. The first is intermittent and repeated, the second a continuous flow. One offers a sense of time that is cyclical, arriving and leaving; the other is timeless. One tells the old debate of light and darkness; the other murmurs of a sustaining essence, water's steady, unaccountable emergence from rocky earth. The paradox of originality is that it points both to the newly appearing and to a continuance free of time and says within itself that they are one."
It's very interesting to discover this subtle duality existing in the origins of the word itself, and also the sense of 'rising' inherent in both roots. But I'm most struck by the inclusive definition of 'originality' in this first paragraph. I find her point of view to be really refreshing. It seems we often focus on and celebrate forms of originality which exhibit "the quality of being novel or unusual" and neglect other forms of originality which might be less immediately apparent but can be just as significant. She offers some nuanced words of caution about the potential dangers of becoming overly fixated on the former and seeking individuality by being different just for the sake of being different:
"New writers soon learn Ezra Pound's injunction 'Make it new,' which is itself a variation of Tolstoy's 'Make it strange.' Both are useful phrases, pointing to the necessity for a vision and language stripped clear of convention. But 'make it new' leans too strongly, perhaps, toward the idea of innovation; a writer ripens by developing a richer, more complex sense of the original and its ways.
American culture loves change; both supermarket and art gallery equate the new with the improved. Improvement is modernism's project; the driving force of Western thought since the Enlightenment, in many realms it has served humankind well. But Bernard Berenson, in 'Italian Painters of the Renaissance,' warns of what he calls a 'secret preference' in Western culture for what is new, individual, and one's own, over even the beautiful and the good. Such an attitude, he points out, leads as readily to artistic decline as to achievement."
Now, Hirshfield's indictment of Western culture for what might be called its "fetishization of the new" isn't itself a new idea; the concept has certainly been around for a while. But I've rarely seen it expressed so clearly or with so much compassion.
It's interesting to think about how this can relate to music. I recall the twin commandments of the mainstream j*zz education system when I was growing up, repeated ad nauseam and seemingly at odds with each other:
"Learn The Tradition."
"Find Your Own Voice."
What to do with these two imposing yet semi-contradictory imperatives? Faced with this apparent dichotomy, some young musicians make a conscious choice to follow one path at the exclusion of the other, either delving single-mindedly into tradition and attempting to master its vocabulary and dialects, or rebelling against it completely and trying to create a unique and entirely individualistic way of music-making. Good music can come from both of these approaches, certainly, but since there's an underlying selection of 'this' and rejection of 'that' in both approaches, they can be isolationist (or even separatist) to a degree and both run a certain risk of calcifying into prisons of unconscious habit if taken too far. There's many ways of playing mechanically, and running from the past can be just as much of a trap as chasing it.
So if neither way on its own necessarily leads to wholeness, perhaps their combination can help. Perhaps the contradiction between "learn the tradition" and "find your own voice" is illusory. Many musicians today take this less extreme and more embracive approach: studying history but not held hostage by it, learning from the past in order to have a foundation to 'move forward' from. I'd say that this sort of language about music is fairly common these days.
But that phrase "moving the music forward" is an interesting one, and the fact that it has become accepted as something to aspire to reveals a lot about our Western bias. First of all, what does it even mean? Forward, okay; but toward what? What if there's a pit of quicksand or the edge of a cliff ahead of you? Each step you take forward is technically 'progress,' but is that necessarily a good thing? Seems that in this situation you'd be better off turning to the left/right, dancing in place, or somersaulting backwards, no? Who decided that 'progress' was supposed to be the goal of art?
Okay, that was a slightly ridiculous metaphorical detour, but my questions remain. Why is it that a person who makes overt 'innovations' in music is often seen as having found "an original voice" but someone with 'authentic presence' is not? Why is the mind elevated above the heart or the body? These are systemic questions, and I'm not sure there are easy answers. But they've been on my mind for a few years.
When I think about the music which I love the most, yes, it is usually deeply rooted in one or more traditions, and yes, it has also risen beyond its historical context to become something personal or idiosyncratic, but that isn't the end of the story. There's something more at play which is hard to name. Hirshfield, again:
"Part of any good artist's work is to find a right balance between the independence born of willing solitude and the ability to speak for and to others. Neitzche's 'Three Metamorphoses' offers some insight into how this is done. The philosopher describes three stages through which the spirit must pass before it can truly serve. First it must become a camel, then the camel a lion, and finally the lion a child. The camel, who feeds on acorns and grasses and the hunger for truth, is a being who has agreed to bear the weight of the world, to carry the difficult forward by her own obstinate strength. For a writer, this stage represents the willingness to be instructed by things as they are, to enter into tradition and culture and be affected by the issues and hardships of common human life. Having accomplished this task, Nietzche writes, the spirit needs to turn lionlike and slay the dragon of external values, whose every scale is a golden plaque reading 'Thou shalt.' Here, a writer steps outside received opinion and enters creative freedom, beginning to find his resources within. It is a stage described also in a saying from Zen: 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.' But rebellion and independence are still not enough. The lion too must give way, and become a child: only in a child's forgetting and innocence can a truly new spirit come into the world. This is the beginning of genuinely original creation, the moment in which the writer can turn at last toward the work without preconception, without any motive beyond knowing the taste of what is."
I love this.
Anyway, I think I'm done for now. Wow, that was even longer than I expected! I guess this is what can happen on a solo piano tour with some time off in Poland. Ha!
Hope you're having a good Tuesday. I'm curious to hear some of your thoughts on the matter...
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