“And how does that make you feel?”
My Reverie on the Misplaced Conflation of Art Music and Psychotherapy
Years ago, I stumbled across one of those portrait posters of Albert Einstein--one you might find next to Johnny Rotten and The Sex Pistols on an edgy teen’s bedroom wall. The caption on the poster, featuring a quote attributed to Einstein, seized my attention:
Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science.
Engaged as I was, even as a teenager, with the increasingly vivid possibilities of creativity before me, I have never forgotten this discovery. I owe something of its persistence to the notion that its message was entirely unexpected. At the heart of the issue is the way in which new and experimental music has found historically greater resistance (at least in recent cultural memory) than that of its sister arts, namely literature, theater, and the plastic arts. Our culture seems better equipped to handle the abstractions of these other media far better than with music. Music, on the other hand, seems to occupy the same place in our brains as comfort food. Yes, as a civilization we tend to like our music deep-fried, crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. If life is a a fair, then music is the reason we pay the exorbitant entrance fee and stand in all of those interminable lines on a sweaty summer day with their accompanying odors. Trouble is, this expectation rips music away from its home as an art of sonic exploration and places upon it the burden of emotional deconstruction, squarely in the psychotherapist’s chair.
This would all be less complicated if music weren’t at times such an effective emotional escape. The benefits of so-called music therapy are nearly unassailable. Specialists are trained in the use of specific types of music that can help lower blood pressure, decrease stress, and console those wading through profound grief. In fact, music is so good at this role that one can become conditioned to expect this metaphorical drug every time they listen. If the goods don’t deliver, that listener is rarely indifferent and nearly always bewildered at the betrayal levied by their most trusted Dr. Feelgood. Listening with these ears compels one to locate the intimately familiar within the sonic strains. That tendency defiantly resists the sense of discovery that is endemic to true art.
In order to illustrate further, I will comment briefly on each component of Einstein’s statement:
“Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes”
I admit that this first statement blindsided me when I read it. After all, I had been taught that my life was entirely about the pursuit of personal hopes and wishes. We tend to call those “dreams.” Everyone has a dream, right? We are supposed to. It is our dream of success (in whatever endeavor) that compels us to turn in our homework, apply to college, or get that date with the object of our affections. We get so involved in the noise of our dreaming and desiring that we are not quiet enough to hear the universe/nature/God speak. Maybe Einstein is suggesting that the first step to truly knowing the world is to let it speak to us on ITS OWN terms, not on ours. If we accept nature to be an entity as alive as we believe ourselves to be, we would engage it inquisitively, asking it to reveal itself to us.
“where we face it as free beings”
Have you ever composed anything just for the money? Something that you would probably not be spontaneously interested in? I have. Nothing is more ‘fettering’ to an artist at times than binding yourself to somebody else’s vision of beauty. Maybe your patron doesn’t care about beauty, but just wants something useful. This is the danger that awaits the successful composer churning out an abundance of commissioned works. It is so easy to simply remanufacture the same work--for that is often the thing purchased by the patron in the first place. Art requires us to approach the world free of such obligations, so that our questioning is entirely our own. If we are to accept commissions, they must be accepted with the kind of courage that is willing to reject any unusable prescription as needed.
“admiring”
If we do not admire the natural world, the very source of the vibrations and hues that give us sound and color, there is no reason to create. Creation is a perpetuation of nature.
“asking”
The first expression of curiosity is to pose a question. I have often found that the most interesting people I know ask the best questions. Why are these people so interesting? Their asking is symptomatic of a probing mind that craves the unanticipated answer in addition to an adaptability to whatever that answer might be. Are we willing to adapt to whatever nature might tell us? In a practical sense, can I hear a combination of tones as an entity unto itself, and not another vehicle for my ego (compelling the tones to unfold in a way that I will them)? I believe that tones have an inherent propensity, thus my goal as a composer is to uncover that propensity and allow it to develop accordingly. I cannot do this if I do not first figuratively “ask” what that is.
“and observing”
We begin to understand an object by seeing how it behaves. Again, to truly learn the inherent characteristics of an object is to view it without preconceptions or expectations. We must have the courage to withhold those things in order to comprehend its independent will. We cannot be threatened by a nature or an object with a will apart from our own.
“there we enter the realm of Art and Science.”
Perhaps the most surprising statement of all to the unsuspecting: the likening of art to science. If you have carefully assimilated the foregoing points, this is not at all a mysterious or inexplicable connection. You will know that the discovery of true art is an act of non-egotistical engagement, inquisition, and observation. We see that accepting nature according to its own distinct will offer us the sense of discovery only that kind of detachment can provide. I am not a scientist, but I know that conclusions may be drawn only after the acquisition of essential data. Any scientific enterprise undertaken with a preconceived agenda ought to be held in suspicion, if not contempt, by those who seek honestly to know the veracity of a thing. Why not levy the same contempt for artists who would impair their work with the same limitations of preconceived agendas?
At the outset of this exploration, we saw how the therapeutic component of music resisted the kind of discovery demanded by true art. Therapeutic music relies on familiarity and reinforcement of a preconceived world view in its perpetuation of one’s ego at the expense of locating one much more vast. Herein lies the greatest paradox of all respecting art music: in the embrace of only the familiar, we are not listening, only speaking. If music is not to be listened to, then what purpose does it ultimately serve?
