“In those days, it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.” (Ellison: 187)
In ‘Living with Music’, the narrator — let’s simply call him Ralph Ellison — recalls how residing in an extremely noisy block in New York force him to rediscover a repressed musical past. He describes how the screaming and shouting of the local winos and the singing of a zealous though not overly talented neighbor interfere with his aspiration to become an author. Especially the musical attempts of the latter often bring him close to madness. Not only because her singing breaks the silence that he requires to work, but also because her lack of talent make Ellison doubt his own writing skills.
“I was forced to listen, and in listening I soon became involved to the point of identification. If she sang badly I’d hear my own futility in the windy sound; if well, I’d stare at my typewriter and despair that I should ever make my prose so sing.” (Ellison: 192)
In spite of the nobility of her intentions, the singer prevents the author from materializing his own dream. His neighbor’s vocal and singing exercises obstruct the acoustic and mental peace that the author needs to concentrate on his writing. There is, however, a more positive side effect that derives directly from these noisy conditions. They force Ellison to revisit times and places that he had long forgotten.
Through his singing neighbor, the struggling author involuntarily remembers his own musical background. Before he started writing, Ellison pursued a career as a trumpeter. To a middle class, African-American boy growing up in Oklahoma City at the beginning of the 20th century, however, the relation to music was never unproblematic. The narrator describes how he was continuously caught in-between two, often contradictory, discourses.
(…) that of the Negro folk music, both sacred and profane, slave song and jazz, and that of Western classical music. It was most confusing; the folk tradition demanded that I play what I heard and felt around me, while those who were seeking to teach the classical tradition in the schools insisted that I play strictly to the book and express that which I was supposed to feel. (Ellison: 190)
In adolescence, the trumpet was a constant reminder of Ellison’s minoritarian position that urged him to choose between two conflicting discourses. On the one hand, he was confronted with a dominant but foreign past — here in the form of western, classical music — that forces the musician to perform but leaves little to no freedom for action in the present. On the other hand, the young musician wanted to respect the minor tradition of black folk music that calls for radical freedom, a demand that paradoxically entails cutting all ties with the past. Obviously, it was impossible to fully satisfy either one of these demands, let alone to combine them. As Ralph Ellison claims, it was this double bind that made him a bad musician.
Caught mid-range between my two traditions, where one often clashed with the other and one technique of playing was by the other opposed, I caused whole blocks of people to suffer. (Ellison: 190)
Like his singing neighbor, the trumpeter’s musical efforts were far from quiet. Ellison’s loud, dissonant perseverance, however, was not primarily esthetically motivated. To him, jazz and classical music represented two contradictory stances towards historical intervention. Whereas the latter genre allows the past to determine the current condition — I will call this position productive determinism — the former denies history any right to interfere with the present — crippling freedom. Both separately, as well as together, these two attitudes obstruct agency. Productive determinism makes it possible to act by reducing the amount of options to a single one. The individual has no room to influence the course of events and is therefore not really an agent; he is quite literally subject of history. For opposite reasons, crippling freedom does not leave much room for historical intervention either. Here, however, there is an economy of abundance rather than lack at play. In this second scenario, the possibilities are infinite and therefore unpredictable. Since the outcome of his actions are fully arbitrary, the subject is stupefied and paralyzed. As a result, one cannot really claim that historical change needs an agent’s intervention to take place. In the end, productive determinism and crippling freedom lead to the exactly same, unsatisfying outcome: severe limitation of agency.
Ralph Ellison’s demoralizing dilemma was, according to his own testimony, the main reason to quit music altogether and to pursue a career as an author instead. The radical nature of this switch, however, indicates that it was more than a change of profession; it was a complete metamorphosis. “Yet it was ironic, for after giving up my trumpet for the typewriter I had avoided too close a contact with the very art which she recommended as balm. For I had started music early and lived with it daily, and when I broke I tried to break clean.”(Ellison: 193) In ‘Living with Music’, music and text are conceptualized as two radically separated, though synchronically coexisting and competing epistemes. Each of these realms of knowledge is opened up by a technical medium — respectively the trumpet and the typewriter — and corresponds to a unique set of expressive modalities and limitations. Ralph Ellison’s self-initiated, private epistemological rupture is motivated by the sincere hope that the Gutenberg Galaxy will possess more potential than music to solve his paralyzing existential dilemma.
new adventures in low-fidelity
In ‘Living with Music’, the narrator — let’s simply call him Ralph Ellison — recalls how residing in an extremely noisy block in New York force him to rediscover a repressed musical past. He describes how the screaming and shouting of the local winos and the singing of a zealous though not overly talented neighbor interfere with his aspiration to become an author. Especially the musical attempts of the latter often bring him close to madness. Not only because her singing breaks the silence that he requires to work, but also because her lack of talent make Ellison doubt his own writing skills.
In spite of the nobility of her intentions, the singer prevents the author from materializing his own dream. His neighbor’s vocal and singing exercises obstruct the acoustic and mental peace that the author needs to concentrate on his writing. There is, however, a more positive side effect that derives directly from these noisy conditions. They force Ellison to revisit times and places that he had long forgotten.
Through his singing neighbor, the struggling author involuntarily remembers his own musical background. Before he started writing, Ellison pursued a career as a trumpeter. To a middle class, African-American boy growing up in Oklahoma City at the beginning of the 20th century, however, the relation to music was never unproblematic. The narrator describes how he was continuously caught in-between two, often contradictory, discourses.
In adolescence, the trumpet was a constant reminder of Ellison’s minoritarian position that urged him to choose between two conflicting discourses. On the one hand, he was confronted with a dominant but foreign past — here in the form of western, classical music — that forces the musician to perform but leaves little to no freedom for action in the present. On the other hand, the young musician wanted to respect the minor tradition of black folk music that calls for radical freedom, a demand that paradoxically entails cutting all ties with the past. Obviously, it was impossible to fully satisfy either one of these demands, let alone to combine them. As Ralph Ellison claims, it was this double bind that made him a bad musician.
Like his singing neighbor, the trumpeter’s musical efforts were far from quiet. Ellison’s loud, dissonant perseverance, however, was not primarily esthetically motivated. To him, jazz and classical music represented two contradictory stances towards historical intervention. Whereas the latter genre allows the past to determine the current condition — I will call this position productive determinism — the former denies history any right to interfere with the present — crippling freedom. Both separately, as well as together, these two attitudes obstruct agency. Productive determinism makes it possible to act by reducing the amount of options to a single one. The individual has no room to influence the course of events and is therefore not really an agent; he is quite literally subject of history. For opposite reasons, crippling freedom does not leave much room for historical intervention either. Here, however, there is an economy of abundance rather than lack at play. In this second scenario, the possibilities are infinite and therefore unpredictable. Since the outcome of his actions are fully arbitrary, the subject is stupefied and paralyzed. As a result, one cannot really claim that historical change needs an agent’s intervention to take place. In the end, productive determinism and crippling freedom lead to the exactly same, unsatisfying outcome: severe limitation of agency.
Ralph Ellison’s demoralizing dilemma was, according to his own testimony, the main reason to quit music altogether and to pursue a career as an author instead. The radical nature of this switch, however, indicates that it was more than a change of profession; it was a complete metamorphosis. “Yet it was ironic, for after giving up my trumpet for the typewriter I had avoided too close a contact with the very art which she recommended as balm. For I had started music early and lived with it daily, and when I broke I tried to break clean.”(Ellison: 193) In ‘Living with Music’, music and text are conceptualized as two radically separated, though synchronically coexisting and competing epistemes. Each of these realms of knowledge is opened up by a technical medium — respectively the trumpet and the typewriter — and corresponds to a unique set of expressive modalities and limitations. Ralph Ellison’s self-initiated, private epistemological rupture is motivated by the sincere hope that the Gutenberg Galaxy will possess more potential than music to solve his paralyzing existential dilemma.