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December 3, 2005
Similarity and Difference
Themes often seem to recur in my life -- Oscar Wilde: Life imitates art far more than art imitates life -- so now that I've posted my Juilliard essay below that trades rhetorically on a distinction between similarity and difference, I wanted to recall that I've used this distinction before with reference to Stravinsky's Poetics of Music, the published version of his 1940 Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard. Even for my taste, his rhetorical style is a bit much. Nevertheless:
Contrast produces an immediate effect. Similarity satisfies us only in the long run. Contrast is an element of variety, but it divides our attention. Similarity is born of a striving for unity....Variety is valid only as a means of attaining similarity. Variety surrounds me on every hand. So I need not fear that I shall be lacking in it, since I am constantly confronted by it. Contrast is everywhere. One has only to take note of it. Similarity is hidden; it must be sought out, and it is found only after the most exhaustive efforts. When variety tempts me, I am uneasy about the facile solutions it offers me. Similarity, on the other hand, poses more difficult problems but also offers results that are more solid and hence more valuable to me. (page 32)
Very meta, but I think it's interesting, given the above, that my rationale for playing has shifted from a desire for difference to a desire for similarity. And, moreover, that my desires in my life have shifted from always tending to try to stand alone and apart from other people towards trying to understand and connect with other people. The latter, after all, takes actual effort. Willingness to expend energy now for further gain later is, I'm told, the definition of maturity.*
* told, that is, by the font of all wisdom in my life, my dad.
Posted by David Richmond at December 3, 2005 5:58 PM EST
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