On Comedy, Classical Music, and the Modern Day Artist-Activist
1:32 PM
A few years ago I saw a video that made everything start to shift for me.
Said pep talk came from a seemingly unlikely source—someone whose professional persona and work I usually found uninspiring-bordering-on-annoying. His contorted faces and too-obvious comedy made me itchy, perhaps even more so because they seemed to mask someone of depth.
So a couple of years ago when I saw this speech by Jim Carrey, I stopped in my tracks.
The line that has stuck with me is this:
“I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”
Yikes. I hate the phrase “truth bomb,” but if ever there was one.
There’s an obvious line of thinking to follow, but aside from, “Why don’t we all know this and live by it all the time?” there’s another layer that my mind has been looping: why are the comedians the ones who most profoundly deliver truth in our society, and what is a classical musician like myself who spends my days playing notes written by other people accomplishing in comparison?
Comedians, and more specifically, satirists, have been at the core of society’s truth for as long as our society has existed. Humanity is not only remarkable because of our opposable thumbs—we are also hilarious and communicative and capable of profound insight.
The truth is easier to take in a chocolate-coated joke that makes us belly laugh; it’s the yin and yang of living in reality, the mournful and the joyful coexisting. Comedians can get away with being blunt because their bluntness has an element of joy and acceptance of reality. It’s rare as classical musicians that we’re able to make someone double over with laughter at a concert, but there are certainly opportunities to use the tools we have to be a deeper part of the truth in the world around us. Comedians make me think about where those opportunities lie and whether or not I'm seizing them.
Every time something bad happens in the world, boom, back again comes the same tired Leonard Bernstein quote:
"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
Music that's pretty and expressive does certainly better the world. And some days there is nothing more poignant than to listen to the Nimrod Variation—especially this recording—and feel. But the rest of the time, are you saying anything beyond that beauty makes it all worthwhile? Where’s the sense of time and place? Yes, we all need an antidote to the sometimes-ugliness around us, but to some extent, isn’t this the musical equivalent of posting an online petition? It feels so good to add your name, to express your caring, to share your sentiment with others. But what are you doing that moves the world forward? Is it enough?
So here are my thoughts:
1. Programming Is Everything. The pieces you play matter. The theme of a concert or recording matters. Your personnel roster matters. Are you representing our world as it is today? Are you helping all voices be heard? Are you including pieces with a sense of time, place, relevance, and purpose? Do your performances have themes that mean something? Sometimes meaning is beauty or feeling light-hearted or inspired. But to me, never diving to the next layer diminishes the importance of what we do.
2. Commissioning Pieces Is Essential. This should be an obvious one, and yet it happens so rarely and not in every corner of the classical music world. Shostakovich mattered. Who will matter in this generation, and what have you done to help find those people and let them be heard? To help them put food on their tables?
3. Pay People a Living Wage. You are not a warrior for building a better world if you are not respecting the abilities and hard work of everyone under your employ.
4. Say Something. Are you willing to make a point rather than spend your artistic life tip-toeing? Creating beauty is an essential part of our existence. Finding a creative way to make a point and reach people with it, overtly or without them even realizing a new connection formed—that is awe-inspiring and transformative.
If we want to simply hear a usual smattering of soundbites repeated, we can watch the evening news cite people’s tweets. If we want to hear talking points that won’t challenge us, there are plenty of sources for that, too, like Facebook feeds and pundits. Art, whether folk music or hip-hop, classical music or jazz, painting or sculpting, writing or acting or movement, has the potential to be more, to mean more.
Sometimes the something you say can be subtle—being authentic, modeling and humanizing differences. Whatever your truth and your means for sharing it, make a conscious choice to make that truth be seen and commit yourself to purpose beyond concert attendance and donors who aren’t offended.
Honor, mock, invent, turn ideas upside-down and shake them until something important comes out. Will you choose to coast and to exist without delving into the time in which you create, or will you choose to dig deeper and embrace that you are not just a part of a tradition but of now?
And before I post this train of thought out in the visible ether, a few more words from Jim Carrey’s remarkable speech:
“As someone who’s done what you’re about to go and do, I can tell you from experience, the effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is, because everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that is left of you is what was in your heart.”
Your only truth is who you are. Will your artist-self choose to be limited or limitless in your authenticity? How will you inhabit this world of which you are a tiny piece and you are everything?
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