3:52 p.m. - 2007-04-12
In Which I Become a Tad Pedantic
So Vonnegut just died. Kind of a bummer, that. I wasn't the biggest fan of his novels, but he was a bright, outspoken guy with a strong moral sense and wit to spare. It always sucks losing people like that. Molly Ivins and Hunter S Thompson also come to mind (although Thompson had long since become a freakshow shadow of his former self, writing-wise. But still.) as people without whom we're a lot worse off. When Ivins's death was announced, one of the blogs I read everyday made the bitter prognostication that George Will will live to be a hundred. Which is of course true. Coltrane was dead before his forty-first birthday, but Pat Boone is still doing...something at whatever ridiculously advanced age. Alban Berg got struck down at fifty, whereas Milton Babbit spent more than fifty years just teaching at Columbia University (or Yale or wherever). AND, don't forget poor, poor little Mozart in that movie, driven to madness and then death by that evil Salieri. Salieri later grows to regret having taken on this project, as he rots in an eighteenth century insane asylum (no picnic, that), and takes on the role of spokesman for all mediocrities everywhere.
Everything in that movie was made up except for the music and the wigs, but I think they made a provocative argument at the end. Salieri (standing in for the idea of "mediocrity") kills Mozart (or "hyper-creativity") because Salieri wants what Mozart has, but since he can't have it, the next best thing is destroying Mozart. Cue "La Cremosa". Mediocrity discourages or destroys creativity, in a nut-shell. I know this is something that happens a lot because I've spent my whole life living in America, the country where some of its most beleaguered citizens somehow managed to invent jazz, but only at a tremendous human cost. And then, right away, people like Paul Whiteman realized that by ripping off and laming up this music, he could make tons of cash while meanwhile taking work and acclaim away from the real guys and ladies who had invented the music.
Later on, they invented rock and roll: same story. Little Richard, this bold little weirdo who probably came from outer space; Little Richard was so bad-ass he didn't need to sing songs with actual words in them. All he needed were syllables. Syllables like "WOP" and "BAM". Also "BOP" and "BOOM". Those syllables, combined with Richard's enormous presence and musicianship, plus his hair, made legendary, groundbreaking music. Then along came Pat Boone. Pat had neither the hair, nor the...anything else to pull off a song like "Tutti Frutti". But he DID have a Ward Cleaver sweater and a big record company backing him to make sure his lame-assery would find its way into every record store and onto every radio station in the country. So, guess who made more money off of "Tutti Frutti"?
I don't know whether or not I'm trying to make a point. In fact, I just remembered that Vonnegut, the impetus for the last three paragraphs, lived to eighty-five and appears to have enjoyed a successful and lucrative career, so what does he have to do with Mozart and Salieri and their fight to the death? Nothing. Except he must have encountered his share of Salieri types, people who wanted his success but without having to work hard or be talented. He must have had a lot of people in the business end of publishing who looked at him and saw a big, mustachioed dollar sign. He must have had people resent him just for the simple act of being who he was. He must have experienced all the different kinds of negativity that people throw at other people out of, I don't know, insecurity, anger, greed, envy. None of this is unique to the arts and letters of course, but the arts present a greater intensity of negativity.
But at the end of the day, Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" is the version we remember, except when we're discussing how lame Pat Boone is; Coltrane's music is as alive as ever, maybe more so since new people are playing it and hearing the records all the time; Paul Whiteman got rich but really didn't add anything to the development of American music (SURE, SURE, he premiered "Rhapsody in Blue" and had Bix in his band. But SOMEBODY would have premiered "Rhapsody". SOMEBODY would have employed Bix.) and so we don't talk about him now the way we talk about, say, Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines. Human history is chock full of mediocrities who are much more successful than they deserve to be. Look at every royal family ever, including the extra stupid one that's presently ruining our country. Such has it been and such will it be. The trick is to not let this get you down, if possible. Try picking up a good book. Right before you open the book, take a second to think of all the assholes who couldn't have written as good a book as you're about to enjoy. Then, forget about those assholes and enjoy your book.
