CUSTODIANS OF THE PRIVATE:
Thoughts on the Future of Music
Lisa Bielawa
The following TEXT was commissioned by the Composition Area, Department of Music, University of California, San Diego for its SEARCH initiative. The TEXT is copyrighted and appears in its original publication here. While links TO this TEXT from other sites are welcome, the TEXT itself may not be reprinted for any reason without express agreement in writing from the copyright holders [Please contact Roger Reynolds: info@rogerreynolds.com to facilitate this.].
One can answer this charge in several ways. I will approach it from two directions, one of them informed by my experiences in Eastern Europe, where commercialism and capitalism are frequently rendered non-functional because of economic collapse and corruption, and one of them informed by my ongoing quarrel with American postmodernism, which we as young composers inherit from our precursors. I will begin with a foray into post-communist blight, and then find my way back to our own country.
I spent several weeks in Serbia, in the summer of 2000, working with music students and preparing a workshop performance of a new music theatre piece at a contemporary theatre festival. We were in the northern part of Serbia, called Vojvodina, in a city called Novi Sad (literally New Garden) which was relatively harmonious at the time. Due to the presence of a large number of people of Hungarian descent, the strong ethnic conflicts characteristic of the rest of former Yugoslavia at the time were diluted. I ran rehearsals with the help of a translator, Svetlana, who was also my cultural guide and fast friend. She took me to see the bridges that NATO had bombed a year earlier -- twisted steel half-submerged in the river, blocking traffic and trade on the Danube. Factories had been closed, and the water was clean again. Left jobless and idle, people were swimming in the river for the first time in decades. Outdoor dance clubs lined the riverbank, and the bridges loomed over us as we danced.
When I arrived at the Belgrade airport, I was met by a man with a very beat-up car and a sign with the name of the festival in Cyrillic. I assumed I should go with him, but we couldn't really communicate. In the car on the way, we passed many junked cars and dead, idle farmlands. I saw very few other cars on the road. An entire enormous family sat at some card tables by the side of the road, selling pumpkins. A few miles later, another entire family was selling pumpkins. And then another. I saw many, many pumpkins that day. The pumpkins so outnumbered the cars on the road, I knew that at least 95% of those pumpkins were going to rot.
In a collapsed economy like Serbia's, people's lives operate largely independently of supply and demand. Near the theatre was an opulent, marble-floored, spacious café, with a well-dressed staff outnumbering the clientele. They seemed to have three or four muffins on sale. If one encountered this scenario in the East Village in the eighties, it would have indicated that the establishment was a drug front. In Serbia it was clear that the trappings of prosperity had no relationship with successful participation in buying and selling. Well-kept banks were open two hours a few days a week, and nobody went there to change money because the exchange rate was twice what it was on the black market. Behind these mysterious, illogical phenomena -- illogical to me because I am American -- was the palpable fear that something besides goods or services was being rewarded with money. I was not encouraged to discuss these irrationalities, just as I was not permitted to photograph the bombed bridges.
When I began rehearsing my piece with the music students, it became clear that they were starved for new stimulation and interaction. Some of them acknowledged an acute nostalgia for times in which Yugoslavia was part of a bustling European cultural community, and they felt shut off. There was no concern about rehearsal time being limited. There was no concern with career ambitions, because their economy had no way of supporting careers, in the arts or otherwise. (People in their 30's and 40's were largely moving back in with their parents.) They brought a blanket willingness to try any new technique, even if it was totally outside of their expressive vocabulary, but the communication gap seemed very wide at first. I coaxed them into improvising with me, which they had never done. When I introduced new sounds into an interactive improvisation, they began to explore new sounds on their own. Our work together was completely devoid of all of the trappings of professional situations, because these were people who could not possibly see music as a profession.
At the performances during the festival, people of all ages crowded into uncomfortable, smoky rooms. There was an attempt to sell tickets but many people just walked in. People shouted or walked out if they didn't like what they saw, and stayed in the building after the performances just to stand, smoke and talk about what they had seen. Not a single one of the pieces I saw by local artists appealed to a collective sentiment about the bridges or the plight of the community. Of course, any topical commentary would have been dangerous anyway. But every piece of work I saw there, without exception, was a private testimony to the anarchic act of creation. Any currency in a collective emotional language would have seemed sterile in the company of such pure work.
Here in this country we can scarcely comprehend what it means to lose our relationship with supply and demand. In Serbia I felt its absence as an undercurrent of chaos in my spirit that was stronger than my more concrete fear of being in a dangerous place. The idealism of the American artist, particularly the post-minimal composer, insists that value, even artistic value, is expressed through monetary exchange. "Who is my audience?" is another way of asking "Who will pay to hear my music?" Only in a functioning economy, based on competition in the marketplace, can we expect or hope that ticket sales, CD sales, commissions, or even grants and fellowships will come back to us in exchange for our creative offerings. Mentors encourage us to stand up for ourselves, insist on a commission amount that befits the value of our work. Professional development programs for composers teach self-marketing skills. Young composers come to these programs hungrily, because -- let's face it -- we are all scrambling to make a living while doing our work. There are only a handful of concert music composers who make their livings on commissions and appearances alone, and it is increasingly difficult to do. But perhaps we don't want to burden our work with earning responsibilities anyway. We turn to other work to bridge the gap. Teaching and performing are the most common supplements, and both of these can have a salutary effect on composing work in the best circumstances. I maintain my performance schedule on top of and sometimes to the detriment of my composing schedule. Every answer seems to be a compromise. Even composers who make a living from commissions alone find that they risk burn-out, because they have so many deadlines and need to produce so much work that there is no time to refuel, or to explore a new and risky direction in the work. I know a composer who wakes up at 4, composes for two hours and then goes to work at a furniture factory all day. He is writing beautiful and interesting things. I know a composer who cranks out music for a commercial music studio. On his own time he is writing beautiful and interesting things. I know a composer who has family resources and will never have to make a living. She is writing beautiful and interesting things. I don't think I could write beautiful and interesting things if I were in any of their shoes, but perhaps they couldn't do so in mine.
All of us plan ahead, and most of us have to make a living. We are thinking, committed musicians. Every time one of us makes a decision about how we will make the rent next month, or for the next ten years, we are contributing to the future direction of music. With the exception of this felicitous weekend, I exist entirely outside of academic institutions. This gives me great freedom in some ways and presents some problems in others. I am conflicted about money. If I get a big commission, I feel good. The money makes me feel good, the recognition makes me feel good. It also enables me to set aside the proper amount of time to compose well. In my position at the MATA festival, I raise money so that we can pay proper commission fees to young composers. This feels good too. Participating in the exchange of money for services feels good. Am I adding to the trend towards the commodification of the artwork by helping a friend put together a really slick grant proposal or fellowship application, or by speaking to other young composers about "getting their work out there"? Sometimes I think I might be, and so I try to walk a fine line.
I was once asked to attend a brainstorming session for a group of music and theater people who wanted to start a new music theater company. They wanted my advice because I had successfully founded an arts non-profit. I was talking to them about budgets, warning them that only 8% of our income comes from ticket sales, and that we are doing better in revenue than quite a few others. With visible concern, they asked me what percentage we would aim for, in a perfect world. I said zero. Free concerts. No tickets.
I was also asked once to give a talk on the subject of self-promotion for composers at a music conference. Fortunately, I was able to dodge the gremlin, because I was unavailable. I remember feeling confused by the invitation. I don't really believe in self-promotion for composers. But I do believe in advocacy. I try to renounce models of social Darwinism. If I am good at raising money and you are not, I should raise the money for you instead of teaching you how to raise the money. Your relationship with your work may require that you not project yourself as a product into the world. My skills are better used on others' behalf than my own, because if I turn them entirely to my own benefit, my own relationship to my work could get screwed up as well. We should all be bringing our skills and resources to the table to help each other do our work as authentically as we can, to enable as many small acts of anarchy as possible. We need to do this in good faith, understanding that some people may not bring as much social skill to the table as others. Those of us who have the psychological resources to be advocates must do so. We may not always be able to do so. We should take care of ourselves to remain strong. This means that we must have a healthy relationship with our own work, first and foremost, and that we must not squander our energies on self-promotion or even advocacy if it is going to compromise our work. It is not an easy balance, and I seldom strike it exactly right.
This is a personal balance that requires great self-knowledge. In times of confusion, I return to reading to guide me. Dostoevsky is the one who always gives me clarity on issues of advocacy. This beautiful excerpt is from his Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, a memoir of his first encounter with Western Europe:
What would brotherhood consist of if it were put into rational, conscious language? Of this: each separate individual, without any compulsion, without any benefit to himself, would say to society: 'We are strong only when we are together; take everything from me, if you require that of me; do not think of me as you make your laws; do not be at all concerned about me; I offer you all my rights; dispose of me as you please. This is my highest happiness: to sacrifice everything to you and to do you no harm in doing so. I shall annihilate myself, I shall melt away with complete indifference, if only your brotherhood will flourish and endure.' The brotherhood, on the other hand, must say, 'You offer us too much. We have no right not to accept what you offer us, for you yourself say that in this lies all your happiness; but what is to be done, when in our hearts we are constantly concerned about your happiness? Take everything that is ours too. Every minute and with all our strength we shall try to increase your personal freedom and self-revelation as much as possible... We are all behind you; we all guarantee your safety; we are forever doing our utmost for you because we are brothers; we are all your brothers; there are many of us, and we are strong: so be at peace and of good cheer, fear nothing, and rely on us.' [Fyodor Dostoevsky, tr. David Patterson. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1988, 50. http://nupress.northwestern.edu]
Certainly Dostoevsky's brotherhood is a utopia. We may try to govern our behavior towards each other in the creative community by this model, but the likelihood of a large-scale selfless brotherhood in the 21st century is worse than slim. The marketplace is insidious, and quite possibly will soon be inescapable, as Russell's "world trust" fulfills its destiny as "one producing and consuming unit." Blight and corruption like I witnessed in Serbia may produce conditions that offer us a glimpse into a non-commodity-based society, but clearly we should not idealize such circumstances. The vitality of the art created in such circumstances is the heroic result of acute suffering. It is not a model for sustainable artistic life. The economic stability of a nation seems only to be achievable anymore on a capitalist model. How can one not wish for economic stability in a place like Novi Sad, to ease the sorrows of the people who are living and working there? Given the alternative, I hope for a healthy economy there. Just as I sometimes feel I can't possibly refuse to help a frustrated, dispirited colleague who wants to market himself better so he can gain some opportunity or other. But the experience I had there, making new work in collaboration with these artists who were thirsty for artistic exchange and not at all concerned with other kinds of exchange, has had a very healthy effect on my own work since. Experiences like these sharpen our commitment to our work, and deepen our understanding of value.
I made another trip to Bulgaria several months after the Serbia trip, with similar spiritual results. And then I returned to the United States, my home. I had achieved some cultural distance, and this is what I discovered: there is a capitalist utopian model among some artists here, in direct contrast to Dostoevsky's brotherhood. It celebrates hybridization and the dissolution of boundaries. Consider afresh the unprecedented amount of cultural products available on the global market. Music that was never conceived of as a commodity, either because it is historically remote or because it comes from the dwindling number of cultures in which the role of music is still locally defined, is now available in convenient units -- CD's, MP3's. This overwhelming plenitude of musics can certainly be seen as a rich cross-cultural, cross-historical spawning-ground for new mongrel musical styles, a utopia of diversity.