I really love this story. I think the fact
that it’s about music touched a vein of mine, but I’m pretty sure you
could substitute any kind of life work.
I really think it’s beautiful the way Baldwin describes life as
beautiful, and music or drugs or anything being the culmination of so
much life.
It really is like everything that we are coalesces into every
moment, and every note of music requires all that we are, all of our
emotions, and most of all the willingness to liberate ourselves by
making ourselves vulnerable to the universality of music. It really is
like dispersing into something that floats away with the air.
Everything is so private all of the time; we live in such a subjective,
restrictive world. The one moment we let ourselves go to the music, we
give into a world that can make connections between the subjective
sacks of our individual beings. We allow our anger or our passion to
become intelligible. We punch holes in the isolation of existentialism.
And what makes it all possible is the agony we go through. Every
empathetic note requires its own agony.
I think, though, that if we can let ourselves go to things like
music, life becomes worth it. Loneliness is ameleorated. We all enter
that communal lake, a lake in which being high is an experience shared
by everyone through the means of some huge connected being of humanity.
One of my favorite composers is Mahler. I really like him because he
wrote about things that everyone connects to. When we played the
Resurrection symphony in the Helena symphony, I really felt like
something inside of me was pulled away into the music.
I just really believein the power of music I guess. It’s sometimes
my one reassurance that we are not all alone in our minds. Something
inside of us is connected.
Imperfect Mimicry in the Time Before Invisibility
I was thinking yesterday morning about some of the best imagery in the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Strangely enough, by two favorites were images for one idea: that of imperfect mimicry/assimilation. The first came while the narrator was working at Liberty Paints, creating “Optic White” (because if it ain’t white, it ain’t right). His task, to put exactly ten drops of black into each bucket of white, and stir until the gray mess became optic white. As an image of assimilation, it suggests that all black people just need to be dropped into whiteness and stirred around a bit before becoming a part of the perfect whiteness of white society. Then, when the narrator runs out of the black and finds some more in the back room (the wrong black) it doesn’t mix completely, and he ends up ruining whole batches of paint because the “wrong black” refuses to mix into society. Logically, this pisses off the narrator’s white boss…
Next, just before leaving Mary Rambo’s, the narrator is offered a cup of coffee. The coffee tasted bitter, because some renegade coffee grounds had leaked into the pot and ruined the narrator’s morning coffee. This is another suggestion that “a few bad grounds” can ruin the assimilation process for all blacks.
Can anyone think of some other images that suggest the same thing?
The Emo Hunger Artist…
I know it was a few days ago, but I wanted to post about Franz Kafka’s “The Hunger Artist”. I thought “The Hunger Artist” was a particularly interesting character, since he had opinions about his situation but he really couldn’t do anything about it. Or could he? He says at the end that he only fasted because he never could find a food to satisfy him, but did he really look? He seems as if he is taking the easy way out by fasting and is trying to cover up his laziness by saying the he is a “misunderstood” artist.
The story seems as if it could be an autobiography for Kafka’s life. Since Kafka didn’t receive much recognition as an author, he may have been frustrated with his professional life. Either way, it seems a bit emo to me.
Since this blog has a coffee theme, I figure I will recommend a coffee drink each time I post. So here it is.
A drink to help you think: Try a Jay’s Special at Morning Light or at the Pattern House. Jay’s Special consists of hazelnut, white chocolate, espresso, and milk. It is a personal favorite of my manager (who’s name just happens to be Jay…).
