For the Tempus-Fugitives

by Christopher Norris

  Like mutant viruses, and interfere

  By their malignant chemistry with all

  The self-protective ploys that let us steer

  To calmer regions. For the next close call

  Might just be that which crosses the frontier

  Between what’s close and what’s apt to forestall

  Our last defensive strategies since we’re

  Now far too conscious, after the long haul

  Of human versus virus, that “all clear”

  Means “got this latest bugger to play ball

  For weeks, or maybe months, but best not cheer

  Too loudly since the due-dates tend to fall

  More quickly as the viral forces gear

  Themselves up more intently for the brawl

  With hi-tech medicine.” So, whether near-

  At-hand enough for tidings to appal

  Us daily or much farther off, the sheer

  Long-run dead cert still holds the mind in thrall.

  “I have mislaid the torment and the fear”

  Wrote Empson, though the most devoted trawl

  Through life and work won’t much help to explain

  That cryptic line. My best bet: what he meant,

  Or part of it, is how the lethal strain

  We know will one day fox or circumvent

  The utmost of our efforts to contain

  Its wild proliferation wasn’t sent

  As any kind of torment, fear, or bane,

  Such as the shrewd Church Fathers might invent

  (Here Empson once again) as “this last pain”

  In waiting for the damned. No god-squad bent

  On retribution, just a complex chain

  Of DNA and RNA intent

  To seize its opportunity and gain

  A foothold in the host-cell, having spent

  Its time so far in the inert domain

  Of quasi-life where genotypes segment

  Without remainder. If, then, we abstain

  From letting such reflections too much dent

  Our sanity it’s not because our brain

  Can’t cope with notions that would else torment

  Our every waking thought but more, as might

  Be Empson’s point, because it’s off-the-scale

  Compared with other fears that tend to blight

  Our sense of human selfhood or assail

  Our fragile self-composure. Best sit tight,

  The message says, and anyway not quail

  At the mere thought of what may overwrite

  The very codes whose genotypic braille,

  We once supposed, would stay in place despite

  Some one-off freak mutations and not fail

  To keep the real mind-bogglers out of sight,

  Like how to keep rehearsing that old tale

  Of human species-being and our fight

  Against the gene-invaders. For its frail

  And faltering story-line’s prone to invite

  Unwanted thoughts of how the genome trail

  Leads back to where there’s no such black-and-white

  Plot-structure and our mythoi won’t avail

  To screen out images that reunite

  Their chromosomes in nature’s rummage-sale.

  SCISSORHAND (MATISSE)

  Drawing with scissors: to cut to the quick in colour reminds me of the direct cutting of sculptors

  —Henri Matisse

  Though produced by a very old man who was mortally ill, they seem to come from the springtime of the world.

  —John Russell

  It takes courage…to leave all props behind, to cast oneself, like Matisse, upon pure space.

  —Fleur Adcock

  The shapes came quick to hand, the colours too.

  They came like birds to Papageno’s call.

  A buffo role, but it would have to do.

  The problem was, he had a job to haul

  Himself around and get a decent view

  Of what he’d done. That’s why he used the wall

  To paste his cut-outs up, then took a cue

  From street-kids who seized every chance to scrawl

  Their riotous graffiti where they knew

  The stuff had greatest impact, shopping-mall

  Or boulevard preferred. His thought was: screw

  The critic-gatekeepers who kept their hall

  Of fame secure against that urchin crew,

  Plus high-art renegades like him who’d all

  Make rainbows of the line those critics drew

  Between the problem-works they’d soon install

  As ‘late-style masterpieces’ and the queue

  Of reject candidates they deemed to fall

  Beyond the utmost time-allowance due

  To culture-shock purveyors who might gall

  Good taste but not for long. So if his blue

  Nude cut-outs, four of them, can now enthral

  The art-world and entrance the critics through

  A wonder-working power to do in small

  And bright what drove grands maîtres to pursue

  Their deep and dark, let’s once again recall

  How the Salon de Paris and a slew

  Of killjoy commentators cast a pall

  Across each mind’s-eye-revelling shape and hue

  He scissored out. Now that he’s walking tall

  In critical opinion and the few

  Dissenters mostly stow it or play ball

  There’s little thought of how these dazzlers grew

  From a pent creativity in thrall,

  Like Ariel, to all things out-of-true

  Since caught up in the death-defying brawl

  Of mind with joint and muscle. So askew

  They were that now he’d lurch or cling or crawl

  His way to show how paper-cut and glue

  Might outdo all that age had done to maul

  His body while he made the world anew.

  AN EPISTLE TO MR. PHILIP GLASS

  In that way Vinteuil’s phrase, like some theme, say, in Tristan, which represents to us also a certain acquisition of sentiment, has espoused our mortal state . . . . We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain.

  —Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans.

  Lydia Davis

  This was the future, even if hardly anyone wanted to hear it. But, they were told, they shouldn’t worry about that. Acceptance would not come right away, but the history of music was going down this road and you either got on the train or you didn’t, ... And if you didn’t get on the train, you would be left behind.

  —Philip Glass

  The consciousness of the mass of listeners is adequate to fetishized music. It listens according to formula, and indeed debasement itself would not be possible if resistance ensued, if the listeners still had the capacity to make demands beyond the limits of what was supplied . . . . The counterpart to the fetishism of music is the regression of listening.

  —Theodor Adorno, “On the Fetish

  Character in Music”

  “What do you want of me?,” asked Fontanelle

  In (so it seems) a passing fit of pique

  When some sonata opted not to tell

  The kind of tale that listeners vainly seek

  Once instruments take charge. This first induced

  Mere puzzlement, then led to the mystique

  Of memory’s vagrant counterpoint that Proust

  Heard in his fictive sonate de Vintueil,

  And now crows as its chicks come home to roost.

  Let’s ask: what might they want of us today,

  Those minimalist attractors of the rapt

  Attention that piece only got by way

  Of having so evocatively tapped

  A rich vein of mémoire involontaire

  Rather than having qualities
more apt

  To gain it classic status. Just compare

  The Saint-Saëns or the Fauré works that might,

  So scholars say, have done a hefty share

  In sending Marcel off on his far flight

  Of recollection with (let’s say) the sort

  Of work that’s now best suited to delight

  Those types with a retention-time so short

  That anything beyond a four-bar riff

  On rudimentary themes will quickly thwart

  Their easy-listening grasp. For only if

  That theme turns up repeatedly on cue

  And minimally varied will their tiff

  With all things more demanding not undo

  Each Leitmotif and linkage put in place

  By those composers willing to eschew

  Such audience-appeal as comes by grace

  Of stretching ears and minds no further than

  Allows distracted listeners to keep pace

  With music matched to the attention-span

  Of ADHD toddlers. So let’s pose

  The question Vinteuil posed to Proust: what can

  This music ask of us, or what disclose

  Of its designs on us as hearers fit

  To listen, if the rule is: don’t compose

  The sorts of piece that might require a bit

  Of long-range structural listening or the kinds

  That don’t too soon or readily submit

  To the ear’s Lustprinzip. This bids our minds

  Resist the very thought that music should,

  At times, break faith with any tryst that binds

  Composers to ensure their works make good

  The aural non-aggression pact implied

  By any music where it’s understood,

  On their as well as on the audience side,

  That here’s no passage liable to tax

  The listener’s grasp. For else it flouts the tried

  And tested maxim that whatever lacks

  Strong audience-appeal straight off is sure

  To be the sort of piece that either smacks

  Of an elitist culture once secure

  In its high citadel or stands revealed

  As having nothing but the false allure

  Of what’s found to return the highest yield

  In culture-capital. So if there’s one

  Big question asked of listeners and concealed

  Within the notes so effortlessly spun

  By minimalists (let’s instance Philip Glass)

  It’s whether they’re prepared to wish undone

  The scheme of judgment that would have us class

  (Say) Haydn higher than the sundry heirs

  Of old baroque, or think it merely crass

  To give Spohr or Clementi equal shares

  With Beethoven of credit for what’s come

  Of music since that time. However there’s

  This question too: what if the vector sum

  Of those developments and all that tends

  To offer moral optimists a crumb

  Of comfort in bad times or buck the trends

  That breed despair is scrambled and reversed

  By music that so pointedly depends

  On listening-habits of the kind rehearsed

  In early childhood and thereafter trained

  To want no more than jingles interspersed

  With periods when, as somebody maintained

  Of Beckett’s Godot, “nothing happens, twice.”

  The point’s not that they must be addle-brained,

  Those listeners, just that pieces which suffice

  To keep them musically content are such

  As ask of them, by way of entrance-price,

  That they should cultivate the common touch

  And kid themselves that what they’re hearing rates

  High on all counts. Then it may seem there’s much

  To say for epic length that modulates

  Predictably each hundred bars or so

  And thus, by sheer inanity, negates

  Whatever music might yet have to show

  Of such inventiveness as could transform

  Its own expressive powers and let us know

  Ourselves more fully. Granted, though the norm

  Of dissonance has lately been pushed back

  To roughly where it was before the storm

  Of progress blew from paradise to track

  Its path from First to Second Viennese

  Schools, this gives no good reason to attack

  New-found simplicity as some disease

  Brought on by failure of creative nerve

  Or lazy-listener-led desire to please

  With pre-digested formulas that serve

  Its anaesthetic purpose. Yet it’s not,

  That dissident summation, such a swerve

  From the joined-up coordinates that plot

  How rapidly “new music” has switched course

  From what once, at first hearing, took a lot

  Of intellectual-auditory resource

  From keen-eared types before they’d have a chance

  Of grasping it to this full-scale divorce

  Between the kinds of thing that might advance

  Our sensory as well as mental powers

  Of uptake and the kinds that so entrance

  The hearer as to hold them rapt for hours

  Through various well-tried forms of infantile

  Regression. That’s why these late-blooming flowers

  Of post-Romantic decadence beguile

  Them into something like the Wagner mode

  Of semi-wakefulness, though in a style

  Devoid of everything that Wagner owed

  To Beethoven and that ensured he kept

  Harmonic tension high as tempos slowed.

  This meant that those sufficiently adept

  At spotting leitmotifs and how they played

  A structural-thematic role weren’t swept

  Resistlessly along and thereby made

  Complicit in the same kinds of on-stage

  Stupidity and violence that betrayed

  Wagnerian heroines to the insensate rage

  Of echt-Wagnerian heroes. Different when

  It comes to minimalists who’d disengage

  From an old dialectic that again

  Found voice in early modernism (think

  Vienna, 1920s) since they’ll then

  Neither risk pushing listeners to the brink

  Of breakdown by emotions too intense

  To bear, nor—worse still—seeing how they shrink

  From structural complexities too dense

  To grasp while jogging, or when half-asleep,

  Or shuffled on the iPod. Where suspense

  Of chord or cadence once sufficed to keep

  Attentive audiences on the qui vive

  By tensed anticipation of a leap

  To some new key, such things now tend to leave

  Unmoved those whose diminished powers of long-

  Range listening stretch so far as to perceive

  Nothing beyond the time-span of a song

  On that same iPod even though the piece,

  Like most of yours, may still be going strong

  (Or just still going) when its batteries cease

  To operate. So if Proust’s odd request

  Of Vinteuil seems a novelist’s caprice

  Or curious thought-experiment to test

  What his roman à fleuve presumes to ask

  Of dedicated readers, when addressed

  To you the question’s more: is it the task

  Of music to become so structure-free

  And effortless that anyone can bask

  Forever in the sun since shifts of key

  Bring no dark clouds. What it maybe desires

  Of practised listeners is that they agree

  To be as mindless as the piece requires

  I
f they’re not suddenly to find they’ve been

  Deprived of something better by suppliers

  Of such down-market goods. If there’s more spleen

  About this verse-epistle than perhaps

  You’d normally expect to supervene

  In musical debate, excuse my lapse

  Of manners but don’t hasten to excuse

  The insult to intelligence that wraps

  An hour’s worth of the stuff one might well choose

  As background music for a dinner-date

  Around a minute’s worth they just might use,

  Those true past masters, when a shifting state

  Of harmony or mood requires they fill

  That time with passagework, then modulate

  And so—what far exceeds the gift or skill

  Of their note-spinning progeny—redeem

  Its triteness by then having it fulfil

  The promise of some half-remembered theme

  That, first time round, quite likely struck the ear

  As nothing special but now comes to seem

  The key to everything. Proust’s souvenir

  Of fleeting temps perdu et retrouvé,

  His tea-soaked petite madeleine, is here

  Precisely to the point although it may

  Appear off-target since the gentle tweak

  Of memory’s heartstrings brought by the Vinteuil

  Sonata had to do with its unique

  And (unlike the dunked almond-cake Marcel