Happy New Year… Let’s talk about Filtered Art.

So, been forever since I blogged. I’ll get back to Tory Amos in the GrandTour, but it’s kind of dispiriting to track the decreased level of love I have for her work.

We’ll get to that in another post.

I’ve been watching Season 1 of ‘Mozart In The Jungle,’ and been enjoying it. I stayed away from it for a  couple of reasons. First, the ads made it seem far too precious. Instead, it’s delightfully messy, and even if not a work of greatness, is fun and has some soul. And it gets enough right about the struggling artistic life… especially the ongoing struggles to keep going at the artistic life at all levels… to put up with some moments where suspension of disbelief gets really.. hard.

Have fun with it, don’t think too hard.

My other problem, is my difficulty with live classical music. Similar to my difficulty with many films before 1945, or authors who write like they were paid by the word- Dickens, Melville and Tolkien  – I can’t digest live classical performance in the wild.

Live classical music can work for me… but not at the orchestral level. Give me a soloist, a duet, a small room performance, I can grok. But sitting in a huger performance place while enough people to man a destroyer just sit there infront of music stands… I’m bored to tears, can’t follow it. Part is classical not being one of my musical languages, the other is most classical doesn’t affect my physically. I can’t dance or move to it… not even a head bop.

But, good film or tv about classical music, which shows the process, or filters the live perfomance… you could say ‘digest it for me’ if cruel… I can get into. And thus, ‘Mozart…’ It’s not going to get me to a symphony orchestra any time soon, but at the very least helps me feel some of the joy of listening to it or creating it.

It’s like wine. I’ve tried, it doesn’t speak to me, but a good sangria… it’ll do.

‘Mozart In The Jungle’ is not a good sangria, but better than a decent wine cooler.

On that note, onto 2017.

 

Tags: mozart in the jungle