Unrelated Ideas

Back when vinyl was the preferred means of storing and retrieving musical performances, I used to work in a large record store in DC. I would sometimes browse through the LPs and read information off of the back of the jackets. It was off of the sleeve of a 20th-century classical album that I read a quote that changed the way I think about music. I wish I could remember just whose quote it was, but I do recall it was on an album of women composers. My shakey memory tells me it was Ruth Crawford-Seeger, but if anyone recognizes it as someone else's, I would greatly appreciate the correction.

Music is the juxtaposition of two or more completely unrelated ideas.

It took me some hard thinking about this before it started sinking in. I believe the crux of the sentiment can be better appreciated when interpreting the word "juxtaposition" as an action rather than a state of being. That is to say that the ideas are unrelated only until a juxtaposition is made, whereupon they are forever related through artistic intent. After all, it is hard to say they continue to be unrelated when they are forever embedded in the same passage of music.

But how important is creating this relationship? Is it at the very heart of composition? Or perhaps at the heart of all artistic endeaver? Or is it just one tiny idea among millions about what it means to create?

I recently saw a television program on the phenomenon of synesthesia (the brain's accidental linking of two different senses). Professor V. S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego was one of the interviewed scientists for the program. Something he said brought up the memory of that quote for me.

When trying to establish a relationship between creativity and synesthesia, Ramachandran compares the creation of art to metaphor. In his words, a metaphor is "taking two completely unrelated ideas, and developing a link." I cannot help but notice he has defined art as a metaphor for metaphor itself.

I must completely agree with the professor, as apparently does the composer who wrote the record jacket quote. The brain is always making connections between things. It's the artist who searches for an interesting connection, and captures it for his audience.

In a way, a work of art could be considered a simple message:

Here are a few things you didn't know belong together.

I think I can get my music behind that idea.