So, after reading This Article, I just had to write something. My mind has been buzzing with myths and city-related jargon. Here's my first attempt at organizing my thoughts into an essay.
I certainly ramble, but not as much as I could have
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On April 8th, 2007, the Washington Post published a remarkable story. Joshua Bell, world-renowned violin virtuoso, played for close to an hour in a crowded Washington D.C. subway lobby. Out of the more than 1,000 people who walked by, seven stopped to listen.
Seven.
He made a little over $32.
At first, this isn’t terribly surprising. Few people know much about classical music, and even fewer are interested in it. For most of us, classical music all “sounds the same,” further evidenced by the term “classical” encompassing everything written before 1900. Beethoven (Romantic) and Debussy (Impressionist) are equally “classical” as Bach (true Classical.)
So it’s no shock that less than a tenth of one percent of people actually stopped to listen. Nobody recognized the suave Bell, few recognized the – somewhat obscure – songs he played masterfully.
Gene Weingarten’s article does a marvelous job of dissecting the experience. I encourage you to read it. What interests me most, though, is the comparison to Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi. That reference, plus the video clips, made me think… “I’ve seen this before.”
Well, not seen. I’ve read it. Many times.
The article centers around the beauty of genius in a common location. It also focuses on the tragedy of it. There is reference to “framing,” and to modern psychology, and even a little bemoaning of society no longer having time for beauty. Belle would have drawn more attention if he had been selling roses. At least then, a few cliché-driven people would have stopped to smell them.
This story is old, though. It’s the story of Orpheus.
A quick recap for those of you not up on your Ovid: Orpheus was a Thracian bard and easily the most talented in Greece. Besides sailing with the Argonauts, founding the practice of pederasty and eventually getting mauled to death by drunken women, Orpheus is best known for descending into Tartarus to try to restore his wife Eurydice to life. His lute-playing was so beautiful that Hades and Persephone agreed to return Eurydice to him, but only on the condition that he not look at her before reaching the surface.
Of course, he does.
According to Joseph Campbell, this is common to most stories in the Orphic vein. The spirit world and the afterlife are not meant to mix, and the hero is always on the verge of success when some small, trivial detail defeats him. Charming the lord of hell is easy, but keeping eyes forward is not. Ostensibly, it is a tail of hope – that we mere humans can exact change on the world around us. It is also a reminder of our biggest shortcoming: that we have shortcomings. Like Joshua Bell in the subway, it is a story of hope and failure woven together.
Joshua Bell’s performance resonates the Orpheus myth so strongly that Carl Jung would be struck speechless. Here you have one of the greatest musicians in the world physically descending into the subway while people move uninterested around him – people who are moving up and down on their own journeys. He charms the important gatekeepers, such as a shoe-shiner who usually calls the police. And the tragedy is that nobody noticed.
Then you have Weingarten observe the people as ghosts. Because they are.
We no longer have caves and underworlds. We have replaced them as cities. In fact, cities have always been an analog to the underworld. Back before masonry, before agriculture, before walls, the first people to have a permanent residence were the dead. As written by Lewis Mumford, “the city of the dead antedates the city of the living… the city of the dead is the forerunner, almost the core, of every living city.”
As soon as Man began to bury the dead, he created permanent structures. These were places to be visited, respected, and even revered. It is death that began all art – the caves at Lasceaux are intricate in their reverence. As humans kept returning to the same locations, they eventually built walls and cities, sacrificing mobility for security.
At the same time, the myth of the underworld developed. Nifelheim, Tartarus, Hell, these are the philosophy of the city taken to their logical end: complete lack of mobility, but also complete security. They are also populated by strangers. When you picture the underworld, you don’t imagine everyone talking and relating and having a good time. You imagine them as staring blankly, wandering from place to place, close together but unaware of eachother’s existence – and of yours. Hades is about isolation in groups.
Since Lascaeux, we’ve had this funny relationship to death. We fear it, respect it, ignore it, whatever. But, the end of life is always tied to a sense of permanence. First we built cities around our graveyards, and then art, and then religion. Only recently have we separated the three in our architecture.
Pyramids, Ziggurats, Mausoleums, Catacombs, Cathedrals. Our greatest monuments are expressions of urbanity and of death. They are found covered in writing and heiroglyphics. They are attempts at permanence not just of body but of ideas – Ozymandias, in this sense, succeeded.
Returning to Orpheus, the bard represents earthly beauty in a world that has no need for it. In the city, you only have power if you have attention. One could argue that the finest live music being played anywhere on the planet at that moment was in L’Enfant Plaza. But does it matter, if it was so improperly framed that nobody noticed? Why is it so romantic to think of this unattainable genius descending and playing amongst us?
This theme, and Orpheus’, is tied to the innumerable “Prince and the Pauper” tales. Joshua Bell is described as a prince amongst commoners, and we are so wrapped up in our normal lives that we ignore evidence to the contrary. We apply schemas and frames and previous experience and just have to get to that meeting.
In this sense, Joshua Bell has more in common with a particular take on the Orpheus tale: Sir Orfeo, a medieval British Lay about a bard-king who travels to the Faerie world in search of his lost wife.
In this version, he succeeds. His wife returns with him. At the end, though, the Orfeo poet tacks on another familiar story. Sir Orfeo returns to his kingdom after ten years gone. He is so transformed by his journey that his subjects no longer recognize him. He plays for his regent, who comments at the song’s beauty and tells the disguised Orfeo about his king. He then asks Orfeo where he got his lyre. Orfeo responds that he found it next to a body that had been mauled by a lion.
The regent despairs and weeps, at which point Orfeo says “just kidding, I was testing you,” gets his kingdom back and all is well. It’s an unusually cheerful take on the Orpheus myth, but it has particular resonance with the L’enfant performance.
One critical difference between Orfeo and Orpheus is in the Celtic tradition, the faerie world is not one of death. It is where faeries take the nearly dead. The concept is similar to Limbo, where Virgil found the ghostly Orpheus amongst other “virtuous pagans.” The world of the nearly dead returns us to the ghostly images of Koyaanisqatsi, “life out of balance.” It’s not that we are dead, soulless, and gone. We just no longer see Orfeo’s world.
This is the nature of the city. The citizen of the city is the stranger. Just like the Orpheus myth, just like Joshua Bell’s performance, this is both optimistic and tragic. The city is at once impersonal and deeply personal. A village is a hostile place. Everyone knows each other, protects each other. A village builds walls and scorns outsiders.
A city, though. A city is welcoming. Strangers are blank canvases on which to project your hopes and desires. A city of strangers offers more protection and opportunity than a village of family. It is that constant battle between mobility and security.
The impersonal tunnel-vision of modern life is proven with Joshua Bell’s performance. This is nothing new. We are watching an old story get told again, a story as old as the city itself, about greatness amongst unnamed masses. At first, the story is tragic. If only Orpheus hadn’t turned to see his lover. If only those subway commuters had paused for just a second. But that is the overarching theme: our imperfections allow these two worlds to meet, and ultimately separate again. That is what makes everything beautiful. It’s possible for the unusual, the fae, the transcendent to pass through our world. Wrapped around the tragedy is a story of hope that only exists because we failed. The beauty of that day isn’t Joshua Bell’s songs in the subway. It’s the story of them.
I certainly ramble, but not as much as I could have
-----------------------
On April 8th, 2007, the Washington Post published a remarkable story. Joshua Bell, world-renowned violin virtuoso, played for close to an hour in a crowded Washington D.C. subway lobby. Out of the more than 1,000 people who walked by, seven stopped to listen.
Seven.
He made a little over $32.
At first, this isn’t terribly surprising. Few people know much about classical music, and even fewer are interested in it. For most of us, classical music all “sounds the same,” further evidenced by the term “classical” encompassing everything written before 1900. Beethoven (Romantic) and Debussy (Impressionist) are equally “classical” as Bach (true Classical.)
So it’s no shock that less than a tenth of one percent of people actually stopped to listen. Nobody recognized the suave Bell, few recognized the – somewhat obscure – songs he played masterfully.
Gene Weingarten’s article does a marvelous job of dissecting the experience. I encourage you to read it. What interests me most, though, is the comparison to Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi. That reference, plus the video clips, made me think… “I’ve seen this before.”
Well, not seen. I’ve read it. Many times.
The article centers around the beauty of genius in a common location. It also focuses on the tragedy of it. There is reference to “framing,” and to modern psychology, and even a little bemoaning of society no longer having time for beauty. Belle would have drawn more attention if he had been selling roses. At least then, a few cliché-driven people would have stopped to smell them.
This story is old, though. It’s the story of Orpheus.
A quick recap for those of you not up on your Ovid: Orpheus was a Thracian bard and easily the most talented in Greece. Besides sailing with the Argonauts, founding the practice of pederasty and eventually getting mauled to death by drunken women, Orpheus is best known for descending into Tartarus to try to restore his wife Eurydice to life. His lute-playing was so beautiful that Hades and Persephone agreed to return Eurydice to him, but only on the condition that he not look at her before reaching the surface.
Of course, he does.
According to Joseph Campbell, this is common to most stories in the Orphic vein. The spirit world and the afterlife are not meant to mix, and the hero is always on the verge of success when some small, trivial detail defeats him. Charming the lord of hell is easy, but keeping eyes forward is not. Ostensibly, it is a tail of hope – that we mere humans can exact change on the world around us. It is also a reminder of our biggest shortcoming: that we have shortcomings. Like Joshua Bell in the subway, it is a story of hope and failure woven together.
Joshua Bell’s performance resonates the Orpheus myth so strongly that Carl Jung would be struck speechless. Here you have one of the greatest musicians in the world physically descending into the subway while people move uninterested around him – people who are moving up and down on their own journeys. He charms the important gatekeepers, such as a shoe-shiner who usually calls the police. And the tragedy is that nobody noticed.
Then you have Weingarten observe the people as ghosts. Because they are.
We no longer have caves and underworlds. We have replaced them as cities. In fact, cities have always been an analog to the underworld. Back before masonry, before agriculture, before walls, the first people to have a permanent residence were the dead. As written by Lewis Mumford, “the city of the dead antedates the city of the living… the city of the dead is the forerunner, almost the core, of every living city.”
As soon as Man began to bury the dead, he created permanent structures. These were places to be visited, respected, and even revered. It is death that began all art – the caves at Lasceaux are intricate in their reverence. As humans kept returning to the same locations, they eventually built walls and cities, sacrificing mobility for security.
At the same time, the myth of the underworld developed. Nifelheim, Tartarus, Hell, these are the philosophy of the city taken to their logical end: complete lack of mobility, but also complete security. They are also populated by strangers. When you picture the underworld, you don’t imagine everyone talking and relating and having a good time. You imagine them as staring blankly, wandering from place to place, close together but unaware of eachother’s existence – and of yours. Hades is about isolation in groups.
Since Lascaeux, we’ve had this funny relationship to death. We fear it, respect it, ignore it, whatever. But, the end of life is always tied to a sense of permanence. First we built cities around our graveyards, and then art, and then religion. Only recently have we separated the three in our architecture.
Pyramids, Ziggurats, Mausoleums, Catacombs, Cathedrals. Our greatest monuments are expressions of urbanity and of death. They are found covered in writing and heiroglyphics. They are attempts at permanence not just of body but of ideas – Ozymandias, in this sense, succeeded.
Returning to Orpheus, the bard represents earthly beauty in a world that has no need for it. In the city, you only have power if you have attention. One could argue that the finest live music being played anywhere on the planet at that moment was in L’Enfant Plaza. But does it matter, if it was so improperly framed that nobody noticed? Why is it so romantic to think of this unattainable genius descending and playing amongst us?
This theme, and Orpheus’, is tied to the innumerable “Prince and the Pauper” tales. Joshua Bell is described as a prince amongst commoners, and we are so wrapped up in our normal lives that we ignore evidence to the contrary. We apply schemas and frames and previous experience and just have to get to that meeting.
In this sense, Joshua Bell has more in common with a particular take on the Orpheus tale: Sir Orfeo, a medieval British Lay about a bard-king who travels to the Faerie world in search of his lost wife.
In this version, he succeeds. His wife returns with him. At the end, though, the Orfeo poet tacks on another familiar story. Sir Orfeo returns to his kingdom after ten years gone. He is so transformed by his journey that his subjects no longer recognize him. He plays for his regent, who comments at the song’s beauty and tells the disguised Orfeo about his king. He then asks Orfeo where he got his lyre. Orfeo responds that he found it next to a body that had been mauled by a lion.
The regent despairs and weeps, at which point Orfeo says “just kidding, I was testing you,” gets his kingdom back and all is well. It’s an unusually cheerful take on the Orpheus myth, but it has particular resonance with the L’enfant performance.
One critical difference between Orfeo and Orpheus is in the Celtic tradition, the faerie world is not one of death. It is where faeries take the nearly dead. The concept is similar to Limbo, where Virgil found the ghostly Orpheus amongst other “virtuous pagans.” The world of the nearly dead returns us to the ghostly images of Koyaanisqatsi, “life out of balance.” It’s not that we are dead, soulless, and gone. We just no longer see Orfeo’s world.
This is the nature of the city. The citizen of the city is the stranger. Just like the Orpheus myth, just like Joshua Bell’s performance, this is both optimistic and tragic. The city is at once impersonal and deeply personal. A village is a hostile place. Everyone knows each other, protects each other. A village builds walls and scorns outsiders.
A city, though. A city is welcoming. Strangers are blank canvases on which to project your hopes and desires. A city of strangers offers more protection and opportunity than a village of family. It is that constant battle between mobility and security.
The impersonal tunnel-vision of modern life is proven with Joshua Bell’s performance. This is nothing new. We are watching an old story get told again, a story as old as the city itself, about greatness amongst unnamed masses. At first, the story is tragic. If only Orpheus hadn’t turned to see his lover. If only those subway commuters had paused for just a second. But that is the overarching theme: our imperfections allow these two worlds to meet, and ultimately separate again. That is what makes everything beautiful. It’s possible for the unusual, the fae, the transcendent to pass through our world. Wrapped around the tragedy is a story of hope that only exists because we failed. The beauty of that day isn’t Joshua Bell’s songs in the subway. It’s the story of them.