catapult magazine

grant and i have been having an e-discussion about music and history, and various related topics that we thought might be interesting to some cino readers, so we decided to post the conversation here. Of course everyone is welcome to join in.

Sorry the last post was so long.

Paul Ricoueur said a life examined is a life narrated. Life has a story. To examine one’s life or another’s life is to tell a story, and for that reason life itself is not a chaotic mess of unrelated events, but a connected sequence of significant events. Thus, the fact that the stories of the Bible are fabricated should cause historians no undue concern. They cannot be otherwise than fabricated, because the past cannot be recreated.

If Ricoueur is right, can we place the demands of narrative upon music? Would it make for both a truthful story and pleasing music?

I think grant was arguing that music is a way to experience history as something other than a narrative. Listening to Bach catapults you back to the spirit of Bach’s era as does listening to the Beatles. I hope I got his argument somewhat right there. I do agree that music (and all other art forms) can serve to complement historical narratives. They can help you FEEL history in a way that reading a history book won’t do. On the other hand, those feelings don’t translate well into words and so remain a bit too ephemeral for a written-word-obsessed society.

If I’ve followed Grant’s argument, I think you’re right, Dan. My question is this. If you’re right, then wouldn’t that be asking music to remain music and history to remain history…only our understanding of them changes? In other words, we see music as history? We now see Bach’s Double Violin Concerto as history-telling as much as we used to say Gibbon’s history of Rome was history-writing?

In this case music remains essentially the same in content as it always did. Grant seems to be striking at some more pervasive change. I’m missing something, yes?

The argument could also be made that since we’re less and less a word-obsessed society (witness the rise of the image), if we are to salvage history, we need an alternative to written accounts of history.

I think what I like about a more artistic historical process is that it accepts the subjectivity of history-writing without denying the undeniable “there-ness” of the objects in front of them. Artists are aware that stories are written from a person’s experience, not just as cold, objective observations of facts, but they do not reduce these stories to individual experiences. They tap into the spirit that is involved in the observation and interpretation of objects and learn to be receptive to that spirit.

When we start to ask questions about the relationship between our descriptions of the past and our present, I think this is where the question of truth comes in. History-making is always an “ethical” (for lack of a better word) task. We must remember the past properly in our own time and place so that we live our present in truth. Our interpretation of the past is a present (ethical or unethical) act and we have a responsibility to care for the past just as we do for the “environment” or any other part of creation. So a true account of the past has everything to do with how true we are in the present.

Post-modernist views can be dangerous because post-modernists don’t seem to think in terms of truth (the contemporary philosophy program I was in at DePaul was obsessed with questions of ethics, though, and for good reason in a post-modern age). Thinking in terms of science, truth or “living the good life”(ethics) can quickly become some kind of formula of gives and takes for each time and place, but I think what Dan was saying is correct: there is an element of “feeling” to truth. Now, this is not to say that truth is reduced to feeling or that it can’t be articulated scientifically, but whole peoples come together around a certain agreed-upon “sense” of truth. So this is why it’s important to me that people develop a better taste for good music, or for “true” music. If one develops a sense for the true, one will not accept Avril Lavigne as a true account of human experience. We must develop our senses or taste as much as our society focuses on developing logic or critical thinking skills…

I’ll just stop there. Maybe I’m just repeating myself. Do you see the connection/implications of this idea of taste with history? If not, I’ll try to pick it up in another post.

That was an illuminating post, at least for me. I think I’m beginning to “get” a bit of what you’re after. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about godly listening habits, listening to music with a view toward one’s own sanctification. I hadn’t thought of asking whether not a particular piece of music was “true,” but I like it. I usually think to ask whether or not it is honest, which I suppose gets at something similar.

I’d be interested in learning how (or whether) you think music (writing and performance) would change in order to communicate history well/truthfully. Any thoughts?

Questions. Would there be a new class of music…hop-hop, electronica, emo….“history music”? How would a teacher teach history music? Play or perform it, then discuss it? How is it true/why is it true/what does it tell us? Perhaps there would be no new class of music. Music already tells us a lot about a time; what it says could be discussed in a history class. One could also simply listen to music with a taste developed for historical insight.

Lyrically speaking, music is often poetry, not prose. Yet, poetry is not considered the clearest conveyor of history; practically speaking, prose brings dates and event-descriptions, etc, together with greater clarity. Poetry communicates in a profound and punchy way, revealing about as much as it conceals. It seems to rely on a degree of ambiguity. “Don’t make me come out and say it. It would ruin it.” Yet prose does try to come out and say it. What it lacks in style it makes up for in clear communication. “That (poetry) sounds wonderful, but I don’t get it. Just be straightforward with me (Tell it to me in prose).” It seems to me prose has some desirable traits for history-telling, for “getting” it, even if it has been heavy-laden with modernistic, scientific notions. And prose can be written with artful taste (without completely obliterating the difference between it and poetry). Yet, can a lot of prose injected into music be good for music?

I don’t respond well to the idea of a ‘proper’ history and ‘true’ music. I agree that there are some histories and songs that are properer and truer than others, but can we ever say “this is it”? Can we ever say that this particular way of telling a story is true for everyone at all times and in all places, or that this song is true for everyone? I agree that Avril Lavigne does not speak truth to me, but maybe it’s a kind of truth for some 15-year-olds? I consider Steve Green’s music a big turn-off, but to my dad it’s part of the canon of truth.

I don’t find the idea of some music being true and other music being untrue very helpful. Indeed it’s easy to slip from that idea into elitist thought in which “folk” music is disparaged. Isn’t the music of the ‘folk’ these days often the music that the educated elite scoff at?

Yes, I’m a post-modernist of sorts, and I’ve got no particular reason to fight for a particular kind of true history or true music. Sometimes I find myself enjoying a song by Celine Dion (horrors!) and I’m willing to take seriously a historian of Canada who, in telling his story, roots for the cowboys instead of the Indians the way he’s supposed to. It’s true that the Natives got the raw deal in the end, but it’s plausible to think that groups of white people also suffered unjustly. A lot of people were upset with the recent excellent film, Downfall, which depicted the Nazi leadership as people instead of monsters. I think that from one perspective they were monsters, from another perspective they were humans. Both are true. What do you do with that?

All I’m saying is that a story can be told in dozens of different ways, all of which are true. What’s the beef?

Perhaps it’s better to say some history and some music is more truthful than others. I agree with you, Dan, there is no Truth, such that we can say, “This is IT.” I’m tempted here to go off on a tangent on Heidegger’s call for an “open” way of thinking as opposed to a “closed” way of thinking (which Nietzsche exploded), but perhaps it’s more to the point to say that postmodernism has rightly denied the whole idea of a metanarrative, a TRUTH held my humans that transcends all time and space and all stories of any time and place. Such a TRUTH does not belong to us as finite human creatures. Such a view of TRUTH is not a creaturely way of knowing.

I don’t know if this is the best example, but the difference between Reznor and Marilyn Manson illustrates more and less truthful music, respectively. Put simply, Reznor is more honest and truthful than Manson. I remember reading somewhere that Reznor allowed Manson to publish under his record label, even though he didn’t agree with what Manson was up to.

We may dispute the possibility of truth, but we probably agree there’s such a thing as a lie. We may question truth-tellers, but probably not liars. There are those whose work is irresponsible; there are those who have no intention of being truthful. There are those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Consider Thompson, whom I mentioned above, who denies that there ever was an ancient Israel. That is a lie that no perspective will exonerate.

The “truth” is seen differently from different perspectives, for we are finite creatures who know things in a creaturely way. What does this mean for good history-telling? Good “history-music”?