A Lyre and a Player, too

On mimesis, creativity, and the dichotomy of the arts.

S.R.,

I’ve told you before, I’m sure, of my surprise at having fallen in with a crowd of classically-trained musicians. And how strange and impostrous I feel, given that I’m not one myself. Nor do I have an ounce of culture or of education in that respect.

And so I largely mingle, and languish, and dangle there, on the edge of my seat, attuned to a string quartet or a piano composition, my ears fixed, but my mind wandering, and I am moved to tears by the fact that I am left feeling nothing remarkable–rather the opposite of the Don Giovanni passage in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. Or, rather, perhaps I feel then exactly how one feels after reading that passage — “[B]oring in an 18th century way,” as Auden puts it.

I am simultaneously impoverished and inspired by these events.

Inspired, by the raw talent and skill of some of my peers, who are exceptional in many regards, musically and otherwise, by the beauty of the pieces they perform, by their magnetic quality, such that I long to develop my own lack of ability.

I am impoverished, in that I am left longing for something novel, something ex nihilo.

There are, supposedly, two sorts of musicians–forgive me if I delve into the pseudo-sociological– “writers” and “players”.

Now, as you might have guessed, writers write music, players play music. The essential distinction, I suppose, is between creating and doing, where the one creates, and the other does–though this raises parenthetical questions as to whether or not the performance itself is a creation, and I hope to address as much.

This analogy, in any case, can be extended to other art-forms–theatre, for example. Some perform and rehearse, others produce (though perhaps not in the sense in which a performance is facilitated). So much is intelligible immediately simply by our common understanding of those nouns.

The art-form of the writer takes on another shade altogether when it is lived–a production of this or that musical is subject to interpretation, and can be cast in a manner that is subversive intentionally; a reading of this poem can be affected, or the reader might be unconventional (e.g., bending the sex or gender of the protagonist in a reading).

But what characterizes the writer, in any case, is their poiesis ex nihilo (their “making out of nothing”). The raw material for the art (whencesoever it comes) becomes art when some set of constraints are imposed on it, as one does when one shaves down a line of poetry to fit a particular meter, or replaces a word for its length or stress, or utilizes a literary device to provide emphasis, or structures a stage in a particular way. The art arises through artifice, but the inspiration or the beatific vision is organic (unprocessed, unharnessed, raw) prior to this moulding.

The player, by contrast, is characterized by their doing, in which they live that which has been dreamed by the writer. With their praxis comes the height of skill (or perhaps natural talent which has been explicated as skill), the drudgery of education and repetition, and the satisfaction of having an art which has been integrated at the existential level. They, in other words, actualize the vision of the writer, and, in this sense, in general, one is no less and the other no more.

They exist, rather, on a continuum, though there do exist those happy few amphibious who are able to write and to play, and this dichotomy is by no means restricted to music, and can be found, perhaps, in every art — there are theorists and there are pragmatists (for lack of a better term).

One could imagine, perhaps, the ethicist as a kind of writer, the moralist as a kind of player, or the doctor as a kind of player, the biologist a kind of writer — and so perhaps we might be justified in shifting the boundaries of our definitions, or rather refining our genera and species to be broader and more inclusive.

Is it that I long for creativity, or is it that I long for critique?

What is interesting to suppose, I suppose, about the distinction between the writer and the player is that the writer, is, sure, an artist, but is curiously a kind of philosopher, in that the writer (or the artist, if we choose to discuss the genus) is tasked with making aesthetic choices about their inspiration, which turn it into an actionable vision (such that it can be performed by the player, i.e., is consumed). These choices involve a kind of dialogue with oneself or with the work itself, and this dialogue, in so far as it is concerned with questions of goodness, and beauty, and purpose, is a practice in philosophy. Be these choices as simple and fundamental as questions of key, or of time, or of repetition, or of progression, they definitively morph the experience of the listener, and are accountable in as much as they do so.

I suppose, then, that even in the midst of a performance, I long for philosophy.

I ask of some particular piece, or some song, or some monologue, or some painting–

What does it say? What does it mean?

“Does it have views of its own about money?

Does it think patriotism enough?”

W.H. Auden, “O, Tell Me the Truth about Love”

So, what shall we say? To whom do we leave the verdict?

Perhaps Aristotle?

“Why are the craftsmen of Dionysus [i.e., artists, including musicians], for the most part, wicked? Is it because they are least of all acquainted with reading and philosophy, on account of the fact that the greater part of their lives is spent under compulsion of their arts, and because much of their time is spent in intemperance, and sometimes in poverty? For, both of these are preparative of low-living.”

Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights XX.IV.4 (my translation)

I think he couldn’t be further from the truth.

But what do I know?

I’m not a musician.

Sincerely,

George