Informant38

ahh . well. so. ok. back to Mr Costello's chair. first let's look at the thing itself. music. a song. that's his chair. a song. he worked on wrote revised adjusted. crafted. recorded. recorded is the rub eh. that's where the product enters the world according to Sony. you can write songs all day. sing em all night. it becomes product when you get the 'copyright'.
ok. where'd all this start? well according to Eisner's minions it started with Genesis. God said let there be royalties. paid out according to contract law. and it doesn't matter who really wrote it. it's about the name at the bottom of the contract. names. but Eisner's not really correct is he? it started at the origin, at the birth of language. music was there like a midwife. and like a grandparent it's been there ever since. of course there's no legal standing for that statement, but this has nothing to do with the law, it's about right and wrong.
music was there at the beginning. if by music we mean rhythmic language and melody.
see? already we threaten to bog down in definitional vaguery. but on! ON!
music is and was easily recognizable, but difficult to accurately distinguish from speech itself. mm? why? because they're the same thing ultimately. only separable for 'legal' or scientific purposes.
so somewhere in there Costello's chair sits and waits. let's go find it.
but first let's look at some other furniture, ok?
how about this piece here? what is it, a davenport? a chesterfield? something to sit on, comfortable and so forth. made by let's see....William Trevor. Maybe Mr. Costello's heard of him? I would suggest that the qualities that redeem pop songs as more than candy flavored pap, more than advertising jingles gone bush, are the reflections they offer to the human condition. the emotions and sentiments and 'feelings' whether common or rare that we can recognize.
this is why people like stories and songs. love. love stories and songs. need them. this is why the bardic tradition echoes today after a thousand years of persecution by the institutions it most threatens.
which brings me to another branch in this copious argument. bards. scops. troubadors jongleurs folksingers. this is old old stuff. these are old old occupations. and can be distinguished a little from 'entertainers' though there's a commonality there too.
so there's these guys wandering around singing and telling tales and people feed them, people like to see them coming, like to have them stand between the fire and the darkness. so William Trevor's there, in that position but transformed greatly by the modern form. publishing books is not wandering minstrelsy. not exactly. but it's not not that either. and I'm contending it's a bloom from the same perennial. as is pop music, etc. but we have some big differences here don't we? primary is maybe that Mr. Trevor's works can be not only can be but are mostly, what? consumed? appreciated? had? let's use had. Mr. Trevor's work, the fruits of his labors can be and are, 'had', not just in commercial outlets like bookstores, and not just from the hands of friends as gifts, or 'shared' 'files', but ah, in the library. a lot of his readers are, and were, getting his books in the library.
perhaps Mr. Costello has been to a library recently? not too likely I think. unless it was to one of the big institutional ones for arcane research or something. no I mean to the local hard-pressed barely-functioning libraries. my take would be Costello's fame would make it awkward, and his wealth would make it unnecessary. want a book? buy a book.
I've been going in and out the doors of libraries for 50 years. with joyful expectation, gleeful anticipation, and often, on return, reluctant parting. rarely have I had the money to buy more than a few books a year, though over all I've read on average probably two or three a week. the library makes this possible.
so here's Mr. Costello's chair. Mr Trevor's rather. not for free exactly. the libraries buy a couple. at discount maybe, with taxpayer funding. and I suppose if a book is really popular AND they have the budget they buy more. but not anywhere near commensurate with the amount of readership, or 'consumption', that takes place. so where in there is Mr. Costello's finely crafted furniture? at point of purchase? or where the, pardon, fanny hits the wood?
I'm contending that Mr. Trevor's work is inextricably part of the library experience, which is itself inseparable from the long long lines of traditional linkage, joining, connection that is song, or storytelling, or whatever you want to call that thing that people do for each other which is so magical and necessary that there is not and never has been a people on the face of the earth that don't have these figures as an integral part of their society.
so.
now let's look at something else. closer really to Mr. Costello's brand of product. the epic poem. the sustained lyric. specifically I want to point to a recent work that only a very small minority of Mr. Costello's audience have heard of, let alone heard. W. S. Merwin's 'The Folding Cliffs'.
this is a book length 'poem' and it is presented in a form that I have the strongest suspicion is an homage to the traditional chants of the islands where its story takes place.
this is a work right out of the bardic tradition. the main branch from which Mr. Costello's chairs are hacked twigs. and I have read it twice. and I can read it again. tonight if I go to the library and get it. something I would like to do would be to read it to a group of blind people, in whose lives poetry of this stature must be so rare now.
would that be stealing? my conscience says no, unless I were to make money at it. and yes it's true that if I were to print out copies of that book, it would be in some ways analogous to making copies of Mr. Costello's CD's. and it would be stealing, at least from the publishing house, if not the poet. and there's the real heart of all this. as long as there is no bardic tradition, as long as poets are scorned in the marketplace, as long as storytellers must compete with mindless, overpoweringly loud seductive garbage, then we all must move cautiously, carefully, forward through this cunning maze of art and finance. because Merwin, and Trevor in his day, made their livings through the sale of their works, not from the gifts of an appreciative folk. though probably a lot of prizes and awards sustained them, too.
but it's because so much of how we live is upside down and backwards that these conditions pertain, and the stance of the businessmen, and their various 'stars' seems to be that everything's fine, until the evolution of artifacts cuts in to their enormous profits.
the place where this work touches my life is far from the commercial heart of the music business. or the publishing business. these businesses are real and present and in some sense necessary for the survival of the artists and craftsmen they represent to the world. but let's not get too confused by the money.
we are here. we can only move forward by starting from here. no magic transport takes us out of this relationship. honesty will help greatly. the world, as it is, is what we work with now. that world has rewarded Mr. Costello beyond all but the most Faustian dreams of the Rernaissance minstrels. and left Mr. Trevor and Mr. Merwin to eke their livings, not that they haven't been in their time rewarded, but the proportion is a little weighted toward the trivial, let's say. and this is what spurs me to write today. the imbalance. that consumer choice dictates not just the landscape of a particular endeavor, the music business, but the whole terrain of current song, which is defined purely AS business. it's gotten to where in most people's consideration a song is successful based on how much money it has generated.
but there are songs around now, still sung, that come from deep in our collective past, that ring true because they were true when first sung, and were carried forward because of that truth and the beauty it demanded from its singers.
it is the domestication of that process in its most crass sense that has produced the marketplace in which Mr. Costello's protestations are lodged.
or, in simpler terms, the very human and very necessary expression that those songs were streaming from has been forced into the concrete ditches of modern commerce. and so effectively that most people can't imagine things being otherwise.
Mr. Costello is a fine poet, and contrary to what might seem critical disdain on my part, I admire him greatly, like his music a lot. I'm suggesting that, as a poet, he has a responsiblity to imagine, and to preserve, a way of unifying human hearts that is more than necessary. more than the means of our living, it is the meaning of our lives themselves.
that first, then the money.