So I'm sittin' here, thinkin', as I pore over the
musical testimonials on this site, that there is (for me) no emotional high
as profound as being inside a good piece of music. In fact, I'm getting
giddy right now from inhaling the secondary smoke of just thinking about
music.
Obsessed? You bet, and I'm not gonna be shy telling you about it. Here's a
beautiful/ugly/stark truth: I've spent many hours in the last few weeks
taking pictures of my bass clarinet; and only minutes practicing it. Here's
one of my favorites, because it combines multiple artistic media, and it
testifies to the mystical, mythical impact that music has on me. I've got
the talking stick, so it's my turn to testify...
Obsession Exhibit #1: Capricorn with BBBC (beautiful B-flat bass
clarinet)
This is a collage of two photos, snapped by yours truly and (physically)
cut and pasted together. One is obviously my favorite talking stick. The
other is a sculpture called "Capricorn", by Max Ernst. It sits
alone in a huge open space in the National Gallery of Art (East Building),
on the National Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. My wife and I
visited that city (the first time in decades for each of us, and the first
time ever, together) in late September 2001. The Mall, and the city, were
eerily empty, as you can imagine, but beautiful, nonetheless. And, even
more beautiful, we discovered that we both loved modern art (after two
decades of marriage!) This sculpture just transfixed me, and I sat on a
nearby bench, just staring at it. I took a digital photo, then wandered
away, dazed.
Having neglected to walk up close and see who created it, it took me a few
months of (erratic) Web searching to find out. (You try putting a visual
description of a wordless work of art into a Google search string!) But it
only took a few days to decide to insert that image as the wallpaper on my
PC desktop, where I've been staring at it ever since. And while taking
pictures of my bass clarinet a week or so ago, it occurred to me that my BC
was, for me, a much more potent symbol of
authority/mysticism/spirituality/expression than the staff that the horned
figure is actually holding.
Et voila! There went my entire Saturday afternoon, printing and cutting and
pasting and scanning. But I was grinnin' the whole time...
Obsession Exhibit #2: Pictures at an Exhibition
It's true. I own six recordings of Modest Mussorgsky's musical tribute to
his deceased painter pal. Three of them are classical (one piano, one
orchestrated by Ravel, one by Stokowski), one a jazz interpretation, and
two rock renderings. I'm happy to admit that my first exposure was the most
derivative, an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer rock interpretation that only
contained a handful of Mussorgsky-derived pieces. But that led me long ago to
Mussorgsky/Ravel, and, quite recently, to a wonderful jazz interpretation
done over forty years ago by Allyn Ferguson.
Obsession Exhibit #3: The Signature
The MC Network Member Profile gives us an opportunity to create a signature
with which to close our musings. I've been mulling over some ideas, and
came up with this:
----------------------------------------------------
Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
...
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!
Hallelujah, Hallelujah...
-- Leonard Cohen
Music is my religion. So, watch out! CDs are my pamphlets, and I'm gonna
come knockin' on your doors to spread the word!
-- Low_Reed
Music is the river of the world!
-- Low_Reed, inspired by Tom Waits and a world full of music makers
----------------------------------------------------
"Too much," you say? "But it hangs together!" I
protest. "It's thematically coherent, it nicely captures my
fascination with music, and it invokes two of my favorite lyricists."
"But its very length threatens to overpower the message above your
signature!" you say. "Fat chance of that!" I retort,
scrolling up to the distant peaks where this monologue began.
Oh, well, time to sign off for now... after I tell you that we're going to
hear Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg play the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1
with Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra tomorrow night. But to warm us
up, we're going to watch her documentary DVD "Speaking in
Strings", tonight.
More later...
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