In reflecting on just how important a role music plays in my life, I decided to contrast it with the other art forms I simply can’t live without: literature, film and visual art. Music stands alone in one very important way. It’s the only art form that isn’t about anything. It is what it is. In the art of writing, the words are merely tools that are used to convey something like an image or story, or to make a point. Writing isn’t about the words. Someone who cannot read English might not understand the words of a novel, but if the same person heard a piece of music, he or she would experience it in the fullest possible sense. Likewise, in the world of visual art -- even the abstract variety – there is a demarcation between the medium and the image, between the canvas and the image. What’s more, it’s all about what you see in the work, which is not necessarily the same as what it shows. Essentially, paint (among other media) is to art what words are to literature. Music, by contrast --and I’m talking about pure music, without any lyrical content – is self-contained. There is no seam between the notes and the music; the notes are the music. In flashing back to a movie, we remember particular scenes, bits of dialog, not the reels unfurling in the projection room. But in order to recall a great piece of music, all we can do is hum. Unlike even abstract art, music isn’t a bridge to a greater meaning that exists outside of the work. In order to comprehend art, we need to make some sort of sense of it; and most likely it makes a different kind of sense to different people. Music comes to us fully explained. While its effect will vary from person to person, it doesn’t require our intellectual participation to complete its content. Before you add lyrics, a song isn’t about anything. It’s not even a language, because language isn’t about itself; it exists simply to convey. I’m all about music, but music isn’t about anything.
And now I’d like to discuss the Bay City Rollers. Hearing “Saturday Night” on the radio today made me a reborn believer in the power of music to essentially bottle joy. The world that’s evoked in a song – whether it’s one by the Stooges, Radiohead or the Rollers -- may not be reality, but at least it manages to harness, to distill, what’s great about life, and does so in a way that gives momentary clarity to the tuneless confusion of existence.
DISS ME KATE: Not that I’m one to be spoon-fed trendy gossip from the mass media, but I take particular offense at being inundated with the daily goings-on of Kate and Jon Gosselin. I proudly admit that I’ve never seen their show, but I’ve probably seen them on TV as much as those who comprise their voluntary audience. And I can’t recall a more boring saga playing out in the media – these people make the Octomom fiasco look like Masterpiece Theater. It’s bad enough that we treat celebrities like celebrities, drooling over their latest fashions and dirty laundry. Must we make regular people into celebrities, too, simply for being regular people?
Jordan Oakes is a local journalist who has written for publications such as St. Louis Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor. He has strong opinions that begin to atrophy if he doesn't exercise his right to express them. Tune in every Wednesday for another installment of Mediatribe - and if you missed last week's post, click here.
