So, what happens when you are left alone in a strange country and given too much coffee and even more free time? Why, you begin solving the world's problems, of course - one by one - in various scenarios, leading each to its carefully-crafted conclusion. First you end world-hunger, then illiteracy, and by the time the sun is firmly perched on the foreign horizon outside your window, you have moved on to military coups and polar ice caps.
Even though the coffee's only half gone, I have moved on even farther to questions of religion and philosophy. Yes, laugh if you will, but before you chastise my futile use of time, why don't you come over here and give me someone to hang out with instead! And before you think I've gone too far afield for the blogging audience, remember that philosophy itself was the 'internet' of its own time, attracting geeks and child prodigies who were addicted to modern trends, and the power of the possession of information.
So back on track - all joking aside, I actually do spend a lot of time thinking about what makes great music... the ingredients, the nuts and bolts. One of the principle ideas that I keep being led round to is
imperfection. "Faultless is tasteless", etc. There is a very interesting idea among musicians and painters and artists in general that implies that what makes music (for example) great is not in achieving perfection, but in the striving for it. Not only are 'faults' beautiful, but a 'faulty' creature reaching for (and nearly acheiving) musical perfection is breathtaking. The opposite, is certainly true. Robert Pinsky (former U.S. poet laureate) tells us that the basis of 'horror' as an artistic genre is that a human takes on qualities of something physically and/or intellectually inferior to itself; for example, man becoming animal... zombie, werewolf, mummy, a vampire's biologically-altering neckbite, Jekyll/Hyde, etc.
Some go as far as to say that it is the subtle imperfections that actually create beauty. A few examples....
- perfume contains a very noxious-smelling substance which is added in minute amounts but is essential for the end result...
- when a recording of a symphony orchestra is digitally manipulated so that every player's note is perfectly in tune, the sound is completely terrible in the end...
-a perfectly symmetrical face is almost grotesque....
These are very obvious and extreme examples, but it works even in more subtle situations (think of the low, almost inaudible - and certainly 'unmusical' - growls from Miles Davis' horn, or the harsh scraping sound of a bow across a violin string when the player lands on a heavy accent). When I listen to an organist, or a cellist, or viol-player, I am not listening for all the right notes, or the correct interpretation, I am listening for those little gaps, those stutters, those inexplicable pauses that tell me what's really on his mind.
