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Big Breakfast #03: art and authentication

As usual, written in something of a hurry. And certainly with a more rambling attitude than before.

Today’s edition of the Big Breakfast takes on a less critical and more personal tone because the past two stories have dealt with something of considerable importance to me. Both “Malvern Hills” and “Nocturne” deal in part with the cost of making music, and in that way, explore the nature of art-making. So it’s going to be less critical and more reflective (or rambling, depending on your mileage).

In “Malvern Hills”, the narrator—I don’t remember him having a name—struggles to find acceptance among the music circles. The first reason that he proposes is that he doesn’t have the equipment, which is all quite fair, to say the least. The second reason perhaps comes across as being more perplexing. One would think that the fact that he writes his own music should be something of a bonus. That creativity is frowned upon seems inherently self-defeating in the field of music.

Whatever the reasons, it leaves the narrator more than a little frustrated with the state of affairs. He doesn’t give up, though. He retreats to the hills with every intention of writing more music and even starting his own band when he leaves the hills. It’s a position that involves quite a bit of confidence, and it says something that he keeps going. “If disappointments do come, you will carry on still.”

If you think about it, he must have some remarkable sense of self-confidence if he carries on in the face of such persistent disappointment. It is a hard thing to trust yourself; it’s easier to have someone to tell you that you’re on the right track. For the most part, the narrator doesn’t, and in spite of this, his passion for making the music that he wants to make subsists.

Whether you like him or not, the narrator stands firmly for what he believes in. It is a stance that causes him much frustration, as epitomised by the encounter when Maggie asks that he stop practising. Her manner comes across as condescending, which infuriates the protagonist. At this point, there is no question of the selfishness exhibited in his reaction, but his anger suggests a permanent friction—permanent, that is, as long as he stays the course.

The world around us is a practical one. Pragmatism is in fact sensible. The making of art, on the other hand, requires a definite degree of romanticism and dreaming. In an artist, the two necessarily have to find a balance, a task that can seem all rather Herculean. To me his indignation is promising because it means he hasn’t yet given into fear. (Compare this sense of coherence to Steve’s uncertainty.)

In short, the narrator in “Malvern Hills” has a stubborn insistence on making music his way. There is nothing to suggest that he is on the right track. In fact, almost everything seems to tell him otherwise. Therefore, it stands to reason that he persists out of belief in his work and his fairly tremendous self-confidence. The truth is, he may have no choice. No matter what happens around him and to him, his mind will always return to “that bridge passage that [he] still hadn’t got right.”

On the other hand, we do not find the same courage in Steve from “Nocturne”. If anything, these two protagonists share similar beliefs in terms of their music, but differ Steve is not quite as brave as his songwriting friend. To my mind, Steve sees the worth and measure of art, despite the admission that he’s “no stickler for artistic integrity”. Yet, not being quite as confident as the songwriter, finds himself hoping to get into the “big league”

Surely I can’t be the only person in recognising that this “big league” is nothing but the price of admission. If he doesn’t make it to the big league, Steve will essentially find himself left with the odd jobs and daily rehearsals. In effect, he will just remain trapped in his soundproof room, oblivious to the rest of the world as it is oblivious to him. It makes one ask: is it enough for a musician to hone his craft all by himself, to hear himself approach some kind of greatness alone? And how does a musician know if he’s any good anyway?

If you look at it this way, Steve’s ambition to make it to the “big league” is nothing more than a method of authentication—it allows him to say that there is some universal or even artistic quality to his work, that it’s no longer simply a functional undertaking. His aspiration to succeed is arguably driven by the want to prove—to others and to himself—that his music is more than just a form of employment.

So, poor Steve, left with little choice, it seems, buys into the commercial world—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he sells himself to the commercial world. After some halfhearted displays of defiance, Steve finally agrees to an op. Admittedly, he seems to have been duped into doing so by the preposterous lure that his manager lays out for him—“Once you’re healed up, she comes back…” It’s so preposterous that I cannot bring myself to believe that Steve seriously buys it. It appears to be more of an excuse, a shield to hide behind in case anything goes wrong or if he changes his mind. It allows him to hide his shame should he have to—notice how he blames Bradley for talking him into it near the end of the story.

Steve is a man who is not willing to allow his music to speak for itself. Fair enough, since this approach has never got him anywhere. It has, in fact, left him quite aggrieved, as with the case of Jake Marvell. Yet he forgets that in our world, popular opinion does not often affirm artistic merit. Nevertheless, very little avails him, and if he doesn’t have the nerve to believe in the isolated music of his soundproof room, then he’ll have to buy his metaphorical ticket and get his true and unappealing looks altered into the constructed image of a popular musician. The “real world”, so to speak, forces him to forge an artificial self.

The thought of it is somewhat depressing. After all, what sort of perverse game would have you sell your artistic dignity and integrity in order to prove your artistic merit? Musicians struggling to find validity in a society of commercialism; art fighting for its life in the face of pragmatism. It’s not a theme that’s by any means new to fiction, but it remains a compelling one because it describes part of the process of creating art.

Ishiguro’s musicians are not saints—they shouldn’t have to be. It’s true that they’re not always likeable, that they are often morally challenged, and also that they’re sometimes infuriatingly impractical. Maybe it is in this way that Ishiguro reminds us that they are human, as all artists are. That art is a human endeavour is fundamental to understanding why we champion it.

It is in this way that we find some of the challenges of making art illustrated in reading these two stories. In particular, they show how difficult it is to authenticate the value of one’s work—that is to say, how difficult it is to tell how you’re making anything that’s of any good. Steve chooses to do so by chasing after the “big league”. The songwriter in Malvern Hills is stubborn enough to stick to his guns. Whether or not either is ill-advised is up for debate, but what is clear to me is that they’re both going to keep going. Perhaps that is the nature of art, and, as Beckett would have it, even when we can’t go on, we’ll go on.

I’m reminded of the courage that the artists I admire possess. It is the courage to dream and to remain defiant. It is the courage to stand against the tide when you have to, even with the looming possibility that you’re on the wrong track. Most of all, it is the courage to face the soundproof silence, the blank page, the empty stage, and come out with the confidence that you can and will say what you have to say.

There is a scene in “Nocturne”, the most absurd scene, in which Steve, face bandaged, stands on stage with a turkey in his hand—or rather, his hand in a turkey—and is faced with a stranger talking on the phone. The stranger dismisses this curious sight as “some kind of magic show maybe”. I wonder how differently he would think if he had heard—or, indeed, read—the whole story.

It’s probably not so far removed from watching one of his performances. Imagine that: an anonymous man on a stage stands with a saxophone, an instrument that you recognise but can’t quite identify with—a metal turkey, if you will. If you don’t dismiss it all as just some kind of magic show, how he got there and what he’s going to tell you could actually be magic. It could be a jazz piece, a ballad, or indeed a nocturne.

But until he gets that affirmation, this anonymous man will have to find hope in the hopelessness. Whether or not he does so by staying true to himself may be a secondary point, because whatever it is, an artist must first be able to keep going.

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© 2010 a modest odyssey.