March 15 – Malfeasance of Bach

Due to certain unusual formattings, Bach's Malfeasance does not appear as the author intended.  This unintended effect, however, seems to infer certain other intentions.  The Council of I doesn't particularly give a turd whether the original or modified form is comprehensible to anyone.

***

Friends.  Scholars.  Charlatans.  I shall share with you, this Grand Day of Caesar’s Death, the taxonomy and evolution of art.  While the faces of art are as infinitely varied as screensavers and leaves, its categories are strictly finite in number; specifically, seven:  dance, music, painting, architecture, literature, food, film.  And this is also their peculiar order in time.

Picture with me, if you will, on the screen of your

imagination­—if it hasn't yet been savagely attacked and

destroyed by the Great Beast, Television—Maria gnawing on

her uncle's thighbone.  She stands up, gorged on blood and marrow,

just as the sun drips over the horizon and spews its crimson spittle

for her pleasure.  She removes her porcupine pelt and with primitive

intensity and spontaneity flails her body for the gods.  Thus dance

 was first among the arts and we know from confused experience

that dancers are most severely misplaced in time.

Then came music.  Maria sang.

Grunts, whistles, howls, croaks.  She sang, and

while tigers may have plugged their ears, music, in a manner

of singing, was born.

 

Some time later, she dipped a freshly bitten prick in

blood and drew a fresco of her victim on the luscious curves of her

        cave wall.  He may not have liked it, squirming in the

        spiders in the corner, but she showed it to her friends,

and they approved.

A thousand years, a thousand leers:

Maria, out to impress an itinerant magician, razed

her cave and in its place build a coiled tower of bones and eyes

that lured that fine man in.  When he finally escaped, smitten, bitten,

with one less arm, he shared her design with the rat-gorged hovels

of the earth, and towers sprang in magnificent

     rebellion.

					0 BCE & CE 1000 CE 2000 CE

At the intersection of brutality and civilization,

what is commonly called Christmas, words were frozen into

stories, and literature was brought into the world with forceps.                                       

Wasn't this fun, chiseling alphabets?  Look—

anyone can do it!

During The Delicacy itself, Mario sprinkled cocoa

on a Frenchwoman, and nibbled with his friends

to create the culinary arts.

And in this pleasant present day, the great director,

Mario Maria Marionette, combined all previous six forms into one,

changed three dimensions into two, packed a thousand people in a

popcorn bag ... voilà ... film.

To be thorough in our investigation—and not simply historical—we must make two further points:  points which should please the scholars among you, whom I know are satisfied only with the most precise and rigorous logic (which is why we respect you so much), and perhaps also you charlatans, who are satisfied by games and masks.  (My friends—they are satisfied with anything.)

The first point is a risky one, but must be made.  Each art has a primary and secondary practitioner; the whole shebang looks like this:

Art	Primary Practitioner	Secondary Practitioner
Dance	Choreographer	Dancer
Music	Composer	Musician
Painting	Painter	Dealer
Architecture	Architect	Builder
Literature	Writer	Publisher
Food	Chef	Waiter
Film	Director	Actor

Now in some cases—such as literature, architecture, food, painting—we would never say the secondary practitioner is as great as the primary, but in the remaining three—dance, music, film—we can always say that the greatest secondary practitioners are superior to the mediocre primary practitioners.  Thus, Bogart exceeds Just Jaeckin, Gould Schubert, and Anna Pavlova Yasmina Ramzy.  But we cannot say that any secondary practitioner—no matter how great—equals or exceeds the greatest primary:  Gould does not equal Bach, Whelan Balanchine.  This is simply because the primary practitioner is closer to creation's center, transforming the unknown to the known—and the secondary practitioner is inevitably left the task of interpretation—like the shuffling scholar, who spends his gray decades writing about artists or politicians, but always somehow distant from the action.

Now secondary practitioners, unlike scholars, are in the action—in some cases are the action—so they leave you scholars in the outhouse; though you may write a thousand refereed articles opposing me and win the Bribitzer, you'll still be out in the petunias.

We could, naturally, as is the rage these democratic times, extend art outward and include in our loving arms:  quilters, performance artists, software developers, cabinet makers, news reporters, managers.  They too are artists.  But why stop there?  Prostitutes create guilt, cops tickets, priests and morticians lies, secretaries power, rock stars lust, the wealthy envy ... we're all artists!  Mothers create.  So do roaches, spores.  Even meteors, planets, rocks, stars do, in their own special way ... the whole universe is an artist … — … yippee!

But for the term to have any meaning (if everything's an artist, everything's also a chair, a weed, an analysand, a tune, a tomb), it must suffer the burden of limitations; my shebang and table stand; scholars, go home.

Point two.

If sainthood's all about purity, which of the seven forms is the most pure?  Can we say that one of them definitively offers the potential for a more polished mirror of the world?

Dance and music, after all, being the oldest and simplest—no tools are required other than the body—lay a certain claim; their immediacy and transience—ignoring recent technological developments—are characteristics we could associate with purity.  Food too, here a moment, consumed the next, the foie gras entier but a memory on the tongue, being so necessary for survival, yet this survival raised to the power of art and beauty!—surely, surely, food is the purest.  Yet when we examine architecture and note that this most utilitarian enterprise doesn't only serve utility, but sends the greedy masses into awe—not just for a moment or a year, but for millennia!—who could say no to architecture's prerogative?  Painting's claim to purity is that the two share four letters—this surely is significant.  Film was the first form to eliminate a dimension while increasing complexity, which must count for something and begs the question—what one-dimensional form awaits us?  Literature uses the very medium that defines humans—words—working with these tools of imperfection to transcend the world.  If literature is the most pure, its purity arises from its precise enmeshment in human frailty; its purity is so pure because it is so impure.

What say you charlatans?  Whose side are you on?  Are you flesh’s squirming advocates?  Sound’s?  Do you defend the splash of color?  The hard display of edifice?  Word’s wormy wanton?  The kitchen’s kitsch?  Or pomo’s prick and power—light’s projection?

All of you ... all six billion charlatans and four hundred million scholars (friends, stay out of this) ... cast your vote for the Crown of Purity.

***

We're here in Purity Central, the votes are in, and the results are ...

5,999,999,999 to 1

 ... no, wait, ... the 1's been murdered ...

to 0 ...

for

...

music

Some quotes from our excited participants—

The very voice of God (God)

The universal language (Sapan Shah)

Makes me feel good (Jaylan Xacutti)

The perfect propaganda tool (Klara Pölzl)

If music be the blood of strife, flay on (Billy Whipstick)

***

There you have it, there it is, music's got it.

On this Malfeasance of Bach, this consecrated Ides, when saints are betrayed by their friends and plundered, turn your speakers to 100 decibels, turn your iPods to deaf, crank your heart to Can ... or if eternity's not your thing, Piranha Carey or M&Ms ... hunker down in purity's beady bath:  six billion charlatans can't be wrong.