wonderful!

haha

what does this have to do with philip roth, or portnoy's complaint?

gracias, j.

Three of my favorites finally meet up! Nicely done! Also, your lines about the relationship between music and the written word reminds me of an essay by Mallarme about poetry and music. In this part he argues that good writing and poetry can better evoke an idea than any music can.:
"..Our present task, precisely, is to find a way of transposing the symphony to the Book: in short to regain our rightful due. For undeniably, the true source of Music must not be the elemental sound of brasses, strings, or woodwinds, but the intellectual and written word in all its glory. Music of perfect fulness and clarity, the totality of universal relationships."

Any thoughts?

Coral - Thanks!

Anonymous - Not very much.

Smilesburger - Who are you?

Dylan - People are always telling me that I remind them of Mallarmé's aesthetics. Apparently the resemblance is uncanny. Though it's actually a finger puppet magnet in Schopenhauer's image that adorns my fridge. S. thought music was the superior art form, since its pure abstraction meant it was the only form to truly embody the will. I'm not sure there's any need to compare the forms. I prefer to think of each as its own language, with its own overlapping, but different expressive range. Literature can capture one aspect of a thought, and music another. Transposition from one to the other is not possible, and therein lies the problem for the music critic. Since we can't precisely express the idea we're writing about, what is it that we're doing? Are we just making recommendations? Simply providing diluted approximations of the object text's meaning? Hopefully we can do something interesting (or at least entertaining) by 1) Giving the reader enough information about the music so that she can begin to imagine it (whether that be through a description of the musical elements of the song, or of our reaction to it), and (more importantly in the case of mp3 blogs, where the reader needn't imagine the music) 2) Using the unique expressive capacity of the written word to approach the same ideas evoked by the music - not to express them in the same way or in the same aspect, but to round them out, illuminate them differently.

Of course, I only disagree with S. and M. (hmm) because they're not here to defend themselves. If those Two Bad Dudes had survived the 19th and persevered through the 20th, I'd be doing my best to defer to both without contradicting myself.

I think I agree with you Jordan, over Schopenhauer or Mallarme. Music and writing do tend to cover different ground and trying to weigh one's expressiveness over the other can be a bit silly. However, it's hard for me to think about certain expressive limiations on the two. Why is it that in some cases, music succeeds where the written word fails and vice versa? Where, exactly, do these boundaries end, begin, or overlap? (I guess one example to answer my own question ((and subsequently contradict myself)) is that I've never been physically moved to dancing by reading a book or an essay.) I don't know, it's something I still need to think over.

Also, I think your points about music-writing as a blogger are right on. Indeed, many times in reading STG, the songs are brought to life in ways I might never have known had the written part not been included. I think this illuminating, as you put it, is what makes this site so rewarding to read.

Yeah, but Schopenhauer's music sucks.

Sometimes you can think too hard.

You know, sometimes a 'f*** you haters' works equally well to silence your critics.