Blogger Book Club II: Musician in the Middle

By Amanda MacBlane

Hickey's interpretation of the dominant-submissive dynamic between a work of art and its beholder, drawing on Gilles Deleuze's analysis of Masoch and Sade, claims that:

The traditional, contractual alliance between the image and its beholder (of which beauty is the signature, and in which there is no presumption of received virtue) has been supplanted by a hierarchical one between art, presumed virtuous, and a beholder presumed in need of it. This is the signature of the therapeutic institution."

More succinctly, Hickey contends that beauty requires that a beholders relationship to a work be based on free consent, while the experience of art in the institution leaves us victimized--"ignored, disenfranchised, and instructed. Then we are told that it is 'good' for us."

Going back to the very first post, trying to see if Hickey's argument holds true in the world of "abstract, instrumental music", in order to draw a parallel we would look at the relationship between the work and the listener. Yet, there is something missing from the equation. Music offers a way into the work that visual art does not--performing.

As a musician, whether or not the actual piece of music is immediately gratifying, playing it is often a pleasure. Performers, by their very nature, are both submissive to the work and enfranchised to develop their own interpretation. I don't think that it is a coincidence that pieces I've played often stick with me longer than pieces I've just heard. The simple experience of playing music, makes you listen to it differently than a non-musician would. I would never say that my opinion is therefore more valid than a non-musician's, just that what I want from the music--what will bring that pleasure and transformation--might be different.

Furthermore, music (instrumental or not) is capable of eliciting emotions without requiring that we rationalize them or assign them a verbal meaning. Like Elvis Costello said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Just because there isn't a blatant message that can be summed up in words doesn't necessarily mean that nothing is being communicate and a musician is more likely to be in tune with this as they spend hours living with a piece to determine how to interpret it.

So having lived in this musician's dynamic for so long, as I imagine most of the other book club participants have, I do not necessarily expect or desire an immediate grasp of the art/music/film/dance/theater etc. that is set before me. Part of the pleasure I get is from the puzzle--figuring it out, adding my own interpretation, trying to link it to the world around me. While institutions might try to control what I see, it is a personal decision to submit to their teachings.

Of course this doesn't solve the mystery of why some things beckon to me, while I simply say "sayonara" (thanks Marc G.!) to others. I guess that is up to me. In the end, it's hard to shake off the values that have been beaten into us including that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and, in my life, I am that beholder.