Juckstapuzishun
We stopped in mid-air on a dive into chaos a few weeks ago by raising the flag of juxtaposition. This word is on every art critic's short list of words that always apply and should never be used. There is nothing more cliche than pointing out the "obvious juxtaposition" in the artist's use of ... Noise versus silence. Chaos versus order. Graceful elegance versus janky clumsiness. Blobs versus brushstrokes. Light versus shadow. The rules and the breaking of the rules. Intention versus outcome.
Keith Jarrett was scheduled to play a concert in Koln Germany on a winter's night in 1975. When he arrived, the specified Bosendorfer 290 Imperial concert grand piano was not on the stage. A practice baby grand was waiting that was out of tune and with pedals that were not operating properly. He refused to play. ECM records was set to record the show and convinced him to perform by bringing in an emergency piano tuner and showing him the excellence of the recording equipment already in place. He relented and took the stage at 11:30 PM. The high notes were tinny and weak and the powerful bass notes of a proper concert grand non-existent. The recording of the show was released eleven months later. It is the best selling solo album in history and the best selling piano album ever. Give it a listen if you want to hear the musicality of a jazz master's mind at work -- despair, dissonance, joy, wandering until lost, wandering until found and revealed. This work still stands as an epic sonic journey with no map -- the mind of a man playing an hour of whatever danced into his head and hands.
The likelihood of that instrument making the finest piano album in history? Slim to none. And yet...
Juxtaposition, this versus that, the active placing of things next to each other for contrast: the geometry and permanence of the Great Pyramid placed next to the shifting sands of the Sahara; the Talking Heads album "Remain in Light" with the polyrhythms of West Africa and Fela Kuti thrust into the rock and roll of 1980; the king of folk music picking up an electric guitar; the world's largest Gothic cathedral in Manhattan; John Cage's musical composition from 1952 " 4'33"" that is written for any instrument or combination or instruments. It is four and a half minutes of silence. The Eiffel Tower. The Statue of Liberty. Contrast, intentional and sublime.
I'm a human being, roughly 30 trillion cells. Four million are replaced every second. Every cellular division requires the DNA to replicate perfectly. That this occurs with such staggering accuracy is beyond belief. But, perfection in the natural world with numbers this large is beyond possible. Mutations occur. Age drives diversity. Inexact copies appear, but this is also "normal." Juxtaposed to the exact are our genes stumbling forward with mutations, a naturally occuring diversity, which might possibly be beneficial in helping us to heal or weather some new infection for which we have no cellular precedent. Our capacity to grow and heal is organically continually expanding right along with the harmful incursions from without and within. Our own cells mutate into enemies and heroes.
In art, we experience intentional juxtapositions: silence and music, yellow and violet, the Sydney Opera House, Richard Serra's steel slabs and the space between... Outside the realm of human creativity, the universe is profoundly unintentional. Or so it seems. Matter and antimatter, the seemingly infinite frozen darkness versus seething supergiant stars, supernovae blasting the components of life into the void... Random, right? Pure chaos. Or the perfect analog to my cellular mutations. The grand experiment of reality on the scale of the cosmos is running on all cylinders. Create both extremes, all extremes. Ready, set, evolve! Who knows what dreams may come....
P.S. Thank you for your eyes, and especially thank you to the friends who take the time to read these aloud. There is rhythm and pop in these words. They work best when spoken.
P.S.S. There are big changes coming, my friends, to all this, both visually and in text. I have multiple books to publish, which I have been working on for years and fresh artwork to share. Stay tuned. Be sure to open my next missive. Look for it.
P.P.S.S. And, just in closing, might I posit that we, you and I, are the eyes and voice of the universe itself. WE are the juxtaposition to the emptiness, the chaos, the anonymity of comets -- shards of ancient debris drifting through the farthest reaches of nothingness... Which, by the way, is exactly what we are, except we know it.
