Genius According to Robert Heinlein

Genius According to Robert Heinlein

     Contradictory opinions and statements abound in this blog--I know that. Sometimes I appear to affirm the existence of genius--supernormal ability, insight. Sometimes I appear to denigrate the whole idea. To be sure, one primary posture is negative--it pisses me off that the snob appeal of genius desensitizes people to the accomplishments of artists with little or no reputation. It pisses me off that so many people people tend to invent their own aesthetic experiences, weaving them out of expectation, and surface scanning--this instead of focusing their minds and seeking for the truth, always, in the expressions they contemplate. I have tried to emphasize that: it is the expression of character, in its glorious essential humanity, that imbues an artwork with social validity, and that spark of eternal truth, that is the same, the same now and forever, amen, irregardless of the height of the artist's profile. It is not the idea of genius I wish to denigrate, it is the idea that divine humanity is to be found in relative quantities--that this man's truth is another man's merest intimation. I do not think that divine truth is transmitted in a continuum of levels of relative WORTH. I believe that divine truth may be found to pervade, in some form or other, every single created thing. And, I believe that divine forms will brook no literal definition at all--in higher planes all is one, all equally to be cherished.

     Several blog entries have drawn on writing of well-known authors. Certainly if any man deserves credit for a towering intellect, and breathtaking erudition it is Robert Heinlein. Heinlein's work always combines solid science with reflective summaries of just about every known discipline of world culture. His magnum opus, Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961, is a virtuosic display of encyclopedic knowledge not only of science, but history, politics, law, medicine, philosophy, religion, and aesthetics. The following excerpt from chapter 30 is an in-depth survey of principles that validate the work of any creative artist. Its springboard is an off-hand disparaging remark, by Ben Caxton, about a Rodin sculpture, La Belle Heaulmière, "she who was the Helmet-maker's once beautiful wife":

"Ben, I don't know what you have on your mind but it will have to wait while I give you a lesson in how to look at sculpture-though it's probably as useless as trying to teach a dog to appreciate the violin. But you've just been rude to a lady and I don't tolerate that. . ."

"You know I wouldn't be rude to the old woman who posed for that. Never. What I can't understand is a so-called artist having the gall to pose somebody's great grandmother in her skin . . . and you having the bad taste to want it around." . . .

Ben looked at it. "But I don't get it."
"All right, Ben. Attend me. Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart . . . no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them. Look at her!"

Ben looked at her. Presently Jubal said gruffly, "All right, blow your nose and wipe your eyes-she accepts your apology. Come on and sit down. That's enough for one lesson."
"No," Caxton answered, "I want to know about these others. How about this one? It doesn't bother me as much . . . I can see it's a young girl, right off. But why tie her up like a pretzel?"
Jubal looked at the replica "Caryatid Who has Fallen under the Weight of her Stone" and smiled. "Call it a tour de force in empathy, Ben. I won't expect you to appreciate the shapes and masses which make that figure much more than a 'pretzel'-but you can appreciate what Rodin was saying. Ben, what do people get out of looking at a crucifix?"
"You know how much I go to church."
"'How little' you mean. Still, you must know that, as craftsmanship, paintings and sculpture of the Crucifixion are usually atrocious-and the painted, realistic ones often used in churches are the worst of all . . . the blood looks like catsup and that ex-carpenter is usually portrayed as if he were a pansy . . . which He certainly was not if there is any truth in the four Gospels at all. He was a hearty man, probably muscular and of rugged health. But despite the almost uniformly poor portrayal in representations of the Crucifixion, a poor one is about as effective as a good one for most people. They don't see the defects; what they see is a symbol which inspires their deepest emotions; it recalls to them the Agony and Sacrifice of God."

"Jubal, I thought you weren't a Christian?"
"What's that got to do with it? Does that make me blind and deaf to fundamental human emotion? I was saying that the crummiest painted plaster crucifix or the cheapest cardboard Christmas Crèche can be sufficient symbol to evoke emotions in the human heart so strong that many have died for them and many more live for them. So the craftsmanship and artistic judgment with which such a symbol is wrought are largely irrelevant. Now here we have another emotional symbol-wrought with exquisite craftsmanship, but we won't go into that, yet. Ben, for almost three thousand years or longer, architects have designed buildings with columns shaped as female figures-it got to be such a habit that they did it as casually as a small boy steps on an ant. After all those centuries it took Rodin to see that this was work too heavy for a girl. But he didn't simply say, 'Look, you jerks, if you must design this way, make it a brawny male figure.' No, he showed it . . . and generalized the symbol. Here is this poor little caryatid who has tried-and failed, fallen under the load. She's a good girl-look at her face. Serious, unhappy at her fafrure, but not blaming anyone else, not even the gods . . . and still trying to shoulder her load, after she's crumpled under it.

"But she's more than good art denouncing some very bad art; she's a symbol for every woman who has ever tried to shoulder a load that was too heavy for her-over half the female population of this planet, living and dead, I would guess. But not alone women-this symbol is sexless. It means every man and every woman who ever lived who sweated out life in uncomplaining fortitude, whose courage wasn't even noticed until they crumpled under their loads. It's courage, Ben, and victory."

'Victory?'
"Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn't give up, Ben; she's still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her. She's a father going down to a dull office job while cancer is painfully eating away his insides, so as to bring home one more pay check for the kids. She's a twelve-year old girl trying to mother her baby brothers and sisters because Mama had to go to Heaven. She's a switchboard operator sticking to her job while smoke is choking her and the fire is cutting off her escape. She's all the unsung heroes who couldn't quite cut it but never quit. . . "

Uh ... we won't look at any others; . . ."
"Suits. I feel as if I had had three quick drinks on an empty stomach. Jubal, why isn't there stuff like this around where a person can see it?"

"Because the world has gone nutty and contemporary art always paints the spirit of its times. Rodin did his major work in the tail end of the nineteenth century . . . Rodin died early in the twentieth century, about the time the world started flipping its lid . . . and art along with it.

"Rodin's successors noted the amazing things he had done with light and shadow and mass and composition-whether you see it or not-and they copied that much. Oh, how they copied it! And extended it. What they failed to see was that every major work of the master told a story and laid bare the human heart. Instead, they got involved with 'design' and became contemptuous of any painting or sculpture that told a story- sneering, they dubbed such work 'literary'-a dirty word. They went all out for abstractions, not deigning to paint or carve anything that resembled the human world."

Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right-for wall paper or linoleum. But an is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce- render emotional-his audience, each time. These laddies who won't deign to do that-and perhaps can't-of course lost the public. If they hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved-if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes or such."

"You know, Jubal, I've always wondered why I didn't give a hoot for paintings or statues- but I thought it was something missing in me, like color blindness."

"Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art, just as you must know French to read a story printed in French. But in general it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything-obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Ben, would you call me an artist?"

"Huh? Well, I've never thought about it. You write a pretty good stick."
"Thank you. 'Artist' is a word I avoid for the same reasons I hate to be called 'Doctor.' But I am an artist, albeit a minor one. Admittedly most of my stuff is fit to read only once . . . and not even once for a busy person who already knows the little I have to say. But I am an honest artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer-reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror . . . or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of his hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am never trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for 'technique' or other balderdash. I want the praise of the cash customer, given in cash because I've reached him-or I don't want anything. Support for the arts-merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!

Embedded in this dense harangue are several gold nuggets.
My favorite is the last bit about,

"A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! "

It's a cute reversal--usually it's the university composers who accuse the successful movie composers of being incompetent whores--selling their souls for a buck, prostituting the lofty ideals of whatever ism is in question at the moment. To turn around and tell these institutionally supported ivory tower wackos that they are cheap sluts is a very interesting twist. It was very clever to accuse them of harlotry just because they cater to a smaller, elitist clientele--a clientele confused by the vicissitudes of vogue and shallow thinking, and whose product will never ever attract the audience that bears the mighty dollar.

This brings to mind all the historical examples of composers being more or less ahead or behind their time, hence more or less professionally successful. Bach and Brahms were behind their time, while people like Mozart and Schoenberg were far ahead of their time. The rare Beethoven or Verdi, who were right spot on with their time, is often the exception rather than the rule because time is so slippery, and truth so large. But, since time immemorial, the value of things has been expressed in pesos, so pesos MUST have something to do with it.

This other bit from further up makes me stand up and applaud, too:

"Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything-obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence."

Indeed the idea of obscurity figures centrally in the mechanism of art, and it is the ability to make statements forthrightly that separates the called from the chosen. I always like to reread this Schoenberg quote:

It is neither "obligatory" nor "permissible" to write either tonally of atonally. Write or not: but in either case ask no questions but do your best. Whoever really has it in him will produce it, whether it be tonal or atonal: let the others--those who do what they can--write tonally or atonally, or make what noise they please. They will certainly shout us down, who fulfill our musical destinies as we may: and they will quickly find the ears of all those who keep them open for everything ambiguous but closed to the truth."

Musical Truth!
Musical Truth!
The more you eat, the more you--
uh.
 
Glennallen
March 20, 2011
tomorrow is Bach's birthday (maybe)

On the Ethics of Genius

On the Ethics of Genius

"If a tree falls in the forest, with no one there to hear, does it make a sound?" Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Definitions of sound may be consigned to the quibble/semantics garbage pail for all I care. However, sound or no, I have never had any doubt that if a tree falls in the forest, with no one there to hear, it makes no music. Music is communication or it is nothing. With no one there to hear, there is no transmission of idea or energy from one subjective reality to another. Musical truth brings the soul of the individual into more intimate communion with the oversoul, with the saints, with God. The divine intelligence of music wouldn't even bother manifesting without an audience--put another way, it is the subjective reality of the audience that brings the truth of music into energetic manifestation.

There is a commonly held opinion that genius dwells in a rarefied atmosphere beyond the ken of the common man. I vigorously reject this attitude. It may be true that savants like Mozart and Mendelssohn have insight into the mechanics of creation that surpasses the average or even above average aptitude for understanding the abstract mathematics of music, but without the innocence of the child and the connection with the pulsing blood, those abstractions mean nothing.

The following comments are taken from my doctoral thesis article, "On the Ethics of Music Composition."

The single most powerfully validating attribute an expression can have is the ability to invoke the collective mind in the subject, thereby giving him a super-personal experience of himself and, vice versa, the collective mind a super-personal experience of him (see p. 9 of "On the Improv Mind State"). Therefore, since entering a transcendent state, in this regard, becomes a social act, the degree to which an expression is absorbed into the collective mind is very much a measure of its ethical legitimacy.

The "social" dimension of art is the critical point here--the artist does not create in a vacuum, even if there is never a single other living person listening, the vestiges of human intelligence residing in the collective mind field hear every note.


The rightness or goodness of an expression is intimately linked with its presence as a universal identity. A basic proposition of this paper, supported by suggestions made in "On the Improv Mind State," is that humans are multi-dimensional beings. Human beings exist as foci of ego-consciousness graduated over a vertically aligned strata of planes of existence; a whole person does not live on one single plane at a time, but simultaneously on several, possibly an infinite number. A truthful expression of a multi-dimensional being must, therefore, initiate shifts in mind state, and must generate trans-dimensional energies; otherwise the living referent of the expression is only partially represented. Therefore an expression, if it refers to the multi-dimensional world of humanity, must have something to say to humanity, just as any vibration has something to say to a potentially sympathetic frequency.

Contrariwise, if the elements of an expression are fixed in one dimension or another, then the expression cannot be parallel to humankind; since a human being cannot duplicate the experience of such a non-parallel expression with his whole being, complete contact cannot be made. Such a lapse is sufficient to invalidate the expression and to ensure its hasty demise.

Thus an expression may be said to be ethically invalid when it does not engage the whole multi-dimensional being in an intercourse of sympathetic resonance (or duplication). Because higher and the lower constitute a unified reality, the omission of any aspect of this unity makes for a false representation. This invalidation can occur in the material dimension
(1) with expressions which slavishly repeat the literal identities of their referents without initiating a shift in mind state, or
(2) with expressions whose referents are completely ideational, or abstract, with no material point of reference.
The choices a composer makes in building his composition may initiate psychological responses which lead the subject, step by step, toward an experience of his higher self; or they may not.

The virtuoso mental gymnastics at play in a work of genius will always take a secondary place relative to the motion of the heart in its strivings to reach out to the world and touch the heart of another. The heart's desire moving across the waters, undefined or contained by an abstract form, does not express or manifest true feeling, but rather sentimentality, the echo or shadow of feeling; but form without feeling is sounding brass signifying nothing. The a priori logic of music supports and directs the energy of musical truth, but it is not a substitute for this energy; the truth of music cannot be expressed by rational constraints, only articulated by it. The logic is the needlework that holds the magnificent gown of light in place over the restless frame of transcendent reality. Focus on any single aspect of the multi-dimensional resonance of music, at the expense of the others, limits the range of the expression, deflating it, emasculating it, killing it. Thus the work of genius, while in need of abstract underpinnings, must always strive to embrace the scope of a WHOLE person--an holistic spiritual being.

Since humans exist simultaneously on more than one plane of being, expressions must resonate sympathetically with human intelligence trans- dimensionally. Only by resonating in tune with all levels of the personality's subjective experience can an expression be meaningful; only by inspiring the ego to experience itself in its vast array of articulated forms and inarticulate modalities, does an expression validate itself as truthful. Thus the challenge and the opportunity of art is to seduce consciousness out of its comfortable literal mode and direct it towards higher levels of its mental constitution.

In Christianity and Evolution (1971), Teilhard de Chardin describes the way the personal mind relates to the collective mind. Chardin says that a human mind generates a kind of magnetic force-field, and that all the minds of mankind, all those little force-fields, exert an attraction on each other, creating a kind of merged consciousness (the Omega Point). The energy of all those individual minds creates (or, at some point in the distant past, created) a magnetic vortex which draws (drew) all similar minds into it. This vortex manifests itself as a kind of magnetic cloud that hovers over the world of man, a cloud into which an individual mind may reach to access information or to make personal contributions. Living beings thus constantly rebuild or modify the corporate content of this cloud, which is made manifest not only in individual consciousnesses but in an anomalous super-personal mind-space of its own.

The content of this cloud, is truly corporate, because in the collective mind environment the individual is subsumed into the group. The collective mind is an egalitarian environment, an average-seeking energy; no one person is more important than another, even though individuals may sometimes influence whole classes of materials. To borrow an expression from Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics (1971), the collective mind may be thought of as "patterns of interconnection probabilities," (p. 68).
Interconnection is needed to link
(1) the vertical axis of existence through which a human being encounters his multi-dimensional self, and
(2) the horizontal axis, through which he encounters the rest of humanity.

This discussion is leading somewhere--it is leading to the invalidation of the whole idea of genius in favor of a more democratic system of validating art. Ultimately, we are moving to a definition of genius that negates the word's meaningfulness.

Next week: John Cage Stories

Genius According to Somerset Maugham

Genius According to Somerset Maugham

The Moon and Sixpence, (1919) a novel by Somerset Maugham, is ostensibly about Paul Gauguin, but could be about anybody. Moreover, it is a very broad and general discussion of the subject of genius. The word "genius" occurs in the book more than 50 times, and is examined from many varying perspectives. However, Maugham lets us have it right up front, in the second paragraph, with a definitive, early 20th century definition of genius. In speaking of his protagonist, Charles Strickland, he says:

". . . he had genius. To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults. I suppose Velasquez was a better painter than El Greco, but custom stales one's admiration for him: the Cretan, sensual and tragic, proffers the mystery of his soul like a standing sacrifice. The artist, painter, poet, or musician, by his decoration, sublime or beautiful, satisfies the aesthetic sense; but that is akin to the sexual instinct, and shares its barbarity: he lays before you also the greater gift of himself. To pursue his secret has something of the fascination of a detective story. It is a riddle which shares with the universe the merit of having no answer. The most insignificant of Strickland's works suggests a personality which is strange, tormented, and complex; and it is this surely which prevents even those who do not like his pictures from being indifferent to them; it is this which has excited so curious an interest in his life and character.

Thus it may be seen that "genius" is associated, in the early 20th century mind, with singularity of character at least as much as it is with richness of talent, or loftiness of intellect. The emphasis on the unique character of the genius leads us easily into the realm of originality, since singularity of artistic style must certainly follow from singularity of character.
Originality was the biggest bugga-boo of my early years as a composer. Everybody was so busy trying be original that everybody was trying all the same "new" (sic) things. The students at the university practically screamed in my ear, "How can you be original, if you don't sound just like us?" Another good one was, "Whoever heard of a composer that wasn't famous?"
I have always tried to take a broad view of style, and prided myself on my ability to effortlessly weave together stylistic references from an array of historical and cultural sources. The result was a potpourri with enough stuff in it to offend everybody: to the low-brow, it was too high-brow, and to the high-brow it was too low-brow. In 1995 I had a composition teacher tell me that including a swing drum part and a walking bass in the middle of an abstract piece was the most dissonant thing he'd ever heard.
I don't get it; I mean I didn't make this up, Charles Ives did it all 100 years ago, and Charles Ives is well respected. I guess few have had the courage to be as free with their ego-resolution as Ives was: to him, he and music, all music, were spiritually linked; like a babe in arms, he could not tell where he left off and the sweet breast of mother music began. It is the archetypal resonance in his pieces, that reaches into the soul of his attentive audience, and invokes, more than nostalgia, a sense of timelessness.
Are originality and singularity of character linked with honesty? Is the genius simply he/she who has the courage (or the stupidity) to speak only the truth of him/herself? In a later description Strickland, Maugham notes:

"But though he said nothing of any consequence, there was something in his personality which prevented him from being dull. Perhaps it was sincerity. He did not seem to care much about the Paris he was now seeing for the first time (I did not count the visit with his wife), and he accepted sights which must have been strange to him without any sense of astonishment. I have been to Paris a hundred times, and it never fails to give me a thrill of excitement; I can never walk its streets without feeling myself on the verge of adventure. Strickland remained placid. Looking back, I think now that he was blind to everything but to some disturbing vision in his soul."

Are we all unique beings, flecks of God-consciousness, some more or less willing (in this conformist society) to fess up to our individuality? If so, who chooses which spark of eternal mind will rise to distinction, and which to the obscurity of the void? Who brands the chosen one with the inner vision, so irresistible, so unattainable?

". . . how strange it was that the creative instinct should seize upon this dull stockbroker, to his own ruin, perhaps, and to the misfortune of such as were dependent on him; and yet no stranger than the way in which the spirit of God has seized men, powerful and rich, pursuing them with stubborn vigilance till at last, conquered, they have abandoned the joy of the world and the love of women for the painful austerities of the cloister. Conversion may come under many shapes, and it may be brought about in many ways. With some men it needs a cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury of a torrent; but with some it comes gradually, as a stone may be worn away by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water. Strickland had the directness of the fanatic and the ferocity of the apostle."

The "ferocity of the apostle" is just the way the personality of Beethoven might be described. The idea of the hero, burdened with a special quest, is so attractive, so romantic, that few weak-minded individuals can avoid the seduction of its ego-stroking balms. Little do they know that the truly unique individual craves, with all possible heart, to be enfolded in the affections of the herd, protected and affirmed by the hearths of mediocrity. The fact that they suffer an outcast station in their own country, all for not being like other people--this is something the truly mediocre never think of; as they promote their own self-esteem, with the bells and baubles of their in-group, they blind themselves to the sensitivities necessary to discern real quality.

"When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set. (italics, mine). It affords you then an inordinate amount of self-esteem. You have the self-satisfaction of courage without the inconvenience of danger. But the desire for approbation is perhaps the most deeply seated instinct of civilised man. No one runs so hurriedly to the cover of respectability as the unconventional woman who has exposed herself to the slings and arrows of outraged propriety. I do not believe the people who tell me they do not care a row of pins for the opinion of their fellows. It is the bravado of ignorance. They mean only that they do not fear reproaches for peccadillos which they are convinced none will discover."

To close this week's blog I quote Arnold Schoenberg:

"It is neither "obligatory" nor "permissible" to write either tonally or atonally. Write or not; but in either case, ask no questions, but do your best. Whoever really has it in him will produce it, whether it be tonal or atonal; let the others--those who do what they can--write tonally or atonally, or make what noise they please. They will certainly shout us down, who fulfill our musical destinies as we may: and they will quickly find the ears of all those who keep their ears open for everything ambiguous, but closed to the truth."

Character, Apostle, Destiny, Truth, all terms from the jargon of high universals. How is the true genius able to tell himself apart from just some schmuck with an obsessive-compulsive personality? The expression of Ego as an end in itself, works against the individual's development of sensitivities to his/her true identity. The use of Ego energy as the motive key to higher dimensions, promotes a consciousness of unimagined levels of self. Thus, doth divine truth pass a course through the entrails of a human being, and shit itself out on the concert stage for the edification of us all.

Undiscovered Genius - 1

UNDISCOVERED GENIUS
A commentary on the history, contexts, and meanings of the word "genius."

My history, wrestling with the word "genius," dates back to about age 14 or 15.

I am a musician, and an Aspie (a victim (sic) of Asperger's Syndrome): at a very early age it became apparent that I was gifted with that Asperger natural fluidity of thought and muscle memory, such that musical instruments and music composition were a mystery revealed. However, having been brought up in the most basic of white trash traditions of Jesus and Mr. Ed, I became a musician in a cultural vacuum. My precocity was noted by all, but my "all" was a congregation of country hicks, to whom the existence of professions of the mind was unknown and unacknowledged. It had not yet occurred to me to compare myself to anybody else, so I was fairly clueless as to the scope of my gift; I did not realize how special I was, and thus I proceeded along my innocent way, uncorrupted, the serpent's apple as yet untasted.

It wasn't until music camp after 9th grade that I met my mad painter friend, son of two nationally known university musicians. He brought the word "genius" into my life. He was an insanely brilliant artist, (who later distinguished himself nationally), but as a teen-ager, he was really pretty much of an asshole. But he had been involved in high culture all his life, and had grown up in the typical artistic atmosphere of ego strife that is always the consequence of intense self-involvement. Thus, the concept of "genius," I'm sure, had been a common subject bandied about his family breakfast table from earliest memory.

To him, to be the BEST was the only way he could validate being who he was. Perhaps, by claiming a divine right of kings, he sought to justify in his mind the excesses of egocentricity that densely characterized his daily life. Surely, as a teen-ager in the 60's, to establish your own personal moral universe must have seemed a reasonable desire for many, and a necessity for some.

My friend introduced me to the idea of hierarchies of excellence, and insisted on putting himself on the top rung of the ladder. And, of course, having once heard of it, I wanted to be a genius TOO. An intense ago battle ensued for the next year or so, I constantly testing myself to see if I measured up to the lofty standards of my mad painter friend.

It's interesting that my first step across the Rubicon of genius-self-validation was accompanied by Robert Schumann, the composer and critic who first brought the word "genius" to public consciousness in his new music magazine of the 1830's Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (English: New Journal of Music). To Schumann, the term genius did not refer to some specific artist of towering accomplishment, but, rather, to the zeitgeist, the spiritual muse that whispers in the ear of ALL artists. Only later did the word come to refer to somebody who was BETTER than everybody else. I did not know this then. (We'll get back to this.)

It was during the contemplation of Schumann's Traumerei that I first noticed a subtle movement of spirit permeating the internal workings of the music; the music flowed by and there was a "click" like the tumblers in a padlock syncing into place, and suddenly the music was illuminated with the light of truth; notes that were just notes before were transformed into symbols of portent and significance. I could not put a name to this experience, but I could feel the sense of it, the rightness of it, in my body; I know not whether it was in my gut, in my groin, or in my head. But I could FEEL the music come alive in me.

Then I noticed that I could have the same experience listening to a piece of mine. (By this time, say age 16, I had already written two string quartets, other string chamber music, several piano pieces, a full-length musical, and a symphony concertante.) The detection of subtle movements of spirit became the index of greatness in my mind--if I could sense this movement, the piece was great, if I could not, it was trash; no middle ground for me--genius or nothing. And it was with a solemn and frighteningly overwhelming sense of responsibility that I accepted myself into the ranks of the music immortals.

It took me over 30 years to come to truly understand what a crock this was, but considerations like this haunted me and corrupted me for most of that time. School didn't help: college musicians spend 1/3rd of their time learning about music, and
2/3rds of their time learning how to be a snob, and I learned my lesson well. Being a professional failure didn't help either: as an aspie I have always achieved professional distinctions like teaching jobs, commissions, awards, publications, etc., on a level far below musicians of comparable talent and attainment who weren't autistic; thus my ego had to battle with the dissonance that arose from my own sense of inner excellence and the pitiful dearth of tangible rewards it had brought me. I hasten to add that I can claim the admiration and respect of some of the best, most famous musicians in the country, but the musical establishment at large has essentially passed me by. Poverty and anonymity were good breeding grounds for bitter twisted attitudes; sometimes clinging to the persona of undiscovered genius was the only thought that kept my mind afloat during years of emotional hardship and neglect.

If I had not been an aspie, perhaps these critical mind obsessions would have damaged my music more than they did; but, as an autistic person, my conceptual world hardly ever touched my creative world. Therefore my artistic activities were spared the corrupting influence of the ego-centric self-consciousness that has invalidated the work of so many artists, thank God--but my philosophy of art, and my professional personae were not spared. I strove to become as much of an arrogant asshole as my friend. And so, through conversion reaction, I repelled every possible professional distinction I MIGHT have accrued, and became my own worst nightmare--misunderstood genius, eccentric weirdo, professional failure.


There was one tempering consideration that gained positive ground as time went on: all through my ego battles of the 70's and 80's there ran a motto theme that resounded in my ears with a comforting ring: "here we are with eternity on one side and eternity on the other side, and you're telling me it's 1975!" In other words, in the long run, the glittering bauble of earthly fame counts for less than one note of music reverberant through the eternal halls of the astral plane. If nobody listens to me in this world, at least I am known by heart in higher dimensions. Words of comfort to an unrecognized genius, to be sure!


How my attitude changed on the subjects of genius and greatness is to be the primary concern of this blog, with sideways flights into musical aesthetics and ethics. I intend to provide many examples of unrecognized greatness, and reflect on the larger cosmic significance of creativity.

RFT
Glennallen, AK
Jan 17, 2011

Next week: Skalkatos.