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December 12, 2005
An Erotics of Life (SM.RFC 1)
We access so much of our lives now -- history, thoughts, feelings, ideas -- through representation. It makes an artist's job interesting: modern life is, in itself, a work of art. What's left to say?
At a crossroads, I once wrote: "...in both music and in life I need someone, anyone, to hear what I'm trying to say, signal embedded within the noise of life" [February 2004]. What I did not know then was what Sontag has taught me now: "In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art." Continental philosophy (Gadamer) has moved away, I would argue, from the sort of hermeneutics Sontag means, which is why I've found Gadamer so intriguing. But the point still stands: it is not that I needed someone to hear what I was saying. It's that I needed someone to understand what I felt.
Wilde quipped that life is usually imitating art, but the need is quite real: we need an erotics for the art that is life. My past self wrote "say" and "hear," a revealing combination. Intuitively, I had given up on trying to interpret myself; I had given up on self-hermeneutics. Instead I hoped that an other could interpret me, for me. I revealed instead my own pressing need for an erotics of my own life. I needed to unlock my heart. I needed to stop worrying about what I was saying, and start worrying about what I was feeling. And I needed to stop worrying about hearing, and start worrying about listening.
Ironically, that Rosetta stone had always been there, waiting. Which is why, late at night on August 20, 2004, I sat up with a start from my bed in Aspen, Colorado, and wrote on the pad of paper I kept on the table by my bed: The ear hears, but the heart listens, thus contradicting, without conscious understanding, what I had written in February.
I am a musician because I am trying to teach myself how to feel. If society needs me -- if you need me -- in this role, it is to the extent that I, quite incidentally, show you how to feel. I believe that music can be the erotics that Sontag found so lacking in modern (or post-modern) life. And I further believe that we so often look to fulfill that erotic need -- whether we are aware of its existence or not -- in places that will never even come close.
SM.RFC (Request for Comment): Your comments, as always, are more than welcome.
Posted by David Richmond at December 12, 2005 1:06 PM EST
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Comments
Dave-
Speaking as someone who talks philosophically more than I read philosophy I might not be the most authoritative person on this subject but I have a thought for you.
You contend that music can teach us how to feel. What if people can be taught how to feel about music?
An example of this can be seen in the way Malcolm McDowell was tortured with Beethoven's 9th in Stanly Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. He was forced to watch images of rape and violence while Beethoven's 9th was playing in the background. His prison doctors also made him feel nauseous as well during this conditioning process. The result was that when Malcolm McDowell was put back into society and exposed to violence he felt sick. He also felt the same nauseating feeling when he heard the 9th. N.B. This used to be his favorite music.
Also look at the case of Wagner. Many people cannot listen to his music because he was an anti-Semitic fuck.
Also to my taste a lot of 12-tone music is unpalatable. It becomes more pleasing to me though when I study an individual 12-tone work (e.g. Husa's Music for Prague 1968) and learn its compositional merits. Wozzeck was the same way for me.
The potential for this reflexive influence is one of the aspects of music that I find appealing. But it is something that Susan would probably not.
-Stu
Posted by: Stu at December 13, 2005 11:00 PM