Ian and I

Let me tell you an unremarkable piece of news: I sent an email at 4:30 this morning.

That I can do so will raise no one’s eyebrows, nor cause anyone to question anything more than “what were you doing, for God’s sake, awake at 4:30 in the morning?”

All right, then let me tell you something that I, at least, think is astonishing. There is a successful musician in the Fernández-Newhouse family—a guy who frequently travels to Miami, the center of his musical world, to perform. And no, despite the years of practice rooms, cello lessons, conservatories, it’s not I. It’s Ian, Raf’s nephew.

Still not astonished?

Try this: he doesn’t play an instrument.

Or rather, I think we’re going to have to think of his MacBook Pro as his instrument, though I’m not sure of that as well. It may be that his real instrument is the software he uses to generate the sounds that are—to him—music.

This is the moment you stiffen, ‘here it comes,’ you think, ‘another screed against the idea of popular culture and musical relativism….’

Or perhaps you don’t think that; how should I know? Nor am I very clear what I am thinking myself. I talked to Ian about his music last night for two reasons, the first being that it’s the safest—most of his other interests would have provoked howls of protest, as well as cheers of delight, from some part of the family. Ian, you understand, is 27, has dreadlocks that make Marley look like a Wall Street lawyer, and is immersed in the counter-culture.

The second reason? Well, Ian tends not to talk about stuff he isn’t interested in, and guess what? Why should he? So right, it was gonna be music, except that these two musicians were in different worlds, different cultures, speaking different languages.

He’s an intelligent and articulate man, and I know too little both of music and of his kind of music to pass judgment on it. And I wonder, too, whether that word “judgment” doesn’t strike at the heart of it all.

I grew up, as Stegner would say, believing in history. I thought that every piece of art, of music, or that any action would exist in time, be filtered through time, and receive an imprimatur. There was a ranking of composers—who’s gonna say that Vivaldi is “better” than Bach?—and there wasn’t any relativism at all.

There were problems with it, of course. It was very Euro-centric, it was unabashedly elitist, and mistakes or omissions could occur. Bach had to wait around half a century until Mendelssohn strolled into the picture and conducted and championed him. But that was part of the process—a correction that validated the essential strength of the system.

If you think that way, then anything you do is up against daunting competition. I’m not writing this as Marc, but as Marc seen against all literature in contrasting cultures and times. Shakespeare, Saki, Stegner are reading this and snorting over my shoulder; they’re also the lens through which you’re reading this.

Such a view leads you quite naturally into practice rooms, which will lead to competitions, and which will lead you—temperament and talent allowing—onto a concert stage in a room built for one purpose only, where a rigid social system rules. Try chatting with your partner during a Beethoven Symphony or the Well Tempered Clavier.

Ian’s world is not like that. At least I don’t think it is, in the two minutes of his music that I heard, or at least experienced. For one thing, it’s woven into other things—a bar or club scene where music is just a part of what’s going on. Nor do I think Ian has the long hand of history—musical or otherwise—breathing down his neck. I suspect what he values is the overall experience of it all—the scene, the music, the people, the altered consciousness produced by I-don’t-know-what.

The clip I heard was heavily percussive, which Ian had led me to expect; he courteously referred me to another composer working in his genre whom Ian though would be more pleasing to my aged ears. So I checked out Nicholas Jaar, a young Chilean / American, who claims as a musical influence Erik Satie, very much a heavy weight, but also a composer quite often borrowed into popular culture.

OK—and the music I heard?

Look, there has to be another term, another label invented. I don’t want to dismiss what Ian is into, what Ian is doing, what Ian values.

I also don’t want to call it music. My point is that Ian’s sounds are too radically different to be seen or heard in the same way that music is heard.

I started this post by saying that I wrote an email at 4:30 this morning. What if I had said that I had written a poem? We’d see it as two entirely different things. And it occurs to me, somehow we don’t make that distinction very well in sounds / music.

I’m now at a café, which has been playing The Beatles for several minutes. Of the two, I prefer Nicholas Jaar; I’ve always thought The Beatles were the most inane group of the last fifty years, though The Monkees do have a strong claim. And I am considering the English Mystical poets, principally because I ran into the Vaughan Williams clip below.

I knew nothing about George Herbert, not even roughly his dates. And it took several readings before I got, I thought, the poem below. And I’ve listened to the Vaughan Williams piece several times and found interesting things in it.

“Hey Jude” is now playing. Silence would be preferable. I’ve just found the clip of Hey Jude on YouTube—it has 19 million hits. The Vaughan Williams has less than 2000.

The question is—at least the way I see it—will anyone be listening to Hey Jude in 2113?

The answer?

No.  

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life;

Such a Way as gives us breath,


Such a Truth as ends all strife,

Such a Life as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength;


Such a Light as shows a Feast,


Such a Feast as mends in length,


Such a Strength as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart;


Such a Joy as none can move,


Such a Love as none can part,


Such a Heart as joys in love.