Now this is art, by crocky
August 29 2010
Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past. - Joyce, Ulysses 9
"Be in the now." What a crock!- Brad Mehldau (jazz pianist)
The Pianobabbler has embarked on the rich voyage of Joyce's Ulysses. Oh, I'd read it lo these many years past. Now, though, I am r.e.a.d.i.n.g. Ulysses.
It is everything one hears it is. Difficult. Astonishing. Incomprehensibly comprehensible. A monument beyond one man's achievement, achieved by one man. It is everything one hears it is.
However, I'll save the book report for another day.
My point here: I encountered in reading Ulysses the breathtaking panoramic Joycephrase, quoted above and here again: Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
I held to the phrase, like a gobblegourmet to a plunging morsel.
In turn, the phrase led me to Mehldau's response to Joyce, quoted above.
Brad Mehldau, just in case, enjoys some renown as a jazz pianist. Coming from a younger generation, he embodies for many a jazz future.
In his bloated blog piece, Mehldau crosses with Joyce. He crumps the Irishman with "a crock". Mehldau believes that life and art do not entail holding to the now.
Oof. Where does one begin?
At the beginning. Now.
To be an artist is to be beingful. To be beingful is to be in the now. That is the art.
Go into yourself, said Joyce's near-contemporary Rilke (see Pianobabbler vol.121.) I, the artist, the musician, go inside my being. I extract the art. Offer it up to the world. I wait to see it connect.
We make art in order to connect.
The more directly I extract the art, i.e. the less guarded it is, the greater the connection. The greater the connection, the greater the art.
When the Pianobabbler plays piano, he shines most when nothing veils the light between him, the music and the audience. Ardent in the now. Playing, not thinking. Being.
Being. Being means Be-ing now. Synonyms. Not will be or has been. Being.
No doubt the past is the bones of the now. Yesterday's learning and practising form today's struts and beams.
But the art lies in climbing up those beams. Standing astrut. Declaiming in the moment. Snatching life in flight. Flipping it to the listener. Immediately. Now. Being. Being. Now. Music.
Consequence: deepening one's art come through sitting more deeply in the now.
Conclusion: Mehldau's "crock" is a crock.
The roots of his crockery lie, I think, in Kierkegaard's celebrated phrase: Life is to be understood backwards, but it is lived forwards.
Mehldau has confused experience, life's retrospective continuum, and being. Experience goes on in the now, but derives from the past. Being is the now. It is the art.
Which explains, perhaps, why the Pianobabbler has never warmed to Mehldau's playing. For now.
The Pianobabbler has babbled.
The Pianobabbler is a RonDavisMusic production. The Pianobabbler's blog posts appear weekly at pianobabbler.com. Please remember to leave your comments and thoughts below. Subscribe to the RSS feed. And subscribe to RonDavisNews by clicking on the link, above right. And follow us on Twitter.
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