Random Thoughts: Form and Function

I think for any artist, it is a mistake to think that improving form will automatically improve function.

Consider the career trajectory of a rock musician. The upstart rocker is young, raw, and still developing technical skills on his or her instrument. Sometimes a band will release an album that “takes the world by storm” before its members can read a line of music. What most fans will consider their best album is often an album created from what the band members profess as “little knowledge of what they’re doing.”

An aged rock musician may say, “My skills have improved drastically since my first album.” Though the technical skills may improve, the quality of the music diminishes. The earlier albums had a rawness that lacked sound form, but walloped with effective function. Resonant art requires feeling. A fast solo does nothing without emotion embedding it.

I’m sure the band members of Metallica can play circles around their past selves. They can hit every old solo blindfolded. That does not mean that modern Metallica music is better, however. If anything, the music has objectively staled (almost no one would argue that Death Magnetic is a superior album to Ride the Lightning). Where rock music counterpart Megadeth has an advantage is their continued sense of urgency. Every song is still imbued with feeling. The fifty-year-old has the same attitude as his 18-year-old self. There is still pain, triumph, and loss behind the song structure. The quest continues, and therefore, so does the art.

The issue is similar for a writer. A writer’s prose may improve over the years, but that says nothing of the story he or she may wish to tell. A writer may edit a sentence a hundred times, but each successive edit does not necessarily improve the sentence. The master of syntax is by no means the master storyteller. That first drafted sentence, the impulsive one, may be grammatically worse, but it also may pack more punch. Even if embarrassingly poor in structure, it probably impacts the reader more than the hundredth edit. By the hundredth edit, can it even be said that the writer still maintains the intention of the original sentence? After all, the first sentence was probably written on feeling. The hundredth sentence is often written to impress an audience. Something was lost along the way.

My point is that effective art requires work, but it is a mistake to believe that function requires perfect form. This should be good news to any aspiring artist because it gives him or her permission to be imperfect, so long as they have something to say and a fiery means of saying it. It should also illuminate why a guitar virtuoso is often not the writer of a hit single.

Weekly Plunder: Week 19 - On the Edge

Late afternoon at rush hour and there was a faint mist in the air. Standing in a still but frigid air, I waited for the signal to walk cross Tucker Boulevard. Tucker Boulevard is arguably the most dangerous street in downtown St Louis. I’ve seen a lot of brutal wrecks on Tucker and it’s a typical week when one reads in the news about a Tucker Boulevard death or two. Cars can drive recklessly and downright maniacally.

From the other side of the street, a man indifferently crossed toward me while the “Do Not Walk” sign clearly glowed. Cars seemed to bullet at him, first from the left and from the right when he crossed the median. I waited for the sound of metal breaking bone but never heard it. A bus sharply swerved into another lane to avoid hitting him and the bus also barely evaded the car to its side. Honks sounded from everywhere. I was pleasantly surprised when the man made it to my sidewalk still in one piece.

When the man crossed he looked into my eyes and grinned. “Sometimes you just gotta say enough’s enough and live on the edge.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said the only thing on my mind: “That was pretty damn gnarly dude.” And then he walked off. I agree with his mantra, but I also know that my own risk tolerance has its limits. Still, there is a point to safety preventing us from experiencing the full potential of exhilaration.

The one-off encounters we often have with strangers…

What I’m watching: Cobra Kai season 4. A continuation of the characters from the Karate Kid films as they deal with middle age. I loved season 1. Season 4 is often silly but also addicting. I find Terry Silver to be the best character, maybe because I see a lot of him in myself (at least in the early episodes). A former martial arts master living an aristocratic life in Malibu, he is content to retire in comfort and luxury. He was a sensei and an extremely dangerous martial artist. His former partner brings him back into the world of karate by warning him of the emptiness in dying in comfort and fine dining. “Come back to the struggle instead of fading into nothing,” his old partner seems to say. In doing so he reawakens both Terry’s killer instinct, which is downright ruthless, and his talent. I have a lot of Terry Silver in me, which is why I’ve long-avoided competition. But there might be a return.

What I’m listening to: “Carry Me Away” by John Mayer. He’s really at a creative peak (he arguably always has been).

What I’m reading: The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. It’s one of those books that articulates well what I often think about and want to put into words myself.

What I’m doing: I’m aggressively rehabbing my foot with several physical therapy sessions each week, as well as rehab exercises I’m performing twice daily. And I’m back to both cycling AND running. Next week is my final week of physical therapy. The ankle feels better by the day and it’s very close to healed. The journey to heal the ankle was one I’d rather not do again, but it was also a purposeful one. Sometimes we find meaning in struggle. Building a foot from nothing to something has been a project that has inspired me to use the foot far more than I had in the past.

The Weekly Plunder: Week 2

Funny how our judgment of colors, particularly the judgment of their beauty, can change with the seasons. Orange and yellow are suddenly more alluring, whereas spring violets and sapphires are more jarring and out of place. It’s the season of pumpkin carving and corn harvesting. Leaves are more beautiful when they decay.

What I’m watching: Season 3 of What We Do in the Shadows. Hilarious!

What I’m reading: Full Throttle by Joe Hill. Dark Carousel is a personal favorite from the collection. It gave me Something Wicked This Way Comes vibes (the dark carnival with the haunted carousel that turns kids into the elderly as they spin around).

What I’m listening to: “Trains” by Porcupine Tree

What I’m doing: rehabilitating my ankle. Every attempt forward is followed by another setback. I’m a long way from healing, unfortunately. But with my inertia I’ve found more room to think.

The Still Point of the Turning World

T.S. Eliot referred to the act of reading as “The still point of the turning world.”

Finding such moments of stillness seems crucial to sanity, now more than ever.

With the advent of clockwork came the creation of anticipation, and with anticipation inevitably came anxiety. Yet time as we know it today is a relatively recent phenomenon in relation to the span of human history.

The first mechanical clock was likely invited some time in the 14th century. Portable clocks, or pocket watches, arrived much later, in the 1700s. So while clocks entrenched a spot in societal life only over the last several hundred years, humans have existed for over 200,000 years.

Before clocks, we evolved to sense time as something that ebbs and flows, like the rise and fall of the sun.

With clocks came a march toward “progress”, something that could only be tangible if we had “markers” and “goals” to anticipate.

Now there are such time markers everywhere. Beeps on phones serving as reminders of looming appointments and peers to call. Blings on computers reminding of upcoming work meetings and due dates. Deadlines on projects. Metrics on spreadsheets marking durations of tasks to push employees in the assembly line faster, for the sake of “efficiency.”

Where can modern people find stillness?

Alarms pull the languished out of bed so that they can rush and “hit a calorie count” on a gym machine, which has a set duration that counts down to an end time, after which that person must rush to work. Hurry, or your exercise time gets reduced! Even time outside of work is spent hurrying to get to work.

Phones remind us at lunch that our eating time must be brief. We have appointments, and tasks, and deficiencies to address!

The constant tick of the modern mind has never been louder, and I have never more ardently sought stillness to counter it.

I do not exercise with a phone on me. I bike and run without one to get lost in the moment and appreciate the elements, and how they interact with me and the world around me. “End time” be damned.

I try to hide screens when I read. Reading is a rare opportunity for absolute focus and meditation, and time does not need to exist while in this state of mind. I don’t want schedules and reminders distracting me from my chance to push time aside.

I hand write these blogs first, then type them later. I don’t want a sense of urgency in a rare opportunity to reflect.

The march forward creates a longing for more and uses a tool called time to hammer feelings of incompleteness into the minds of the masses. It is this sense of urgency that turns a state of peace into a state of longing. Clocks are now tattooed into our upbringing and we justify the need for them by fooling ourselves into thinking we need more. We become obsessed with addition. More screens, more material stuff, more upgrades, more responsibilities, more promotions, more emails, more phone reminders, more bills, more Xanax, and more work hours.

It feels so damn good to just hit the pause button on it all.