Defining Convention (Messin’ With the Kid, Pt. 2)
A few years ago, the Ford Motor Company and the State of New York partnered in a program to lease a fleet of electric cars — not hybrids, but fully battery-powered — to folks living along the Metro North commuter rail line. My wife (who rides into New York every day, and is rather the tree-hugging sort) managed to finagle one of the little zero-emission beasties for our personal use.
The car was called a Ford TH!NK (yes, that is an exclamation point in place of the “i”). It was a tiny two-seater, about the two-thirds the size of our Honda Civic, maybe even smaller. The body was composed of high-grade textured red plastic. Where the gas cap would’ve been, there was a plug that accepted a charge from a special electrical outlet installed in our garage.
The experience of driving the TH!NK was almost exactly the same as driving a car with an internal combustion engine. You turned the key, put it in gear, pressed the accelerator with your foot and drove. The TH!NK was quieter than the Civic. In fact, it was essentially silent except for the sound of tires on pavement. It wouldn’t go as fast, but it made the speed limit, which was fine for driving around town.
In most respects, the two cars served an identical function equally well. The difference between them was in their engineering. The TH!NK was powered by a new experimental technology, whereas the Civic used a variation on the same gasoline-fueled engine that’s powered automobiles since Henry Ford was in diapers. I doubt the TH!NK was necessarily a more complex piece of machinery — the Civic certainly had more bells and whistles — but under the skin it was revolutionary.
In fact, I would scarcely hesitate to say that, of the two automobiles, the Civic was the more conventional. That’s not to say the TH!NK was necessarily a better car. It was a fairly experimental vehicle at the time and therefore had its share of bugs. But it represented a major technological leap, with the promise of further innovations to come. That for me made it the more interesting vehicle.
Just something I’ve been TH!NKing about today …
Hi Chris,
Computers today are much faster and capable of more complex operations than those of ten years ago. We now have a complete map of the human genome, something we didn’t have ten years ago. The use of stem cell therapy to treat leukemia is more advanced than it was ten years ago. In the words of They Might Be Giants, Science Is Real.
Is technological progress a useful analogy to music? Is Wayne Shorter more “advanced” than Lester Young? Is, I don’t know, Jon Irabagon more “advanced” than Wayne Shorter? Is music also subject to the March of Progress? If so, what are we all supposed to be marching towards? Ever-increasing levels of in-your-face complexity, density, dissonance, theoretical abstraction, structural indeterminacy (or, somehow, all of the above, all at once)? It’s 2010 — are we still all supposed to be worshipping at the altar of High Modernism? Or can we maybe evaluate music on its own terms, for its own virtues (or lack thereof), instead of tabulating how it stacks up against some arbitrary notion of whatever someone happens to think “progress” means?
Comment by DJA — January 27, 2010 @ 5:41 pmAll good points and food for thought …
Comment by Chris — January 27, 2010 @ 5:48 pmWhile I have a moment, I’ll address your comment in a bit more depth, Darcy:
I think you misinterpreted the intent of my little parable, which was not to extol “progress,” but rather to illustrate my use of the word “conventional” in the previous post. That said, I can see how you inferred what you did. I can only say that I’m eternally curious about what’s around the bend and less tolerant of repetition than I perhaps could be, and those qualities certainly inform my musical perspective.
Your points are certainly fodder for discussion, and you’d probably be surprised on how many of them we’d agree.
An artist should do what he needs to do. All the writing and talk surrounding music is entertaining and edifying to some degree, but ultimately it’s about the sound, innit?
Comment by Chris — January 27, 2010 @ 8:15 pmMy crackpot look at Riesman is clarifying and will get more polished.
1. I’d argue that most free Jazz participants are ‘inner directed’ and indifferent to group think.
2. Many at the margins struggling to please an imagined audience based on fuzzy assumptions are ‘other directed’ and vulnerable to miscalculations at capturing this imagined and fussy audience.
Free Jazz peeps, especially the audiences, are like bird watchers. They enter the moment with an ear to discovery and a fondness for surprise. Roland Wiggins calls this a ‘low anticipation/fulfillment bias’.
The sub idioms that aim to please tend to work a ‘high anticipation/fulfillment bias’. Their audiences anticipate resolving to the tonic and get testy when it doesn’t. Such forms are thus prisoners of fickle fingers and fashion trends.
But, it long has been the pathway to higher incomes and blessings from the broader group at large.
The minority of us bird watchers simply don’t find the drollness of calculation to be particularly appealing so we root for those who stick their necks out in order to surprise us.
The worst that occurs is a failure to conjure the sense of surprise. But we are a kindly lot and give them the benefit of the doubt. Doing the anticipated bores the snot out of us.
And it doesn’t much matter what formal elements are engaged whether timbre surprises, sonority surprises, asymmetric melody inventions, dynamics play or what have you. It’s all fun.
The problem with the calculators is they want to be accorded the same cachet that accrues to the risk takers without doing the work.
Comment by Chris Rich — January 30, 2010 @ 1:49 pmThank you, Chris. Exactly! The bird watcher analogy is spot on. What really bugs me is it that those of us who are that way – through no fault of our own, by the way, it’s the way we’re wired – are so often accused of cultural elitism, or subject to the accusation of “worshiping at the alter of high modernism,” which is utterly and completely, 180 degrees contrary to my nature. Yup, that bird watching analogy nailed it. Probably not a coincidence that one of my favorite pianists, David Arner, is a birder.
Comment by Chris — January 30, 2010 @ 2:02 pmIt is at the core of the quarreling. Something in your life experience, and it is more common in your generation cohort, led you to follow the promptings of inner direction.
The entire phenomenon of punk rock and all its many variations was a rejection of the intensive group think applied by boomers.
Sometimes the new outlook morphs into a different group think model, but sometimes it doesn’t. You are just trying to be yourself well while those who are disturbed by this trot out all the sophistries one finds from a threatened group.
The tell is the demand for validation of choices from those of us who didn’t make them and don’t intend to make them and who incur all manner of indifference from the group. It is not enough for them to go with the flow, hog the limelight with mediocrity and make a grab for the money…noooo.. these puds also want to grab the cachet for what you and others do.
I find it offensive, pathetic and silly.
Maybe we can just run with the Zappa axiom…“If you like it, it’s bitchin’ if you don’t, it sucks” .. and call it a day.
And with that, I think I’ll toss Not Cool on the player before turning to my next stab at description involving “Today On Earth”.
Comment by Chris Rich — January 30, 2010 @ 2:46 pm