My companion in isolation listens to a
lot of jazz. I like it too, but I have
never been able to listen to music while I am working,or reading. Or walking, or on the metro, or the treadmill.
(Ok, I don’t really have a treadmill, but I wouldn’t listen if I were on one.)
Listening to music, for me, is an activity that requires my full
concentration. I need to be still and be
open.
I am not naturally musical. Piano lessons on a
neighbor’s piano when I was about 9 was a dismal failure (exacerbated by a
classically trained Russian teacher, whose methods of correction involved a
ruler and my fingers). I tried teaching myself guitar in the 60s, but despite
my long hair and granny glasses, flower power just wasn’t working for me. Many years later, I was given a keyboard so
that I could accompany my husband, who plays the saxophone, on Christmas carols
during imaginary festivities in our home.
The teacher (really nice and patient) quit after four lessons. Back to silent nights that year. Never sang
in the school choir. Can’t dance. The
verdict: ain’t got no rhythm. But despite all that, I do enjoy music all kinds
(stuck in a wheelchair for a year due
to a freak accident, I read translated librettos while listening to operas on tape, and learned to
love opera). And while I couldn’t produce
rhythm, I never felt that I couldn’t
appreciate it. Enlightenment came when
I discovered two things. The first was a
book, “What to Listen for in Music,” by Aaron Copeland that gave me a great
deal of insight into the principles and nuances that work like an alphabet to
unlock the melodic mysteries that I thought only those with “the ear” could
discern. The second thing changed everything
for me. I discovered notan. Notan is a Japanese word that means light-dark
harmony. All my life I have been a
visually oriented person, but I could never reconcile that with my lack of
musical comprehension. I loved the look
of musical notation on paper, but I could never learn to read the notes, to
translate the visual into the aural. Yet
when I studied art, I found I could instinctively comprehend rhythm in the
brushstrokes on a painting, or the sweeping lines of a sculpture. An artwork is a composition, just as is a
piece of music. The rhythm in a painting
comes from its balance of light and dark elements, the underlying shapes that
structure the piece, whether realist or abstract, a foundation for the details
of color and texture that follow. When
there is a balance, another Japanese term comes into play, ma, the
“space in between.” There must be
emptiness to create a space for fullness to enter. That push-pull between the seen and the
unseen provides the rhythmic energy of great art.
I love the fact that looking art can
set my inner swing in motion. And how
that cadence can help me get through the emptiness of many of my recent
days. We already have the downbeat, let’s
find the upbeat, any way we can.
This rhythmic painting is “My Country,”
by Australian Aboriginal artist Tarisse King, who traces the tracks and rivers
where her ancestors once walked. Art Heals.
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