A couple of weeks ago, when I had Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece” on heavy rotation, I had a friend who was with me explain his displeasure at the discordance (3:41ish mark) found inside of the direction of his later improvisation found in the piece, high, tinny, off key, etc. It was around this point that I realized the differences in listening, (all over again, maybe) the implications found in not understanding them, and the extension of this into even the occurrences of waking reality. By this, I mean: I think we need discordance. In all of it’s forms.

Copland maybe wrote to said friend’s initial reaction around 1939 in saying: “The simplest way of listening to music is to listen for the sheer pleasure of the musical sound itself. That is the sensuous plane. It is the plane on which we hear music without thinking, without considering it in any way. One turns on the radio while doing something else and absentmindedly bathes in the sound. A kind of brainless, but attractive state of mind is engendered by the mere sound appeal of the music.”

I’m pretty sure that said friend is listening with a latent ear. One that had no room to consider anything but the immediate fact that says, “Ow. This isn’t right. That note doesn’t belong there. It’s discordant. Please change it.” I call attention to this now not because I’m innocent of falling into this, or even that listening on this plane is wrong, but because I believe that it illustrates a problem in that dwelling continually in it can lead to a lack of understanding, even resignation to the emotional potential found in other forms of listening.

A profound example of this, I think can be found in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2- First Movement (Allegro Maestoso). {Which you can find streaming : http://www.archive.org/details/uso20080601}

At a glance, Mahler presents us with a piece first that’s seemingly more than heavy. It’s almost painful how massively oppressive it seems at first. Cminor weighs heavy as the thematic mood of the piece, or at least for the first 6 minutes or so. In listening to it, we as the listeners get very completely during that period the point that Mahler is trying to communicate. It’s pretty clear the intentions of the opening section, intentions that I believe are reconciled later. Discordance isn’t found in the beginning of Mahler’s 2nd, to the same extent that it is in the above observations of Bill Evans’ usage, I just used that as an understanding of maybe how these ideas were sparked initially.

Now, in an age during which the average radio single isn’t more than about four minutes in length, this is a lot of dirge. Especially for most of us that, a) don’t really listen to but so much classical in the first place.. and b) probably aren’t about to find themsevles listening to a dirge that’s probably on average twice as long(the section that I’ve outlined, not even the whole 21 minutes..of the first of five movements.) as it takes Kris Allen to tell us to live like we’re dying. By comparison, we’re basically dead, we’re just attending our own funeral that Mahler’s written for us. Now if you’re reading this, and it doesn’t sound like the best time in the world, I first, want to commend you for reading this far, and second, want you to listen to the above. (Preferably in the greatest quality possible.) Nothing I’m about to say will probably make sense out of context.

If the first six minutes of the Allegro Maestoso weren’t what they were, (those being, foreboding, funerary, oppressive, a-la John Williams’ “Imperial March,” etc.- all things that maybe are not exactly the most fun to listen to, in today’s musical ideals..) would the contrasting movement into C Major(around the six minute mark) create half of the emotional dichotomy that it does, one that so perfectly encapsulates the concept of redemption, as consistent with the aims of the work? Hearing just the movement into C major alone, out of those six minutes of prior context, provides (personally) not even half of said emotional resonance. Mahler understands the need for contrast as an emotional foundation by starting into a six-minute dirge leading up to the movement. If though, the listener, finds those first six minutes unbearable, would he not then be depriving himself of all of the potential profundity found in said movement at all (..much less the contrast between the two, obviously unattainable in his neglect)?

I wonder too if discordance isn’t found thematically, or even found in contrast to the musical expectations of the modern, commercial era. Looking at the musical tastes of the past 50 years, for instance, I believe that the darkly thematic presentation of the first six minutes of Mahler’s first movement is what is culturally discordant in comparison to “Shots” and “Tik Tok.” Maybe even discordant in our attachment to both “shots” and “Tik Tok?”On top of this, how is this emotional reaction even a product OF our only understanding of “Shots” and “TiK ToK?” I wonder if emotional investment and attention literally to the technical aesthetic of the music being played needs to occur to all of it, in a manner that is uniform throughout, in order to understand the potential for musical/emotional profundity. Essentially: We need to weather the storm if we even want to begin to see the sun. What is it if clouds break over already open sky?

This is not to say that we should suffer through listening to our music, necessarily, but rather instead, understand that our listening should be an investment. In that, if we actively invest our attention, ourselves, into every note as it’s presented to us, we can understand where we’ve been inside of the “journey” that is this piece, and because of it, appreciate so completely the workings inside of it. To me, Mahler is emotionally “redeeming” his own piece. The idea, the concept of redemption that the symphony is built around is literally unfolding to us as the “clouds break” in the key change.

In this vein then, what is it about the whole idea of discordance that offers us what we don’t know we need? What we can’t see that we need?..that tempers us. For instance, mainstream radio- pop music doesn’t like discordance- this I’ve established. Because of this though, I think it’s rather difficult for us (generation Y, whoever we are..) to absent-mindedly bathe in the immediacy of Mahler’s sound, the completely sensual plane, with incongruent melodies, etc. and anything greater than sensual immediacy doesn’t sell records in the modern era. To listen to the dichotomy established though, especially in a concordant saturated music mainstream, has no choice but to jar us out of lethargic listening- something that I think is doubtlessly a good thing. Mahler understands that if you want to lethargically listen to what he has to offer, he’s not even trying to talk to you in the first place, and your lack of receptivity will probably weed you out in those six minutes.

Diluting this slightly: what if not even dischordance, but just investment could be equally as powerful? Perhaps instead, more credible to Leonard Bernstein, Bill Evans’ “Lucky to Be Me” presents this well, I think. The last twenty-seven seconds of which, some people around me have already tired of hearing about. I think that if you invest yourself, and totally give your entirety to just the three minutes and forty one seconds of its extent, the last twenty seven will pay you back. Substantially. Hell, it’s Bernstein, it’s worlds more approachable than Mahler, or even “Peace Piece.” Discordance is at a minimum, and still it pays, and pays greatly, I believe if an emotional investment is made throughout.

And so, what is it then about other forms of discordance that tear wide all of our assumed understandings about the world, and our place in it, moving us outside of our desire for immobility, to show us how much better it’s about to get? As soon as we reach a state of complacency with our current state of things, is the minute that we fail to lose sight of how much more profound everything could be. What are the odds that the shaking of our comfort levels has nothing attached to it? That in extending this to reality, to seek out discordance, even, is to look for those things that maybe explicitly and constructively go against our comfort levels: in music, in love, in culture, in religion, in work, in politics, in everything that we are and expose ourselves to.  I would argue that it is intensely difficult to achieve a real state of development without any form of discordance, and perhaps profundity cannot be had (realized?) without it. To strive beyond these things is to get past the sheer sensibility of modern music, and our modern paradigm. At times, jazz understands this, classical music understands this. And if art is nothing less than life reflected, what more is to be said above this translating into both accordingly? To look for depth, profundity in what we expose ourselves to, will always reward us. What then, are we listening FOR? ..Or are we just listening?

“The Cascades was a moderate-sized upstairs place, bring your own bottles and buy set-ups. A good-looking kid was trying to get notes from a tenor saxophone which was green with corrosion. It sounded the way it looked. A blond solidly built boy was watching him. He had a cornet. I introduced myself; the saxophone player shook hands with me. ‘My name is Bud Freeman and this is Jimmy McPartland.’ We sat down and began to play. Freeman seemed to know only one tune; everything sounded vaguely like “China Boy.” MacPartland had a strong, rugged tone; he knew where he was going and enjoyed the journey.

“Between sets we gabbed. MacPartland and Freeman talked about jazz as if it were a new religion… When MacPartland mentioned King Oliver, smoke came out of his eyes. ‘He’s playing a fraternity dance at the Chez Paree tonight,’ he said. ‘Let’s go down there after we finish.’ We arrived in time for the last set. Oliver lifted his horn and the first blast of “Canal Street Blues” hit me. Everyone was playing what he wanted to play and it was all mixed together as if someone had planned it with a set of micrometer calipers; notes I had never heard were peeling off the edges and dropping through the middle; there was a tone from the trumpets like warm rain on a cold day. We were immobilized. The music poured into us like daylight running down a dark hole. The choruses rolled on like high tide, getting wilder and more wonderful. Armstrong seemed able to hear what Oliver was improvising and reproduce it himself at the same time. It seemed impossible so I dismissed, it but it was true. When they finished, MacPartland said, ‘How do you like it?’ There was only one thing to say, ‘It doesn’t bother me.’” – Eddie Condon

“One of my philosophy professors lectured wildly about love once, yelling: “When you’re in love with someone, that person is the lighthouse of your universe.” (I scrawled it inside Science and Poetry in pencil—lighthouse of your universe—as if I would ever forget that phrase.) He was a delightful caricature of his position. I could swear he literally tore his hair out while howling at us. He went on, “Nothing means as much without that person.”

One of the men in the class repeated, incredulous, half-laughing “so you’re saying you can’t enjoy, like, a vacation, without someone if you’re really in love with them?”
“Of course not.” the professor replied. “Not completely. You recognize beauty, but beauty means less if they don’t witness it with you. Beauty is less. You see something sublime and your first thought is that they should be there with you. It’s not as good without them. They illuminate. They make everything more.”

“When it’s dark enough, you can see the stars.” -Persian Proverb

I think that the absence of sound is one of the most incredible things in the world. No more vividly is the concept of “nothingness” illustrated than in total silence. You feel like you could be the last human being on earth. If you add a sound, just a small one, it changes everything and maybe even makes the silence below it that much more vivid. If you have a piano in your house, just sit in front of it in silence for a while, and then push any one key, just once. It’s that that fascinates me.

Ogata Gekko- "Ryu Sho Ten" 1897

A while ago, I got a sort of inkling regarding the multi-faceted nature of intimacy. I had ideas about what kind of form this would take, but really I guess that I needed more time to comprehend exactly what that entailed, etc.

In looking into intimacy though, to me, it’s become apparent that several constants will surface. To understand these though, we need to assume two things for the sake of argument.

1. Our true, core, unadultured selves lie omnipresent within us. This is the deepest part of ourselves that is so inherent to us that we can do nothing (immediately) to change it .

2. That said selves lie latent, perhaps, under adaptations, or additions, or expectations, gates, insecurities, defenses, histories, that go along with being a part of a socially dependent society. Understanding this, in what way is the removal of those things maybe an attempt to comprehend what our latent “untouchable” selves consist of? Is this the goal of intimacy?

There is something, obviously, atypical about all of those things inside of intimate interaction that separate it from a normal, social one. For instance, take even physical proximity. Physical proximity fundamentally, is the first indication of a separation between intimate and social communication. There is something about being right up next to a person physically, that, on a most basic level is to some degree an exposure. Smell, or minor physical imperfections for instance,  naturally illuminate parts of ourselves that only those interacting intimately are privileged to. Communicative of a desire to have those things removed by that person, so in this regard, intimacy is always inherently going to imply some degree of risk.

Maybe this dictates to a great degree the impact that sex has on the western psyche. If the laws outlined above are true, than perhaps sex itself is the closest possible physical manifestation of our latent selves, shared completely with someone else.

Thus, genuine intimacy, outside of that influenced by drugs, etc..ushers with it a certain degree of exposure, nakedness in the sight of understanding that more than society’s comfortable distance exists between you and another. In a way, this is a sacrifice made on the part of both parties, an admission to a little bit more of themselves, as they are, without all of the typical defenses, without the brilliant golden gates that we so diligently upkeep, that we have been taught, and are all too proud to show everyone else. A directness and a purity of sorts regarding the deepest entities of ourselves.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” – C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves