Jazz and Ripped Jeans
Last night I was sitting in a jazz club listening to a particularly fantastic musician. For a number of reasons, I was having trouble concentrating: his band wasn't very good; friends were conversing around me; my ice cream sundae was reaching up out of the bowl, grabbing my sleeve and trying to drag my attention and spoon to it; a girl I'm particularly fond of was sitting in front of me; and... well, I'm not very good at concentrating.
Nevertheless, Mr. Jerry Bergonzi has so much talent that he can counteract my penchant for distraction and demand my study and amazement.
And so, study I did. Jerry mixes incredible patterns in obtuse keys with an ever-changing tone that brings a complexity to his music that I can only begin to comprehend, let alone truly understand, fully respect, or imitate. He uses the whole range on the instrument (and more, if you ask me). He plays beautiful melodies and then throws in some dissonant notes... which he then resolves in some amazing demonstration of musical theory through roughly a million notes played at speeds unobtainable by mere humans. I thus conclude the man has bionic hands... or more likely... Mr. Bergonzi is actually an alien life form or robot, sent maliciously to Earth to destroy all hope that young, budding musicians may harbor. (What? Ever heard of the scientific process? It's all about logic, my friends.)
But it is the dissonance which got me really thinking. That's what jazz is. Throwing in notes which sound ugly by themselves - unexplained - and then painting the rest of the picture and making them beautiful. Perfectly flawed notes. Many people don't get jazz... or more often, they don't like the hardcore stuff. The avant-garde. And it makes sense, because honestly... it takes a lot of listening to appreciate.
But isn't that how every worthwhile aspect of life is? Great art - I mean the very best art - incorporates flaws. Paintings depicting real life with its ugliness… disillusionment, fear, violence… right along with its beauty. Love. True love isn’t some utopian relationship where there’s never any disagreement or pain. True love is only when you love someone for who they are – their flaws included. Or even more trivial things. Most things we love have their quirks: from your car to your old teddy bear to a flawed brick wall in your apartment to your distressed, ripped jeans.
Life needs it’s flaws to be beautiful. Perfection only goes so far – it gets boring. For true happiness we need to know true pain and suffering.
That’s something that I didn’t understand for a long time. I’m agnostic. I don’t pretend to know if there is a divine entity or intelligent design. I see evidence both ways and I think it impossible to determine at this time. But one of my big problems with the idea of a designer (especially an all-knowing, all-powerful one…) was the question of why it would incorporate such terrible things in to the plan. But I think I get it. What goes up must come down. It’s finding a mix of the two that’s hard – you can’t go up or down too fast.
I will always have problems with the idea of a designer. I find comfort in the idea of chaos and I see much proof of it in the world around me. I accept that a designer may have set up an experiment that we know as this universe… planned it well enough to create an overall balance between things… set up the fundamentals of evolution so that life could take it’s natural coarse… but I find it hard to believe that he could have planned everything that is happening now. And then the inevitable question… what came before that designer? These questions obviously cannot be answered and will drive a person crazy (I’m on that road and speeding).
/*end tangent*/
The patterns in life that repeat themselves everywhere will always be a constant source of intrigue for me. The microcosm of a good jazz-solo as symbolism for the beauty in a flawed universe is so potent to my sense of being… I feel like it’s important and there is a bigger picture that I’m not seeing, veiled brilliantly behind a feeling many take for granted.
Nevertheless, Mr. Jerry Bergonzi has so much talent that he can counteract my penchant for distraction and demand my study and amazement.
And so, study I did. Jerry mixes incredible patterns in obtuse keys with an ever-changing tone that brings a complexity to his music that I can only begin to comprehend, let alone truly understand, fully respect, or imitate. He uses the whole range on the instrument (and more, if you ask me). He plays beautiful melodies and then throws in some dissonant notes... which he then resolves in some amazing demonstration of musical theory through roughly a million notes played at speeds unobtainable by mere humans. I thus conclude the man has bionic hands... or more likely... Mr. Bergonzi is actually an alien life form or robot, sent maliciously to Earth to destroy all hope that young, budding musicians may harbor. (What? Ever heard of the scientific process? It's all about logic, my friends.)
But it is the dissonance which got me really thinking. That's what jazz is. Throwing in notes which sound ugly by themselves - unexplained - and then painting the rest of the picture and making them beautiful. Perfectly flawed notes. Many people don't get jazz... or more often, they don't like the hardcore stuff. The avant-garde. And it makes sense, because honestly... it takes a lot of listening to appreciate.
But isn't that how every worthwhile aspect of life is? Great art - I mean the very best art - incorporates flaws. Paintings depicting real life with its ugliness… disillusionment, fear, violence… right along with its beauty. Love. True love isn’t some utopian relationship where there’s never any disagreement or pain. True love is only when you love someone for who they are – their flaws included. Or even more trivial things. Most things we love have their quirks: from your car to your old teddy bear to a flawed brick wall in your apartment to your distressed, ripped jeans.
Life needs it’s flaws to be beautiful. Perfection only goes so far – it gets boring. For true happiness we need to know true pain and suffering.
That’s something that I didn’t understand for a long time. I’m agnostic. I don’t pretend to know if there is a divine entity or intelligent design. I see evidence both ways and I think it impossible to determine at this time. But one of my big problems with the idea of a designer (especially an all-knowing, all-powerful one…) was the question of why it would incorporate such terrible things in to the plan. But I think I get it. What goes up must come down. It’s finding a mix of the two that’s hard – you can’t go up or down too fast.
I will always have problems with the idea of a designer. I find comfort in the idea of chaos and I see much proof of it in the world around me. I accept that a designer may have set up an experiment that we know as this universe… planned it well enough to create an overall balance between things… set up the fundamentals of evolution so that life could take it’s natural coarse… but I find it hard to believe that he could have planned everything that is happening now. And then the inevitable question… what came before that designer? These questions obviously cannot be answered and will drive a person crazy (I’m on that road and speeding).
/*end tangent*/
The patterns in life that repeat themselves everywhere will always be a constant source of intrigue for me. The microcosm of a good jazz-solo as symbolism for the beauty in a flawed universe is so potent to my sense of being… I feel like it’s important and there is a bigger picture that I’m not seeing, veiled brilliantly behind a feeling many take for granted.
posted by Ethan at
16:40
1 Comments:
"Life needs it’s flaws to be beautiful. Perfection only goes so far – it gets boring. For true happiness we need to know true pain and suffering."
Very true. The pain, too, must be felt, experienced, not just "known", for it to be transmuted into the sublime. Engaging the soul, along with the mind, is the only way to the true part of true happiness.
By
Meghna Chakrabarti, at 23:06
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