Beginnings Part 2 supplement — The Warriors

Dorsey Wright as Cleon, the leader of the Warriors.  The Coney Island Wonder Wheel glows in the background.  Image via pixshark.com.

Walter Hill’s 1979 film The Warriors, based on Sol Yurick’s novel, has a relatively simple premise: a street gang from Coney Island, the Warriors, must find their way home from the Bronx while being pursued by all the other gangs in the city, who wrongly suspect them of having murdered someone who was going to unite all of the city’s gangs. 

The opening credits are shown over a seven-minute montage that brilliantly maps out the movie’s premise.

The film opens on a nighttime shot of a The Wonder Wheel, a Coney Island landmark.

Image via socialpsychol.wordpress.com.

A subway train pulls into a station, with the Wonder Wheel still in the background.

We see the Warriors board the train, intercut with a speech from their leader, Cleon, briefing them on the gathering they are about to attend.

Image via clothesonfilm.com.

As their subway train makes its way, we see other gangs getting on other trains, intercut with shots of gang members consulting subway maps.  Even non-New Yorkers will get the idea that the Warriors are traveling from one end of the city to another.  (For cinematic reasons, the film proceeds to take great liberties with the geography of NYC's subway lines.) 

Images via thewarriors.wikia.com and pyxurz.blogspot.com.

Finally, we see a wide shot of hundreds of gang members gathered outdoors as the Warriors wend their way through the crowd.  Cyrus steps forward to address the gangs, and the plot soon ignites.

Roger Hill as Cyrus.  Image via warriorsmovie.co.uk.

The film's introduction may not refer to future plot points, as the newsreel at the beginning of Citizen Kane does, but it teaches the audience the simple rules of the story premise and sketches in the landscape.   Rival gangs and a long trip across the length of the city stand between the Warriors and their safe arrival home.

---

Thank you for reading.

Beginnings Part 2 — Introduction as Panorama

Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane.  Image via behindtheseens.wordpress.com.

Operas and musicals typically start with an overture, a medley of the melodies to come. 

In addition to allowing the theatergoers to find their seats and settle in for the show, a musical overture serves several purposes.

• It plants themes in the ears of the audience, so that the melodies will be more quickly discerned when they are sung within the context of the show.
   

• It establishes the show’s emotional and dramatic range and thereby helps the audience clear out the requisite mental space.

A similar approach shows up in literature and film.

Citizen Kane begins with the death of the title character, Charles Foster Kane.  But this is immediately followed by a newsreel (3:33-13:57) that documents the highlights of Kane’s life.  Those familiar with the movie will note that this newsreel effectively sketches out many of the themes that the film then proceeds to explore in greater detail.  The audience is thus familiar with many of the faces and landscapes, and the viewers’ minds are prepared for the film’s scope and tone.

None of this gives away the central story, which is about Kane’s private life, not the public one captured in the newsreel.  By presenting the material in the form of a newsreel (cleverly shown to be flapping off of the projector reel at the end of the scene), the film suggests to the audience that the known facts of Kane’s life are the stuff of manufactured legend.  The panorama thus sketches in the story of Kane’s life in order to ask, “What don’t we know?”

---

Thank you for reading.

Beginnings Part 1 supplement — Renee Gladman’s To After That

Renee Gladman.  Image via therumpus.net.

Renee Gladman’s To After That is an excavation of sorts, a memoir about coming to terms with a manuscript and all that went into its creation.

It begins . . .

“Let me see it,” as strange as it sounds, was my first thought when I returned home this evening.  Hours before—having printed the last page of the manuscript and prepared to flee the house—I had written “After That: a novella” across the title page, then I ran outside.  When I was about a block from home I turned around and came back.  I pulled the manuscript out again—a crisp stack of ninety-seven very white, very smooth pages—and scribbled in black ink “When I was a poet” just under the title to qualify things.  I changed my outfit, adding a new, more versatile layer (a hooded sweatshirt), and left my house decidedly.  I was outside; the relief I felt was tremendous.

— Renee Gladman, To After That

Gladman has taken her readers in through the book’s front door, by which she shows her narrator leaving and entering an actual front door, the perfect preview of what follows.  The book details an author’s attempts to finish writing a different book, and the process finds her oscillating between triumph and defeat as the manuscript eludes her grasp.  Indeed, the final sentence of that opening paragraph — “I was outside; the relief I felt was tremendous” — lets the reader in on what the narrator hadn’t yet realized: her relief was short-lived.

To After That travels forward and backward through moments of certainty and doubt, and as it does so, it continues to resonate with notes sounded in the opening paragraph.

---

Thank you for reading.

Beginnings Part 1 supplement — Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison.  Image via www.brainpickings.org.

A great example of a beginning with a clearly marked front door: the prologue of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

I am an invisible man.  No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.  I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination — indeed, everything and anything except me.

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man 

Consider some of what the first paragraph accomplishes:

• Ellison has unveiled the meaning of the title and thereby presented us with a lens through which we may view all that follows. 
   
• He has established the narrator’s distanced perspective, a survivor with an incisive take on his surroundings.  We readers might already feel as if we are in the company of someone who has seen more than us, for though the narrator tells us that though we may have looked right at him, we have not yet seen him.

A prologue is often written after the completion of a book so that the writer knows where to point the reader.  In this case, Ellison has pointed us right at the book’s overarching theme.  To be sure, many mysteries await, and what follows is vast and complex, all the more reason why this introduction is not only a model of delicacy but also of an author's awareness of his readers.

---

​Thank you for reading.

Beginnings Part 1 — Where Is the Front Door?

Gabriel García Márquez via homoliterus.com

Artists, especially those working in various forms might consider the following observation from architect Witold Rybczynski:

The first question you ask yourself approaching a building is: Where is the front door?  According to Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, always a useful guide, locating the entrance to a building is the single most important decision in the design process.  “The entrance must be placed in such a way that people who approach the building see the entrance or some hint of where the entrance is, as soon as they see the building itself,” he writes.  There are several issues here.  One is simply finding one’s way.  In a well-designed building you proceed to the entrance almost without thinking—you know which way to go, you should not have to look for signs or ask for directions.  Furthermore, a building with a clearly identifiable entrance feels welcoming, whereas a building—especially a public building—whose entrance is obscured feels both annoying and forbidding.

Witold Rybczynski, How Architecture Works, p. 84

Since reading it, I have observed this principle in action.  Indeed, when approaching an unfamiliar building, not only am I searching for the point of entrance, in effect, I am surveying the exterior for a sense of its internal logic.   How, if I were to enter, might I move through it?

Witold Rybczynski via treehugger.com

Compare that observation about buildings to this one about writing from Gabriel García Márquez:

One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily. In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book. The theme is defined, the style, the tone. At least in my case, the first paragraph is a kind of sample of what the rest of the book is going to be. That’s why writing a book of short stories is much more difficult than writing a novel. Every time you write a short story, you have to begin all over again.

Gabriel García Márquez,  The Paris Review Interviews II

It seems to me that García Márquez and Rybczynski are describing the same issue.  As García Márquez suggests, how might a book’s entryway train the reader how to read what follows?

And how might a dance piece or musical composition or film do the same?

---

Thank you for reading.

Tradeoffs Part 2 supplement — Control vs. Loss of Control

Pete Townshend.  Image via www.morrisonhotelgallery.com.

One tradeoff that many artists make unconsciously is to take steps to seize control.  This might take the form of acquiring of special equipment that allows greater control over materials—a fancier loom, a synthesizer with more knobs, a digital audio rig, and so forth.

Another form of taking control comes by way of personnel changes.  Musicians, for example, often go solo to make the record that their band mates had resisted.  By striking out on her own, the leader has gained control.  She can pick and chose players who will carry out her ideas more competently and just as she requests.  No more resistance or squabbles—it’s a dream.

Yet the lack of resistance and improvement in competence are not pure gain.   What about the sense of difficulty and fight that may characterize the band’s performances?

Consider, for instance, some of the differences between . . .

“Going Mobile,” from Who’s Next by The Who.

and . . .

“Secondhand Love,” from Pete Townshend’s solo album White City: A Novel.

Townshend wrote and sings both songs.  One needn’t declare a preference in order to appreciate the tradeoffs inherent in recording as a member of a band versus recording as a solo artist.   

The groove of “Secondhand Love” is not only more polished, it breathes with the air of deference captured on solo records. “Going Mobile,” by contrast, is more contentious.  Note, for instance, how Keith Moon’s drum part and John Entwistle’s bassline speak of players in competition for the audience’s ear.  No element in “Secondhand Love,” beyond Townshend’s voice and guitar, makes such an overt bid for our attention. 

Players on a solo record aim to carry out the singular vision of the artist, whereas band mates exist in an ongoing contest for attention.  That competition is what charges band performances; it can also drive a singer/songwriter crazy. 

Townshend, famously aware of the ensemble around him, surely understood these tradeoffs and got what he wanted from “Secondhand Love.”  He also understood what he gave up in the process.  How many artists can claim to be so conscious of what they might gain by ceding control?

---

Thank you for reading.

Tradeoffs Part 2 — Is a ride pattern necessary?

"Trafalgar Square" by Piet Mondrian.  Image via www.wikiart.org.

Here, Mondrian's minimalism serves as a visual analog to Ringo Starr's musical minimalism.  We can think of the boxes as beats which are either played (the boxes filled with color)  or omitted (the boxes that are blank white).  

I am indebted to Bill Slichter for sharing with me his insight about the connection between Mondrian's art and rhythm in music.

One of Ringo Starr’s many contributions to drumming is his insight as an arranger.  His parts are often minimal, leaving lots of space for the voices and other instruments.

One method he employs is omission of what drummers call a ride-pattern—the constant ticking of the hi-hat or dinging of the ride cymbal.  A ride pattern provides subdivisions of the beats.  They are like little sonar blips that keep orienting the musicians.

“Here we are.”

“Here we are.”

“Here we are.”

“Here we are.”

“Here we are.”

Ride patterns are so useful as to be part of nearly every drumbeat.  Yet they come at a cost, one most drummers might overlook.  Ride patterns occupy a lot of sonic space, space you might not know existed until you hear  what is made possible by, for example, Ringo’s omission of a ride pattern in the verses of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Notice that the aural space conveyed by the absence of hi-hat or ride cymbal suggests physical space.  And the absence creates a vital contrast with the choruses, during which Ringo smashes away on his cymbals.  It’s as if we hear the verses from our seats in the theater and are then thrust up on stage for the choruses.

In my experience, too few drummers consider leaving such holes in their parts.   It’s an unconscious decision on their part.  They enter a song assuming that some form of ride pattern is necessary.  But what about all of the space they are trading away by way o that assumption?   

They might take note of what Ringo and the Beatles were able to accomplish when the drum parts let the space do the talking. 

---

Thank you for reading.

Tradeoffs Part 2 supplement — Max Roach channels Papa Jo Jones

Papa Jo Jones.  Image via en.wikipedia.org.

I once had the immense pleasure of seeing Max Roach play a solo show—just him and his drums.  Watching and listening was worth more than a hundred drum lessons.

At one point, he recalled a battle of the drummers held in Central Park.  He and other legends took turns wowing each other and the crowd with their solos around the kit.  And then came Papa Jo Jones, longtime drummer for Count Basie.  Jones, something of an elder statesman among the drummers that day, walked out on stage and sat down with nothing other than his sticks and a hi-hat.  According to Roach, the solo Jones played blew away his competition.

After telling the story, Roach recreated Jones’s hi-hat solo for the audience.  It was something like what he does in this video.

Jones had laid bare an assumption his fellow drummers had made: a drum solo uses the entire kit.  Not for Jones.  There are tradeoffs of soloing only with hi-hat, but the counter tradeoffs apply when using the full kit.  The constraint "hi-hat only" allowed Jones to go deep.  Until that day in Central Park, Roach and his fellow legends may not have considered such an approach.

And until hearing Roach tell the story and reproduce Jones’s solo, neither had I.

---

Thank you for reading.

Tradeoffs Part 2 — Becoming Aware of Unconscious Tradeoffs

Anna Deavere Smith, whose radical tradeoffs reveal a deeply conscious artistic mind.  Image via users.humboldt.edu.

Artistic decisions flow from our intuitions, and for an artist to question every decision she makes would quickly prove overwhelming.  Once she has created a finished draft of her work, she can begin, perhaps with the help of fellow creators, to examine the tradeoffs she has made, perhaps without realizing it.  To do so opens up possibilities for her next steps. 

Sometimes, we become of these unconscious tradeoffs by encountering work by others who have made other choices.

For instance, I have my nonfiction students read Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles 1992.   Smith is an actor and playwright.  Two of her best-known works are one-woman shows in which she delivers character monologues based on interviews of people caught in civic traumas— Fires in the Mirror, which documents responses to the Crown Heights riot of 1991, and Twilight, which documents responses to the riots that followed the non-guilty verdict in the trial of the policemen whose beating of Rodney King was caught on videotape.  

Here is a video of Smith performing various characters she's met, including author Studs Terkel and, later in the video, Mrs. Young-Soon Han, one of the characters in Twilight.  

Note one type of tradeoff Smith makes: her characters sometimes take strange, confusing detours through their stories.  She might have streamlined the stories to omit these detours, but Smith knows that the detours sometimes reveal something important about the workings of her characters' minds, something that would be lost by way of streamlining.  

The book form of Twilight is an edited version of her stage show—all of it monologue.  Other than a few basic details about each character and the setting and a few stage directions such as “pounds fist,” the pages are filled with the words of the various characters.   This is a revelation to the students.  As they first encounter Smith’s monologues, they might regard Smith’s book and its lack of narration as presenting an interesting alternative to the standard nonfiction approach.  

Upon further reflection, however, they come to see that Twilight reveals some large assumptions they’ve made about their own writing.  Narration and narrative description may characterize most nonfiction they've encountered, but now they see that they've been making an unconscious choice, one that comes with tradeoffs.  Narration may allow the writer to communicate things that can’t come out of the mouths of her characters, but it comes at a price.  Allowing the characters speak for themselves provides the reader with a more direct, unmediated connection with them.

The success of Smith’s rich portrait of LA testifies to what many nonfiction writers might be unconsciously trading away.  Whether or not my students adopt the approach Smith developed for her striking theatrical work, they are now more likely to consider the tradeoffs made between narration and pure dialogue and all points between.

---

Thank you for reading.

Tradeoffs Part 1 supplement — Tradeoffs as acknowledgement of creative constraint

Quincy Jones.  Image via jazzinphoto.wordpress.com.

I once heard Quincy Jones discuss the art of composing.  He said something to the effect that until he could impose a creative constraint on himself, he had no freedom to compose.  In the case of his film score for In Cold Blood, all kinds of possibilities emerged once he committed to centering the music around two string basses, musical representations of the two killers at the center of the story.  

Noam Chomsky, in broader terms but also in resonance with Jones’s reflection on composing, has observed that the rules of syntax are what unleash the creative potential of human language, the means by which we think.  It’s a familiar paradox: Where anything is possible, creativity shuts down, but when the range of possibility narrows, we face choices and engage our imagination.  Furthermore, the narrower our choices, the further we can push within the range of options.  

To speak about art in terms of tradeoffs acknowledges this reality.  For instance, a choice that nonfiction writers entertain (now more openly than ever) is whether or not to embellish their stories with fictionalized details. 

Let’s set aside any moral objections one might have with such embellishment, and for the sake of discussion let’s assume that the fictionalized details would have no bearing on the larger meaning at stake in the story and also that the reader will not be able to discern truth from fiction.

 What are the tradeoffs?

Embellishing by way of fictionalized details gives the writer more options.  For instance, she gains access to sharper contrasts and smoother transitions.  The embellishments allow her to solve problems that the truthful details of the story might disallow.

What might she be trading away?  One answer is that sometimes the more interesting aspects of a story lurk behind inconvenient details. 

For example, when I sat down to write my memoir about playing drums, I faced an inconvenient aspect of the story: Though my band had achieved significant success, I myself was not a quite a rock star.  Should I skew the story by rounding myself up to rock star?  Should I overstate the story’s disappointing end to create a crash and burn narrative?

Only by staying within the constraints of the story’s reality did I push myself to realize that the story of becoming a near rock star was unexpected and full of details that might be new to readers.  In my life as a drummer, I regularly imagined stardom.   Sometimes the show-biz planets aligned to convince me I had made it, when in fact I had not.  My favorite details of the book were those that captured the sense of being in showbiz purgatory, neither damned to failure nor granted access to full-blown glory.  And telling that story would not have been possible had I skewed the facts to ease my initial storytelling anxieties. 

And mulling those anxieties slowed the start of my writing.  Only when I realized that I wanted to tell the truth, with all of its storytelling complications, did I find the freedom to write. 

Quincy Jones comes through again.

---

Thank you for reading.

Tradeoffs Part 1 supplement —Using tradeoffs to enrich workshop discussions

James Baldwin.  Image via newyorklivearts.org.

In my brief career as a teacher of creative writing, I’ve already learned that no group of students will ever agree on whether they like a particular piece of writing, even if that writing is by someone as exemplary as James Baldwin.

Thus, when a workshop conversation takes up a piece of writing by one of the students, I find that talking about a piece’s merits, a matter of opinion, draws our attention away from the work, which is why I invite students to report their experience of reading.

The other thing I ask them to do is to talk in terms of tradeoffs, so that we develop a way of talking about a piece on which all can agree. 

“I like present tense here.  It’s exciting.” 

A statement such as this, which is really all about the reader and not the work, presents an opportunity to push for a richer understanding of the tradeoffs made by the artist.  Conversations that push the students’ understanding will result in more thoughtful responses . . .

“Why did I like the present tense here?  Well, present tense lends the writing immediacy because you get the sense things are happening now.  On the other hand, it sacrifices perspective because the events are not recalled after the narrator has had time to consider her surroundings.  Still, because this scene was relatively short and I had received some perspective on what led up to this point of the story, I enjoyed the change of tempo provided by the rush of the present tense.”

This second response explores tradeoffs made by the writer and the reading experience that followed.  It takes the students to a deeper understanding of what they do as writers and readers.

---

Thank you for reading.

Tradeoffs Part 1 — Tradeoffs as shared points of reference.

Producer/engineer Young Guru, mulling tradeoffs at the mixing console.  Image via massappeal.com.

When we discuss art, it’s natural for us to employ evaluative language.  Doing so, however, often overlooks the fact that evaluative language only points back at us, the audience.  It doesn’t point at the work.  We can argue about the best Ella Fitzgerald performance or Joni Mitchell song, but those arguments only establish the taste of those in conversation.  It does little to illuminate what the artists themselves are up to.  

Nevertheless, we need language with which to talk about art.  For example, when I read a student work, and it’s not working for me, I need to be able to talk about why in terms that are concrete, beyond dispute.  One way to do that is to describe my experience of the work.  “I was confused on page four because . . . .”  A writer can hardly disagree with such a statement from a reader.  She can’t say, “No, you weren’t confused.”  The objective nature of the conversation helps keep things clear for all.

Another way to talk in concrete terms is to discuss the tradeoffs made by the artist.   Even when two people disagree on a work’s success or failure, they can agree on the tradeoffs that were made and what resulted from those tradeoffs. 

For instance, in my posts about musical time, I listed some tradeoffs that are made when drumming becomes rounder (more even) or less round (more uneven).

Whether or not I can persuade you that Ringo Starr’s sense of time is better than a drum machine’s (which is really a conversation about my listening), we can agree that Ringo’s imperfect time-keeping infuses the Beatles with a certain vulnerability that a drum machine cannot.  Likewise, we can agree that if the Beatles had used a drum machine that rendered perfectly even time, the result might have been something less vulnerable and more invincible.

Tradeoffs, thus

• Provide concrete points of reference for people who may disagree as to a work’s success or failure.
   
• Help us remember that creativity is all about choices.
   

The language of tradeoffs thus help us distinguish between conversations about the artist’s choices from conversations about our response to those choices.   The different tradeoffs each of us might make reflect differences of intuition and taste. 

The language of tradeoffs therefore helps us take responsibility for how we receive the work.

---

Thank you for reading.

Roughness Part 4 supplement — Revealing the Errors of Making

Nina Simone.  Image via jazzinphoto.wordpress.com.

At the beginning of this recording of “I Shall Be Released,” Nina Simone can be heard stopping the band and exhorting them not to push.  The false start and the brief correction she gives to the musicians were preserved as part of the recording. 

All of that might have been cut, but its inclusion provides a window into the making of the song and the difficulties of recording and performing.  Simone’s dialogue enlivens the recording not only because it’s interesting to hear a performer at work in the studio, but also because we then listen to the song knowing that the question of not pushing is in the minds of the musicians.  Even as the song progresses and we let go of that concern, the rough and tumble moment at the start has infused the performance with a little more life. 

Simone in the studio.  Image via ninasimone.com.

We have heard something more like the whole truth of the recording, and it feels more alive as a result. 

---

Thank you for reading.

Roughness Part 4 supplement — “Roxanne”

Image via 45cat.com.

The story goes that Sting accidentally sat on a keyboard in the studio as the Police were recording “Roxanne.”  You can hear it at the 0:04 second mark, followed by his laughter.

 Consider how the discord and ensuing laughter enliven the performance.  They give the song a comic dimension, something that within the context of the song’s subject matter might evoke drunkenness and the street.  This moment of comedy makes the song feel more lifelike and complete.

---

Thank you for reading.

Roughness Part 4 supplement — “Honour Thy Mistake”

John Masefield.  Image via poetryfoundation.org.

The Oblique Strategies are the creation of musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt.  The strategies are a collection of statements, commands, principles, and questions designed to help artists break through creative logjams. 

They originally existed as a deck of cards, so an artist working on a project could, if stuck, reach for the deck, draw a card, and act upon what the card offered.

Examples include . . .

Reverse.
Use an old idea.
State the problem in words as clearly as possible.
Only one element of each kind.
Cascades.
What would your closest friend do?
What to increase? What to reduce?
Are there sections? Consider transitions.
Try faking it!
Ask your body.
Work at a different speed.

One of the cards has particular relevance to roughness: “Honour thy error as a hidden intention.”

Consider the case of “Sea Fever,” a poem by John Masefield.  The opening line may well have been written . . .

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky

But in various versions, the line appears . . .

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky

This may have been the result of a printing error.  Here is a proof of an early printing.

Image via 

http://ia601407.us.archive.org/27/items/SaltWaterBallads/SaltWaterBallads.pdf.

But later printings restore "go down," as Masefield himself reads the poem in this recording.

Some people know this poem in the first version, and others know it in the second.   Whichever version one prefers, one can hear that the strangeness of the mistake takes on intention and mystery

“I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky.”

---

Thank you for reading.

Roughness Part 4 — Mistakes

Sun Ra.  Image via waxpoetics.com.

While roughness is an important intention, it often arises by way of mistake.  What can transform the appearance of a mistake from something accidental to something intentional?

Sun Ra has an answer.

You made a mistake
You did something wrong
You made a mistake
You did something wrong
Now make another mistake
And do something right
Make another mistake
And do something right

Note how the song encodes grace and groove.  Repeating her mistake allows an artist to enter into her accident and turn wrong to right.  And the song’s groove evokes the creative flow that is recovered by way of repeating a stumble.  The stumble may thereby be examined and mined for its insight.

Make another mistake, and do something right. 

---

Thank you for reading.

Roughness Part 3 supplement — The Temptations of Technology

Some of the great singers featured in 20 Feet from Stardom. From left: Darlene Love, Tata Vega, Merry Clayton, Judith Hill, and Lisa Fischer.  Image via billboard.com.

Last year, I saw Twenty Feet from Stardom, a wonderful documentary that tells the story of some of the foremost background vocalists of the 1960s and 70s.  (Little did I know that some of them sang lead on tracks attributed to others.)

At one point, a producer from that era remarks on how none of the singers in the movie needed autotune or any of the other technology of the digital recording age.

True, but I wondered if the salient observation might be slightly different:  Engineers and producers have now been conditioned by autotune and don’t accept what they might have before the digital age.  Autotune and the trappings of digital recording are hard to resist.   Had they been available in the era documented in the film, who’s to say producers wouldn’t have used them? 

And what a loss that would have been!

Listening to “I Want You Back,” consider that young Michael Jackson’s less-than-perfect tuning is absolutely essential to the power of the performance, one of the greatest in the history of pop.  How many engineers of today can honestly say they would have left these tuning irregularities untouched by autotune?

When the technology for tidiness is available, it requires more than great restraint not to use it.  It requires something more than a commitment to authenticity.  It requires the knowledge and savoring of roughness, wholeness, and life.

---

Thank you for reading.

Roughness Part 3 supplement — Practice Roughness

Micky Waller.  Image via vickibrennerent.com.

As artists, we become what we practice.  That much seems obvious, but what might be overlooked is that rough playing, which has its place, must be practiced.  It is not necessarily available to a dexterous player.

Thus, jazz drummers who sit in with rock bands might be impatient with the music they are asked to play, but their rock colleagues might be even more impatient with the jazzer’s inability to convey authentic rock swagger, because swagger must be practiced.  The stumbles and slop that go with that swagger are essential elements of the rock and roll musical vernacular. 

Micky Waller’s drum groove on Maggie May is a thing of beauty, and roughness—its swagger and slop—is an essential element of that beauty.  In order to pull off such swagger, a more sophisticated drummer than Waller must take a break from perfecting her rudiments and dexterity around the kit and devote some time to hearing and reproducing the rough attitude behind this kind of performance—the particular way Waller’s sticks flail onto the drums, the caveman simplicity of his fills, the sense that his kick drum is held in place by ropes tied to his drum throne.  It will not be easy for her.  Waller's drumming is awesomely messy, and the mess cannot be reproduced by someone whose practice time is devoted to tidiness.

---

Thank you for reading.

Roughness Part 3 — Roughness as Intention, the quilts of Mary Lee Bendolph

Gee's Bend quilter par excellence, Mary Lee Bendolph.  Image via soulsgrowndeep.org.

Roughness reflects an artistic intention.  Without the intention, roughness will be airbrushed away and replaced with something lacking in depth.

The stunning work of quilters such as Mary Lee Bendolph stems in part from her operating within constraints—what materials are available—but much more from her artistic choices. 

"Lonnie Holley's Freedom" by Mary Lee Bendolph.  Image via artsy.net.

"Strip Quilt" by Mary Lee Bendolph.  Image via artsy.net.

"Blocks, Strips, Strings and Half Squares" by Mary Lee Bendolph.  Image via whyquiltsmatter.org.

For instance, she surely has the skills to make her quilts perfectly rectilinear, but doing so would deprive these quilts of their magic, which relies on what architect Christopher Alexander might term their roughness.

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, Alexander believes that . . .

“Things which have real life always have a certain ease, a morphological roughness. This is not an accidental property.”  

“The seemingly rough arrangement is more precise because it comes from a much more careful guarding of the essential centers of the design.”

Christopher Alexander, Book One, The Nature of Order, p. 210, 211

One of Bendolph’s artistic strengths is her valorization of roughness.  She intends it and understands its necessity.  Craftspeople, painters, writers, music producers, and filmmakers might learn from her work if they wish to produce work of similar depth, so overflowing with life.

---

Thank you for reading.

Roughness Part 2 supplement — Demo Recordings

Singer songwriter Ruthann Friedman.  Image via theartsdesk.com.

Demo recordings often capture something lost in the final version, and that something might be synonymous with what architect and theorist Christopher Alexander means by roughness. 

The rough edges of a demo recording can suggest completeness (and thus aliveness) in ways that a polished rerecording might not.  

For example, compare the snappy polish of the Association’s “Windy” . . . 

with the roughness of songwriter Ruthann Friedman’s original demo. 

Note the sparseness of Friedman’s demo arrangement, her bluesier singing, the texture of her guitar strings, the warp of the band’s groove and less-steady tempo.  The Association's much more professional recording presents an ode to a beautiful girl; Friedman sounds as if she is singing of someone whose eyes "flash at the sound of lies."  

While it lacks the Technicolor glory of the familiar Association version, the character marks in Friedman’s demo imbue it with a complete humanness that conveys life in a way the Association’s stellar version cannot.  

---

Thank you for reading.