OutTakes
by Edd Merritt

It’s Ninth and Hennepin “and you spill out over the side to anyone who will listen.” Tom Waits

I‘ve been a “word guy” for quite a while, a Ken Nordine “Word Jazz” fan in high school, an English major in college, an advertising copywriter at my first job. I’ve always felt that communicating ideas, even feelings, through accurate and well-developed structure of language was part of our duty as human beings. It’s a major reason I think we should not shirk literature as an important part of our schools’ curricula.
Its value falls over into other areas of our work world, too. Having mingled many years with people who define themselves as managers, I have found that those who are able to convince me of their reasoning are those who can communicate their rationale most clearly and directly through language. Too few people ask the all-important opening question, “Who is my audience, and how will they understand what I’m trying to say?” Way too many assume that because they said it, their audience heard and shares the understanding. And too often that assumption doesn’t hold true.
In most instances, the military model of command and obey won’t cut it these days. Developed to handle instant danger -- it doesn’t matter what I say, just do it without question. That may hold in battle but not in other parts of society.
Well, I’m slowly discovering that reading words to get thoughts to the brain -- and eventually the gut -- is being challenged by other media – and rightfully so. Oh, these other forms have always been there. We simply haven’t paid as much attention to them. We’ve been so busy schooling ourselves that we haven’t asked often enough about what it means in terms of learning. Should we debate what courses to require or should we ask what things will generate learning?
Less of our schools’ focus has been on what might be termed the “full range” of triggers that spark students’ inquiries. And we may be nearing a cultural paradigm shift that will require us to look outside the box.
I was struck by that notion at, of all places, the recent Jazz Festival in Burlington. Musicians whose leader grew up in Charlotte triggered my thinking.
Xander Naylor and his quartet played a noontime gig on the Fountain Stage of upper Church Street. His sound stood out among other groups on the street, less classic jazz and more devoted to electronic tonal blending and timing brought together through creative mixing of technology with the standard instrumentation of drum, guitar and keyboards. It reminded me of some of the early solo work of pianist Keith Jarrett insofar as it was about fitting together tonality rather than producing and playing melodies. I grant you that in standard jazz the musicians generally start with a melody and build upon and around it. With Jarrett’s work and that of new musicians, the term “playing” takes on new meaning.
Although of a different genre, both artists generate sounds by mixing and juxtaposing tones. The sounds sometimes form chords, sometimes not, sometimes harmonies, sometimes disharmonies. Both musicians use live concerts to experiment. The drum rhythm reminds us that this is more than simply sound bites spit against a stone wall. It requires thought as well as soul. In Burlington I was captured between two brick buildings that echoed the tones magnificently and helped make it feel as though I was within the music and not outside it.
I should note that neither Naylor nor Jarrett, however, play tunes one would hum the rest of the afternoon.
As a listener, I am inclined to simply let this kind of music form patterns in my head. The consequence is that I find myself mixing an ear full of sound with conscious attempts to determine where the tones are going and what should come next. I often lose my sense of physical place. I’m too caught up in the earful to be cognizant of the eyeful.
The technology behind the production of sound these days makes that all-important connection between arts and sciences. To be creative now, you really need to know mathematics as well as the buttons to push and pedals to pump to produce what you want aurally.
I have long preferred literature to movies, because books and good writing allow me to create images in my mind that aren’t presented on a screen as the “only one.” It’s what I believe to be the joy of literature, the requirement that in order to appreciate fully what you’re reading, you need to replace the immediate world with that of the mind.
That is also what happened to me as I listened to Xander recently and to a Keith Jarrett concert in the Hartford Athenaeum many years before.
I think it also happened to my son for whom art and music became more than just electives outside his college major. I think he recognized, perhaps subconsciously, that they presented him with keen eyes on the world, a discovery that, in fact, prompted him to study ways of producing them. Motivation is a marvelous thing in learning.
Had I been introduced to mathematics as essential to the production of the music to which I was tuned in in my early schooling and not as a course I had to take to get into college, I might actually have been more inclined to study math -- and stick with music, maybe. I could almost guarantee to my late father that it would have saved him some excruciating anxiety over my math grades.
But then, if I had carried an interest in mathematics through my first college year, I might never have met my wife. Life is just a jumble of inconsistencies, ain’t it?
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it’s a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth