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.].
And so we arrive at my quarrel with postmodernism.
This country in particular has been just such a spawning-ground for hybrid styles and forms. This is not a coincidence. It is a by-product of our hegemonic position. Postmodernism, a word much misunderstood, especially because it carries slightly different meanings in music, visual art, literature and dance, celebrated the constellation of composite styles and stimuli generated by the new macro-culture, or "sublime." Music, always slightly behind literature in its -isms, witnessed an explosion of such hybrids, many of which were accompanied by an anti-ivory-tower politics.
The philosophy of many composers in the generation that precedes me (people in their 40's and early 50's now) has always seemed to me to be something like this: "Why should I write one kind of music for my professors and listen to another kind of music at home? If I listen to and am influenced by music in popular idioms, why shouldnąt it infiltrate my style and inform my aesthetic?" I actually see the logic of this paradigm, and if it were at all true for myself, I suppose I can imagine feeling the same way.
I grew up in this country, I was exposed to many kinds of music when I was growing up, although because my parents were academic musicians, I had particularly esoteric listening habits as a teenager. My father was a composer, and the music he was writing when I was growing up was informed primarily by academic modernism. It was a matter of pride to him that my brother and I remained ignorant of Classical and Romantic music, although because my mother was an early music specialist, we were exposed to tonal music primarily through the Renaissance and Baroque. Later, as a teenager, I went dancing in the warehouse clubs south of Market Steet in San Francisco, and in college I worked for two summers as a singing cocktail waitress on Martha's Vineyard. I was exposed to plenty of music from the commercial world -- why do I not desire to compose in a postmodern, hybrid style -- mixing high and low, incorporating world musics into concert music settings? Why does this not feel authentic to me?
I got an answer recently, in an unexpected and delightful way. I was talking on the phone to a friend of mine, a wonderful soprano who sings mostly opera, but loves to listen to popular music at home. I had just had one of those lousy disappointments that crop up in the personal lives of single people. She was sympathetic, though she felt a little helpless. At the end of the conversation she said, "You probably wouldn't listen to it if I made you a breakup CD, would you?" I said no, probably not, but then I thought -- what a sweet gesture! This was an exchange of friendship, an act of empathy. I changed my mind, and she made me a CD of girl singer-songwriter music -- no track titles, no information -- just 'for Lisa.' I knew this was music I would never have listened to otherwise, but my appreciation of her kindness impelled me to listen carefully and gratefully. The words described situations like mine, the harmonies adhered to a long-established language of emotional expressiveness, dating back to the Romantic era. As I thought idly to myself, "Wow, I guess I'm not alone in my sad feelings," another part of myself exclaimed -- "Hey, I'll bet a lot of people use music this way!" I had stumbled into participating in the use of music as a cultural tool. The shared sentiments I imagined as I listened were collective passions, products of the American romantic imagination (that's romantic with a small r). Many people think they are having an artistic experience when they engage in this ritual. I believe that something quite different was happening here. Would Russell find it evil? Possibly. Would Milosz call it artificial sustenance? Most probably. I learned in that moment that my relationship to music does not usually inhabit this model, and that when I participate in such an exchange, which I do quite rarely, the experience may be wistful, or fun, or even therapeutic, but it is not an artistic experience. The authenticity that I strive to maintain in my work depends on knowing the difference between using music as a commodity -- even if it is as an emotional commodity -- and articulating or receiving an experience of authentic consciousness, through musical means.
My friend knew I would feel exactly the way I did when I heard these songs. The people who wrote them also knew, as did the producers, the labels, and the stores. When we participate in this system, we do so IN ORDER to feel the way we are supposed to feel, the way we are instructed to feel, the way everyone feels when they hear the same culturally-defined triggers. This is not what my music is for. Why? Because this is not what music in general is usually for in my life, and my music reflects that. The vast majority of music is commercial, of course, and the vast majority of people use music in this way, because they believe that this is what music is for. I do believe that as technology continues to conquer civilizations and centralize information, it will become more and more difficult to create and receive music outside of this commercial model.
And why do I believe it is important to continue to do so? Why does music have value? We have established that it has value precisely because its existence is not predicated on a system of supply and demand. It also has value because it exists to bear witness to the vitality of the private self -- the self that is not engaged in any exchange whatsoever.
When I read or listen, I do so in order to experience the vitality of my consciousness, and thereby, the wonder of human consciousness in general. I do not project my emotions into a shared language in order to participate in a collective sentiment. I choose to read books or listen to music that makes me feel that I am in the presence of a fellow consciousness, or a reflection of consciousness in general. When I listen, I seek an authentic observation of the self. When I compose, I seek an authentic observation of the self. Why (I have been asked) is this self-exploration not simply narcissistic? Because listening and composing are the same. An authentic act of creation is a faithful observation of the self. This self is not my-self, nor is it your-self, nor anyone's self. It is The Self. A friend of mine describes this phenomenon by saying that a successful piece of music is both private and public at once. It is absolutely private because it is only ever experienced as a solitary consciousness, but it is also absolutely public because it offers this experience of the private to anyone who will open him or herself up to it, who can still his or her participation in collective passions long enough to bear witness to The Self.
As inclusive as I strive to be in principle, and as much as I give all creative people the benefit of the doubt, I can't match the fervor of many of my colleagues for boundary-less diversity. Although postmodernist utopianism is seductive and even conceptually elegant, I have observed that, in practice, the glut of potential influences induces mass over-stimulation. It may also be said that it threatens what Russell calls the "private passions." It is no longer possible for a composer and his or her audience to share a common language, because the saturation of potential languages and hybrids of languages is beyond the limits of human absorption. When an isolated influence visited an ancient culture -- the Moors in Spain or the Persians in Armenia, for example -- it could cause a proper upset, then be integrated variously into the existing cultural language. The impact of modern-day multi-culturalism on the individual artist is far beyond the mechanics of influence. It is on the level of a traumatic delirium.
And so I have never found that I could embrace the utopian vision of maximum hybridization. My stance towards it did not, in fact, start out as a principled resistance to it, but as a kind of involuntary systemic atrophy. I can't seem to be selectively influenced. When I listen I do so intently; my receptivity to evocative and beautiful sonic ideas is high, so high that listening to music continues to be, for me, a vulnerable state. I postulate that other highly aware people besides myself know this experience of receptivity. I predict that as the information superhighway continues to strengthen and extend its reach, the percentage of thinking people who will feel this vulnerability will increase, as the contrast between the fragile individual consciousness and the massive collective dialect becomes more and more pronounced.
Roger Reynolds has suggested that "boundaries are not altogether undesirable.... We cannot do without them, yet many factors now press us to move beyond them wherever they are found." [Introduction to UCSD Music Department SEARCH EVENT V, 2002] Boundaries keep inside and outside separate. How much do we open ourselves to influence? How do we organize the charismatic ideas we discover in the world and determine, through the creative process, that they complement our own unique vision? Each of us has a unique capacity to absorb and process information and influence. It is already impossible for most of us to have a natural and open encounter with the stimuli around us without experiencing symptoms of saturation. Such symptoms inhabit our work as well as our selves. I believe it is each composer's responsibility to his or her own work to collaborate with the world only to his or her natural capacity for absorption. Collaboration with trusted colleagues is one of the best ways for creative artists who have the requisite resilience and confidence to accept and absorb influence. Influence is a necessary component in our work. Without it we stagnate. But with too much of it we atrophy or capitulate. At this point in my argument it is possible that I could meet with criticism for cultivating "Irrelevance to our Time." As much as I may seem to be advocating protectionism, I know that it would be artificial to ignore the incredible range of artistic stimuli available today. Closing off our sensibilities to the interesting and beautiful things around us is just as treacherous as letting our systems be racked by the over-stimulation of modern life. But our responsibility must be to ourselves. The influential stimuli that we amass and integrate into our work must fulfill the realization of our own full awareness. This dilemma is one about which I have had extended arguments, recently, with mentors and colleagues alike. No one can be irrelevant to his or her time -- this is my profound conviction. The only possible error, a quite common one that must never be underestimated, is irrelevance to oneself. By collaborating, listening and learning we contribute to the maintenance of a salutary creative mind. The second and equally difficult step is bearing faithful witness to that mind in one's work. Any gifted artist who pursues these two ethics will be relevant to his time, because he will be a fertile testimony to his time.
I remember a lively debate, about a year ago, with a mentor. At issue was my own peculiar ignorance about popular culture. At a time when many people's expectations of younger composers, particularly those who are outside of academia and live in New York, is that their work display a stylistic hybrid of high and low culture, my interests and passions are more eccentric and esoteric. This person suggested that as an artist, I have a responsibility to be a representative of my own culture, and that I can't really be an adequate ambassador unless I give myself a two-year catch-up course on American popular culture.
My response was that I am just as much a product of my society as anyone else, even if my interests continue to get more eccentric rather than less. Any one composer's set of influences is an elegant example of the beauty of human curiosity. The important thing is that I nurture my own vital curiosity. Then, if my music is a faithful and sincere testimony to my own musical consciousness, in all its eccentricity, I will be providing the means for intimacy with a listener. If I show up, and if the listener shows up, and if we are both sincere and aware, a true artistic exchange can take place. What is in your most private musical consciousness? Let me hear it in your work. I am not eager for you to do a lot of research outside of your native fascinations, in order to become more relevant to me. We are all relevant to each other because every consciousness contains the whole world.
Art is the extension of that consciousness into a place where it can be shared.
Does this mean that we, as vanguards of the future of music, are not supposed to care whether or not people want to hear what we write? Of course we care. We like it better when more people like what we do. It gives us company in our fascinations. It makes us feel that whatever compelled us to create certain sounds is compelling to others as well. But that isn't why we do what we do. As an artist I say: I value this experience in time -- perhaps you will too. But time is only experienced one consciousness at a time. There is always only an audience of one in my mind. It is you, or it is myself. It is an individual consciousness, experiencing sound in time. One or two of you may value the way in which I organize your experience of time through the music you are hearing today. All of you may -- I am human, of course I hope you all do! But these are social concerns -- that isn't the reason I put sounds together the way I did. The more of you who value what you hear, the more individual experiences of intimacy have taken place, and I suppose that is a desirable thing. But there isn't any way I can make that a priority if I am truly inhabiting a private passion. This would be double-dipping. The stimulation of our musical consciousnesses is supremely personal and private. It is also supremely political, because it insists on existing outside of concern with supply and demand. In our composing and in our listening, we are custodians of the private.
What will the future be, for those of us who value what the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska calls the "broken whisper" ["Autotomy," by Wislawa Szymborska, tr. Czeslaw Milosz, quoted in Milosz, The Witness of Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983, 4.] of the private self, rendered more and more frail by the din of technological advancement and collective realities? I hesitate to predict, since the more forceful agents in our world will decide so much for us in the decades to come. But I am discovering, as I speak to many other young composers from all over the world, that many of us are choosing quietly rigorous paths. There is a kind of velvet mutiny underway -- composers and artists of all kinds are gearing up to protect the domain of artistic experience from the conquest of supply and demand, by insisting on creating work that is authentic to the self and by refusing to apologize for its lack of participation in collective sentiments. We are safeguarding the full and rich consciousness that artistic experience provides. It will get increasingly difficult to do so. We will need to protect ourselves from over-stimulation and saturation. We will need to continue to grow and be influenced in ways that are authentic to us. We will need to struggle with our own unavoidable participation in collective passions, including rivalry, use and various kinds of empty gratification.
I want to share with you some of the music that young composers are writing. These pieces represent a vastly diverse range, but what I feel they have in common is that they offer me a vivid, private world. They are relevant to themselves, in a way that invites me to share that relevance.
Before we listen, I need to acknowledge the many friends and colleagues who have conversed with me about the future of music in the past weeks. I am indebted particularly to Gordon Beeferman, Mick Rossi, Eleanor Sandresky, Philip Glass, Andy Armstrong, Peter Stewart, Aaron Kernis, Rick Carrick and Sadie Dawkins for their considerable influence on me as I was writing this.
Sound files:
Excerpt 3 from On Waking 3:33, 4168K
Carla Kihlstedt, composer/violinist/vocalist
© Carla Kihlstedt, by permission
Excerpt 4 from Untitled #6 2:55, 3434K
Mick Rossi, composer/pianist, with John O'Gallagher, saxophone
© Mick Rossi, by permission
Excerpt 5 from Regina 15-1/2 1:55, 2251K
Nicholas Brooke, composer/organ, with Michael Lipsey, drums
© Nicholas Brooke, by permission
Excerpt 6 from Regina 15-1/2 0:41, 813K
Nicholas Brooke, composer/organ, with Michael Lipsey, drums
© Nicholas Brooke, by permission
Excerpt 7 from Love Spelled Backwards 2:47, 2609K
Theo Bleckmann, composer/vocalist
© Theo Bleckmann, by permission
Excerpt 8 from Detail of Beethoven's Hair 2:04, 2422K
Randy Nordschow, composer
Performed by Essential Music
© Randy Nordschow, by permission