 | on music | Dec 5, '10 10:06 PM
for everyone |
- I sometimes wonder if musicians have some disorder parallel to anorexia nervosa. People with anorexia develop distorted self-images partly because they feel pressured to live up to their culture's standards of beauty. The same goes for many musicians - just change "people with anorexia" to "musicians" in the previous sentence. A musician's perceptions can be so skewed that he can no longer hear whatever beauty there is in his playing. All he hears is ugliness. Like an anorexic always complaining that she's always fat, that she's never thin enough, a musician complains that his playing is always ugly, that he never produces any beauty in his performances. Maybe someone will retort: "Of course he finds his playing ugly. He's an artist, and artists always strive for perfection. If you're striving for perfection, of course all your work will seem terrible." Maybe. Maybe such twisted perception is part of the artist's twisted sanity. But shouldn't we be wise? If the artist's striving for perfection leads to an unhealthy psychological life, isn't it a sign that something is wrong - Strangely, this all begins to echo the Christian life. We are saved by grace, but we often forget that we are also to live by grace. We neither save nor sanctify ourselves - God saves us, God makes us holy. Maybe we also forget to play by grace. To make music by grace. We mess up here and there, we fall short of the glory of Perfection, but we are forgiven in advance, we are loved before, during, and after each performance. We will never reach perfection in this life, both as a musician and as a Christian, but He has saved us, and we no longer need to see our performance/s as a way to earn salvation, but as an act of thanksgiving for His grace and love. Make a joyful noise, says the Psalmist. A joyful noise. The out-of-tune musicians, the messy musicians, the forgetful musicians, the slow musicians, the technique-less musicians, the cramming musicians - make a joyful noise, an exuberant din, an ecstatic cacophony, for if He can take the noise of our fallen lives and make music out of it, then surely He deserves all our music, all our songs of praise and thanksgiving, resounding through the world and through the streets of Heaven, the glorious echo of all He has done in our lives... - Anyone who has been on Facebook long enough will inevitably encounter one of them. It might be one of those mysterious messages about who knows what directed at who knows who. Or it might be one of those explicit outbursts about how bad this day was or how _____ was such a ______. Or it might be one of those depressing observations about how depressing life is because life is so depressing. And just as inevitably, readers of such statuses complain in their minds about how people should keep their troubles private, or how people shouldn't ruin each others' days with "bad vibes". That's Facebook life for you. There's that old parable, which almost everyone knows, where a man was beaten up by robbers and left for dead on a road. Two people passed by the man, but neither was willing to help him. Then a third person passed by. He looks down at the bruised, bleeding body of the man, and he says, "Hey!!! Get off the road! You're ruining everyone's day with your gory body! What a hideous sight! You're only allowed to bleed in private!" Of course, that's not how that story goes. But sadly, perhaps it's how our story goes. Instead of helping someone who's obviously hurt or suffering, we wish in our minds that they would keep their problems to themselves. Instead of sharing kind words, we say to ourselves, "What a killjoy this guy is!" Or at least, I know that's how my story goes. I realize that I can be so unloving. Sure, it's easy to love your neighbors when they are smart, fun, positive, and confident. But what if your neighbors are stupid, boring, negative, and insecure? What if your neighbors are emo? What if they are killjoys? I realize how easy it is to love humanity yet hate humans. We love our distant neighbors, not our immediate neighbors. We complain about all the suffering in the world, yet when we see someone who is obviously hurting, we do nothing about it. For some reason, when we think of "suffering", we think of the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, the powerless, and for some reason, we imagine that these people are far from us.
The truth is, they are near to us. They are so near that we don't see them anymore. The people we see everyday, in school, in work, on Facebook - aren't these people as worthy of our love and attention as the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, and the powerless? Or shall also we marginalize the people around us? We complain about how blind people are to the suffering around them. Yes indeed, how blind we are... Maybe I'm being naive. People don't want just anyone to intrude into their lives. There is, after all, such thing as privacy. There are boundaries which we should respect, lines which others should not cross. As one grows up in society, one learns all these things. We learn that, however much we care about people, sometimes it is socially unacceptable to pry into their lives. Society, in its characteristic way, has structured, limited, and "tamed" concern, caring, in short, love. Society's Great Commandment is: You shall love your neighbor as yourself only when it is socially acceptable. But again, maybe I'm being naive. Maybe I'm a hypocrite in the making too. After all, after posting this, do I really think I will start loving people more? Will I really be that brave? That radical? Maybe not. Not on my own power at least...  - There it was - a heart in my cup of hot choco. "Big deal, it was just a coincidence." Just a coincidence? Don't belittle coincidences. Life itself is a collage of coincidences, and if coincidences are trifles we can ignore, then we might as well close the curtain on life. Like a card balanced on the tip of a towering house of cards, my life rests on the choices of generations and generations and generations. Remove a single card, and the whole will falter; undo a choice, and I wouldn't be here today. It's the craziest lottery in the universe, and I've won. I've won existence, I've won a heart in my cup of hot choco.
But does it mean anything? If it does, what does it mean? Is anyone speaking? Years ago, I saw something which I've never forgotten. For reasons too tiresome to recount here, that afternoon long ago, I was depressed. Anyway: I found myself walking down the halls of my school, immersed in myself, when I wearily lifted my eyes and saw - and at this sight, the whole world fell silent - the sky ablaze, ablaze with orange, red, yellow flames, and as I longed to melt into that sunset, inside me, a voice whispered, like a whisper you overhear through your dreams: "I love you." The sunset whispers. Maybe the heart in the cup whispers too, and maybe it is the same Voice that speaks. I've often begged God to send me a sign. "Show me you are real!" I prayed, no, screamed, to God, hoping I would see something miraculous, something shattering, something which would blast my doubts light-years away into the farthest corner of the universe - only to open my eyes and see everything unchanged.
Perhaps I have been looking in the wrong places. (After all, do I really expect God to write with stars on the night sky: "I exist"?) Frederick Buechner writes, "If there is a God who speaks anywhere, surely he speaks here: through waking up and working, through going away and coming back again, through people you read, and books you meet, through falling asleep in the dark." Yes, if God speaks to us at all, he is speaking to us in the everyday, everyday, the whole day, and perhaps the problem isn't so much God's stubborn silence as it is our willing deafness. If we but learn to listen to our life... "Do you love me, God? I, who pushed you away as you embraced me, who nailed you to the cross with such nonchalance - do you, can you, really love me?" "Yes, I love you. I love you so much that I would send my only Son to die on your behalf so that you might have eternal life. I love you so much that I would set the whole sky on fire just to get your attention. And I love you so much that I would even put a heart in your cup of hot choco, just to remind you of how much I love you." | hahaha! | Nov 20, '10 12:02 AM
for everyone |
"The mating rites of mantises are well known: a chemical produced in the head of the male insect says, in effect, 'No, don't go near her, you fool, she'll eat you alive.' At the same time a chemical in his abdomen says, 'Yes, by all means, now and forever yes.'" - Annie Dillard - "The existence of God can't be proven scientifically," our STS lecturer declared. "It is believed only through faith." First of all, of course God's existence can't be proven scientifically. Surely we don't expect scientists to repeatedly produce God in a laboratory. You can just imagine it: "Hey man, look in the test-tube over there! I think it's... I think it's... God!" "Really?... Hey, I think you're right! How exciting! We should run the experiment again though, maybe this was just a fluke." God isn't the kind of being whose existence can be verified through scientific means. That doesn't mean we can't know that God exists. It's a pervasive yet mistaken idea that only science can determine whether a statement is true or not. "God exists!" "Oh yeah? Where's the scientific evidence?" "Uhm... There's... There's no scientific evidence." "Then he doesn't exist!" *Christian walks away* But the Christian doesn't have to walk away. He can reply, "Do I need scientific evidence to prove God?" "Of course!" "Why?" "Because the only way to prove something is through scientific evidence." "But where's the scientific evidence for that?" (That = the statement that "The only way to prove something is through scientific evidence.") It's a good problem to think over. How can you scientifically prove that science is the sole determiner of truth and the only means of obtaining knowledge? But if you don't want to think about it, the point is simply this: science isn't the only way of knowing things. No one should be frightened when someone says that God's existence can't be proven scientifically. How should one respond to such taunts? With eloquence: "Duh!" His second point though - "It is believed only through faith" - is far more questionable. Putting aside the fact that the word "faith" is a problematic word, a word I'm not particularly fond of, there's a problem with the lecturer's thinking. He seems to believe a certain dichotomy - we know things either through 1) science, or 2) faith. (Whatever faith means.) But that's a false dichotomy! There are more than two ways of knowing things - philosophy, for example. Why can't we prove God's existence philosophically? We can also know things immediately (call it "intuition", if you like.) I know I exist, I don't need science or philosophy to prove it. In other words, we need not think like this: "God can't be proven scientifically?! Aww man! I guess I'll just have to take it by faith then." Just because we can't scientifically prove God's existence, it doesn't mean we should stop defending our beliefs and retreat into anti-intellectualism. We have other means of defending Christianity.Just because we can't use paper planes and bullfrogs in combat, that doesn't mean other weapons don't exist, that doesn't mean we should run away from the battlefield. | HAHA!!! | Nov 18, '10 3:15 AM
for everyone |
You are a pain in the neck To stop you giving me a pain in the neck I protect my neck by tightening my neck muscles Which gives me the pain in the neck that you are. - R.D. Laing - Growing up: the process of looking more and more stupid in retrospect. - "Love is nothing but electrochemical activity in the brain. We have finally unraveled the age-old mystery of love!" No, we haven't. For isn't it just as incomprehensible that a lover's experiences - the first uninvited stirrings of love, the teasing hopes half-entertained and half-disdained, the almost unbearable joy of hope confirmed (even if barely), the breathless sorrow of hope denied - isn't it just as mysterious that all this should be caused by the most minute motions of matter in the brain? You might as well say that a city's electric, buzzing life depended on the swirling of dry dust in a garden. Both "love" and "electrochemical activity in the brain" ultimately point to the same experience, and we fool ourselves if we think that scientific terms represent that experience more faithfully than everyday words. Salt tastes the same even if you call it sodium chloride. A rose is still a rose even if you call it by its scientific name. We haven't solved the mystery; we've only reworded it. | hmm... | Nov 14, '10 2:44 AM
for everyone |
I was hungry, and you formed a humanities group to discuss my hunger,
I was imprisoned and you crept off quietly to your chapel and prayed for my release,
I was naked, and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance,
I was sick, and you knelt and thanked God for your health.
I was homeless and you preached to me of the shelter of the love of God,
I was lonely, and you left me alone to pray for me,
You seemed so Holy, so close to God,
But, I am still very hungry, and lonely and cold.
(I don't know who wrote this...)
| haha! | Nov 7, '10 5:30 AM
for everyone |
There's this fairy-tale about a pen and an inkwell, and in it, they argue and brag about where stories and poems come from. "It's from me!" the pen exclaims. "No, it's from me!" retorts the inkwell. Later that night the poet comes home from a violin concert, ecstatic over the beautiful music he's just heard. And he writes this: "How absurd if the bow and the violin were to put on airs about their performance! And yet, that is what we mortals do so often: the poet, the artist, the scientific inventor, the general. We put on airs ourselves, and yet we are all merely the instruments upon which the Lord plays. To him the honor alone! We have nothing to put on airs about!" After that, the pen and the inkwell continue arguing. (from "Pen and Inkwell", by Hans Christian Anderson) With what ease we keep ourselves hidden from each other! We have learned how to converse without saying anything, how to participate from a safe distance, how to be present while being absent. Carefully, we weave our path through the people-filled day, hoping others won't notice this or ask that; if we are lucky, we fall asleep as hidden as we were when we woke up. And so we remain hidden - hidden from that person we sit next to every weekday for several hours; hidden from that friend we have known for several years; hidden even from our very own family. What thrills us? What annoys us? What do we dream about? What are we afraid of? What are we proud of? What are we ashamed of? These questions and many more - can anyone answer them? If not, does anyone at least have a hint, an idea of who we are? And there are other questions - do we have any idea of who the people around us are? Do we know what thrills them? What annoys them?... Perhaps we are terrified of each other. That's why we hide ourselves, that's why we act out roles and wear masks. For if we could see what lies behind those masks, could we bear it? Could we bear the sight of another's face, with so much pain, weariness, uncertainty, no less than gratitude, wonder, perhaps even happiness carved on it - could we bear all that without our hearts breaking under such weight? Perhaps not. So we keep our distance, we remain hidden. We are terrified of each other, of what it would mean to take off that mask, of what we ought to do once we see that face. It's all too risky. And what would it mean if we took off our own masks? How would people react? Would they be able to bear it? Or will they walk away, pretend it never happened? It's all too risky. The stability of much of our lives rests on our hiddenness and the hiddenness of others. To come out of hiding, to remove the mask, is to dare to undo that stability, to risk removing a card from a house of cards. For a moment, everything is precarious, a breath could bring down the house of cards, and it all hangs on one question: Will I love this person or not? Of course, it is easy to love those who are lovable. But what about those who aren't - which include, if we are honest, many, if not all, of us? | on music | Sep 18, '10 9:41 AM
for everyone |
- In one episode of "So You Think You Can Dance", one of the judges made a comment which got me thinking. She was comparing dancers who learned dancing in the streets and dancers who learned dancing in schools. She said that the former had the advantage of "dancing from the inside out" - that is, they have feelings inside and the outward expression of those feelings is dance. The result is that their dancing is intense and authentic. With the latter group of dancers, it's the other way around - they learn the dancing first, and then they have to somehow find the feelings. In other words, with one group, it's feelings then dance; with the other, it's dance then feelings. One group starts from the inside out; the other has to work their way outside in. I realized, as a musician, I belonged to the latter group. I play the notes (outside), but more often than not, there are no feelings (inside) accompanying the notes. I produce the sounds, but not the music. I have to work my way from the outside in - I have yet to connect my feelings (if there are any! hahaha) to the notes I'm playing. But how does one do that? In his book on piano-playing, Neuhaus explains why so few pianists are able to captivate an audience, despite there being many talented pianists: "The reason is... they play what they have been taught, and not what they themselves have experienced, thought, and worked out."
The best music-making is rooted not in the compliance with external rules and techniques, but in the inner life of the creative artist. It is rooted in experience in the broadest sense - it is not separate from experience, but is the creative outflowing of that experience. (etc etc etc etc...) There's a quote that goes "You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say." The same could be said about music-making. The message comes first, then the music. (Not necessarily in terms of time, of course, but in terms of artistic priority.) But what if I have no message? What if I'm just playing because I have exams at the end of the sem? But if there's no message behind the music, then what am I saying? (Maybe I can be like John Cage, who wrote: "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry.") - How many of us have been in that situation - our concerned parents tells us "Don't watch that movie, it's bad for you!" and we reply, "It's just a movie!"? Or they might object to the songs we listen to, and we exclaim, "It's just music!" Whether our parents are right or wrong is not my concern here. What fascinates me is how we often deny art's influence over our lives. "It's just a movie! It's just music! It's just a book!", we think to ourselves, as if we could immerse our minds in these things and remain the same person afterwards. Is art really this powerless? There's that old adage - "Tell me who your friends are, and I'll tell you who you are." How often do we realize that, many times, the movies we watch, the books we read, the music we listen to, are as close to us as our dearest friends? Few people in our lives have that direct access to our innermost secrets that art has. Amongst people, we tend to project a certain image of ourselves - confident, in control, purposeful. But how many people know us the way art knows us? For art knows our weaknesses - the nagging insecurity behind our confidence, the quiet fear behind our attempts to be in control, the aimless wandering behind all our seemingly purposeful activity. Someone might complain, "But art can't know us the way a person can! The comparison is a very weak one!" And he would be right. Of course art can't "know" us - art has no literal consciousness. But perhaps this misses a crucial difference between our relationship to art and our relationship to people. Because they are conscious, because they have free wills, people can always reject us. On the other hand, art, having no consciousness, no free will, has literally no choice but to bow down to our desires. In other words, to a certain extent, we can make art mean what we want it to mean. And once this happens, once we align art with our desires, art becomes an affirmation of our desires. What do I mean? Observe the hopeless romantic. Notice how he can't help listening to love songs. He can't help singing love songs. And if he's really infatuated, he probably can't help filling the silent air with imaginary love songs - "Walk my way, and a thousand violins begin to play," goes the old song. Seeing all this, we might comment "He's singing love songs because he's in love!" That may be true, but it misses out on the other half of the situation - "He's in love because he's singing love songs!" In other words, being in love causes him to sing love songs, and singing love songs causes him to be even more in love - and on and on goes the cycle. Art becomes an affirmation of his desires. But perhaps this is too simple. It makes art to be a mere function of our desires, when in fact, art can also challenge those desires. Look again at our hopeless romantic - what if he encounters a song which sings against love, an "anti-love song", so to speak? Or worse, what if he hears a song which reminds him that there more important things than being in love? He has two choices. He can stop listening to this new song, and continue listening to love songs (which, at this point, is a form of listening to himself). Or he can open his ears and try to understand this new song. In doing so, hopefully his mind will be broadened, and "being in love" will take its proper place, not as the be-all and end-all of existence, but as a part of that larger tapestry of experience which we call life... What will he do? It's still his choice. In the end, it comes down to a question of desire - what do we really want? - Nowadays, it has become fashionable to believe that truth is relative. To hold this belief is a supposed mark of being an "enlightened" person. Ironically, this "enlightened" belief defeats the very foundational values of the Enlightenment, and in fact, reflects the gradual darkening of the minds of people today. If the motto of the Enlightenment was "Dare to know" - a call for each person to think for oneself instead of blindly following authorities - I wonder if people really stop and think deeply about whether or not truth is indeed relative. Do they give more than a fleeting thought to this issue? Or do they blindly accept this central tenet of postmodern culture?
For if we really think about this issue with an open mind, it soon becomes clear that the relativism of truth is not as obviously true as people believe it is.
For in fact, the very idea that "Truth is relative" self-destructs upon closer analysis. For if all truth is relative, then even that truth is relative. If "All truth is relative" is itself relative, then that means some truths are, in fact, absolute. But if some truths are absolute, then not all truth is relative! In other words, believing that "All truth is relative" will logically lead one to believe that "Not all truth is relative" - a self-defeating contradiction, and therefore, not true. To believe that "Truth is relative" is just as incoherent as believing that "Triangles have 4 sides".
Perhaps one of the reasons why many people today believe in the relativism of truth is because of the limitless variety of the world. There is just so much out there - how can we say there is only one truth? Doesn't the variety of the world reflect the variety of truth - the fact that truth is relative?
Though this argument has a valid point about respecting and appreciating different forms of belief, it is nevertheless a fallacious argument. Just because there are countless truth claims "out there", it doesn't mean that all of them are true, and more importantly, it doesn't cancel out the possibility that one of them is true. Imagine a class taking a math exam. Just because each student has a different answer to a math problem, it doesn't mean that there is one right answer. The teacher doesn't say "Because all my students have different answers to 2+2, it means there is no single answer to 2+2."
Due to today's information overload, perhaps it is indeed tempting, even comforting, to believe that truth is relative. It keeps one from engaging in the overwhelming intellectual effort involved in searching for the truth. The search for truth stops the moment one says there is no truth to search for in the first place. Moreover, believing this keeps one from stepping on people's toes. It helps one avoid any real debate on sensitive topics - religion, morality, maybe politics? Also, believing in relativism is closely tied to the modern "virtue" of tolerance - we all have different truths, let's all just tolerate it.
But we must be careful that we don't mistake tolerance for acceptance. For the very idea of tolerance presupposes that you disagree with a person who has beliefs contrary to your own. If you agreed with that person, you wouldn't be tolerating his beliefs - you would be agreeing with him!
- OK, enough about being rational. Time to write about perhaps the most popular form of irrationality today - love. *insert loud atonal chord* I am still convinced that love is the ultimate stupid potion - a veritable concoction which turns decent, stable individuals into hateful, confused people. Sometimes you'd hear people say "If I were in love, I would never do anything to hurt her. I would never make 'tampo'. I would never let my pride get in the way of our relationship."
Wrong!!! What this person forgets is that, once you're in love, you're in a completely different mental-emotional state altogether. You might as well say "If I were underwater, I wouldn't hold my breath" or "If I were in mid-air, I'd bake cakes!" The things which you would never do as a "sane" person, you find yourself doing when you've fallen (why do you think they call it a "fall"?). You find yourself being an immature jerk, making tampo here and there, letting your pride get in the way, and so on.
As someone once wrote: "If we judge of love by its usual effects, it resembles hatred more than friendship."
So, I ask, along with Bjork: "What's the use of falling in love?"
Hahaha, don't take this seriously... - It's probably a sentimental cliche to mention the idea that "Life is story". But give it a closer look, and it will be apparent that much of our experience is influenced by our desire to think of our own lives as a story, or as a collection of stories.
Take the idea of closure. Generally, a good story has a satisfying sense of closure. At the end of the story, all the plot's tension has been resolved. There are no loose threads of story, no unsolved mysteries. (I'm speaking generally here, of course. There are countless exceptions to this.)
When it comes to the myriad of stories that make up our lives, we also search for this sense of narrative closure. Most of the time, though, we search in vain. Someone we know leaves the country. Whatever happened to him/her? We don't know. We have a fight with someone. Will we ever be in good terms again? Maybe not. We fall for someone who we only knew for a short span of time. Where is she now? We'll never know. It's in moments like these that you realize that life wasn't made to fit into your neat and tidy ideas of closure and resolution. So much of reality goes against our desire to impose order on our life, like strong waves breaking down a sandcastle on a beach.
Ironically, when we DO find a sense of closure in life, even then, we experience sadness. We experience it in those moments of great joy or peace, when we feel as if life could end at that moment, and we would be happy with how our life ended. At the same time though, there's a quiet sense of sadness over the fact that life will go on; that, when you wake up the next day, you'll have to go back to school or to work, and that you'll have to descend once again into "normal life", with all its irritations and blandness.
So either way, we're frustrated. We don't find closure, and we're left with unanswered questions. We find closure, and life goes on the next day.
Or take the idea of a developing plot, the sense that something's actually happening in the story, that the story is going somewhere. Isn't this one significant reason why people are so allured to romance? For in romance, one feels as if the story of his/her life is moving forward, as if each day took him/her closer to his/her beloved. Whereas in "normal life", there's the nagging feeling of being stagnant and motionless. So who can blame the hopeless romantics for wanting to be in love? Who would choose boredom over excitement, hopeful progress with resigned inertia?
(And to add to this sense of forward motion, there's the sense of the meaningfulness of everything when one is in that state known as being "in love". Everything - from a spoken word that could hopefully mean "something else", to an exchange of glances that lasts a second too long (or too short?), from a text that arrives several minutes later than usual, to a glowing smile which may or may not involve you at all - everything means so much, too much perhaps, so that hopeless romantics are veritable experts at attributing meanings to a gesture which a 'sane' person would never attribute to the same gesture.)
Or take the idea that a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Even here, life thwarts our desires. This is most clearly illustrated by our relationships to the people around us. Most likely, most of the people we know at this point in life won't be around us forever. We only have them in our life for a few weeks, maybe several months, at best, maybe several years. In other words, we only see the middle of their stories. We weren't there at the beginning, and we won't know how it will end. It's like catching a few minutes of a movie which we didn't start and which we will not watch to the end. But the movie will go on playing, even if we stop watching it. Even after we say our final goodbyes to our friends (because one of us will be graduating, or immigrating, etc.), their lives will go on, even if our role in their life will be more or less over from that point onwards. Our paths cross for but a few moments, our stories intersect for but a few scenes... | hmm... | May 4, '10 5:29 AM
for everyone |
- "A group of African musicians, invited to tour the American folk festival circuit, found that their music was getting a decidedly cool response, was being dismissed as 'commercial'. After a few weeks the musicians sat down and worked out a new arrangement of their material, designed specifically to signal 'authenticity' in American folk terms. With this 'fake' sound (it bore little relationship to the music they played in their home country) they became widely praised for their 'ethnic' flair. More recently, Jeremy Marre's series of films for Channel 4 on popular music in Asia was criticized by critics because... it did not include 'enough indigenous melody as opposed to processed Western pop'. Marre's point, of course, was to show that this distinction is nowadays meaningless."
- (on film music) "... to have meaning, emotions must be shaped, and this is as much a public as a private process, one in which music (and music-making) seems central. Do people 'hear harmonies' when they kiss outside films, too?"
- "Pop love songs do not 'reflect' emotions, then, but give people the romantic terms in which to articulate and so experience their emotions."
- all from Simon Frith's "Music for Pleasure" - "Why don't I feel anything while I play?" I've often wondered.
I remember the times when I'd mentally tell myself to "feel the music" as I performed - not a very successful idea actually, one which almost invariably led to me feeling frustrated. And in my frustration, I would conclude that perhaps I wasn't a musically sensitive person after all.
And even as I look at my general musical life, I find that, though I often find the music I listen to ("classical music") to be expressive, rare is the piece of music which actually moves me. (Jazz and popular music are a different story.)
So with experiences like these, I'd end up wondering if there was something wrong with me. Maybe there is. Haha. But recently, I've come to see that perhaps my experiences aren't so "wrong" after all.
I recently read a book which argues that music (absolute music) is incapable of arousing "garden-variety" emotions (happiness, sadness, melancholy, etc...). Hard to believe? Absurd? Nonsense? See for yourself if the argument convinces you (I'm very roughly paraphrasing here):
Emotions, in order to be aroused in us, rely on a person having a belief or set of beliefs which allows that emotion to come about.
Take fear, for example. In order to experience fear, one has to have an object of fear (one can't be afraid of literally nothing), and a belief that that object can cause one harm, and therefore, should be feared. Or take happiness. In order to be happy, one has to believe that there is something to be happy about - such as winning an award (we believe awards are valuable). Etc... Something like that.
But how does this happen in absolute music? Can absolute music form in us these beliefs which are necessary for the experiencing of emotion? Can one really say that music makes us feel sad when absolute music, by its nature, is incapable of providing us with the beliefs needed to experience sadness? For example, in real life, we can feel sad because we lost something valuable to us. In music, is there something in the music we can lose which will cause us to feel sad?
The author then concluded that since music is incapable of forming these beliefs in us, music cannot arouse these "garden-variety" emotions in us.
But what then do we feel when we listen to music? For we can't doubt that music does nevertheless move us "emotionally". If what's happening to us during the listening experience isn't the arousing of emotion, then what's happening?
The author later argues that what we in fact experience is not happiness, sadness, etc. but pleasure in listening to great music - or in his words "the emotion we experience when we listen to great music" (something like that :P). (He calls it that because there's no word in English which properly describes the feeling.) It's the feeling of exhilaration, of joy, of wonder (there is no right word!) that we experience when listening to music.
But why do we feel, say, sad when we listen to a Chopin mazurka? The author notes that, while we recognize that the music is expressive of sadness, the emotion we ourselves feel is not sadness (for why would we desire to feel sad? why would we look for the experience of sadness?). The reason we think we feel sad is that we somehow mistake the sadness being expressed in the music for our own emotion (exhilaration, joy, wonder, etc...).
Perhaps by now, you're thinking this is all $&@%#&. As for me, I'm hesitant about accepting the arguments of a book right after reading it (it's the skeptic in me,hehe). Nevertheless, the book has insights which shed light on my experiences with music:
- The author (Peter Kivy is his name, if you're interested) claims that music doesn't arouse everyday emotions. I think he's right. When I listen to sad music, the sadness I feel is different from the sadness experienced in real life. The joy I feel is different from joy in real life. Maybe my mistake as a performer is that when I tell myself "feel the music!", I expect myself to feel the emotions I have in real life, when in fact, the experience of music might not even involve those kinds of emotion.
I remember one piano lesson where the teacher told me to play a passage more "sadly". I tried to think of sad memories, but couldn't bring myself to feel sad. After all, there wasn't anything to be sad about (except, perhaps, my playing, haha). Maybe instead of trying to make myself feel sad, a better approach would have been to focus instead on music's sadness - what makes it expressive of sadness - and not my own.
And indeed, I think my best performances (not that they were very good, hehe) were the ones where I focused not on trying to be emotional, but on the music itself. It's a moralistic cliche to say: "Don't focus on yourself." But perhaps that's true not only in human relations, but in performing - don't focus on yourself, on your emotions, on your technique. Focus on the music.
(Not that we will always experience intense emotion once we focus on the music. Musicians are humans too, after all, and have their "blank" days.)
OK, I hope this post made sense, haha... - Before my family headed off to ATC to watch Iron Man 2 (there are only one or two reasons why the movie's worth watching, hehe), my brother and I were discussing whether there were any "great Christian movies" out there. We realized that, while there were "OK Christian movies", it was difficult to think of any Christian movie which succeeded not only as "Christian propaganda" - as vehicles for the message of Christianity - but also as a work of art in its own right. (Not that being mere propaganda is bad in all contexts, but that's another topic...)
Of course, such judgements are highly subjective, and may be symptomatic of a certain elitism which abides in those who have experienced the supposed "best" that art has to offer (haha). Nevertheless, it still bothers me that I haven't seen a Christian film that can compare with the depth, the artistry, the emotional resonance of my favorite films, which happen to be all non-Christian.
Not that I consider all the Christian films I've seen to be terrible movies. But compare them with the greatest films ever made, with the pinnacles of the cinematic art, and one can't help but feel that Christian artists can still do so much more in their work. I'm not suggesting that we should "compete" with non-Christian artists - our sole aim should be to please and glorify God; let the artistic community think what they want. But that doesn't mean Christian artists can slack off; on the contrary, since we are using our talents for God's glory, we should raise our standards all the more. The fact that we are Christian artists makes our work even more demanding, not less demanding.
OK, enough preaching, haha...
I just find it sad that I have yet to encounter a film which does justice to the Good News - which shows the Christian message in all its beauty and profundity. (Form and content are inseparable here - no matter how "good" or "well-intentioned" the content is, if it's presented through a mediocre form, the result can only be mediocre.)
And I think today, more than ever, with so many people watching movies, there exists a need for Christian movies which show Christianity for what it is - not as naive moralism, not as irrelevant myth, not as judgemental exclusivism - but as the thing which we have all been searching for, as that which will fulfill our deepest longings. People go to the movies and are appealingly presented with various worldviews - the most prominent example in recent times might be "Avatar", which, underneath its visual splendor, had undercurrents of New Age philosophy. Can Christianity stand out amidst such a swarm of images?
(Then again, Christianity may well be always seen as absurd in the popular-secular imagination. But as Walker Percy once wondered "whether, in fact, the preposterousness of Judaeo-Christianity is not in fact an index of the preposterousness of the age.") | |
