It’s Greek Day in Astoria, so I thought I would begin with a few words on that Spanish painter El Greco.
El Greco is a painter who truly understands light. He recognizes the power of light and shade and uses it to illuminate the most profound of human truths. In his hand light can not be a mundane thing. Even when the light comes from a specific source, sun or candle or angel it is no mundane thing. El Greco understood that light must simultaneously be the candle and a reflection of the human soul. It is both inner and outer truth.
There are many painters who do this and I am not making claim to some hierarchy of value. Rather I am considering his vision as one rigorously disciplined and always maintaining a clarity of purpose. Like Prospero, Domenikos Theotokopoulos was a spiritual exile in his native land. For both of them it took exile, one forced and the other self imposed, in order to achieve the fullness of their vision.
The chiseled faces in El Greco’s work speak to a spiritual striving that never quite reaches fulfillment. A striving that perhaps achieves its goal and as a result sees even farther than before. A striving that is always forward and never resting. The clouds of uncertainty broken by the burning wings of an angel.
Linguistic communication requires both speaker and listener to have a common background. A mutually agreed upon set of signs and signifiers such that speech and understanding may occur. When discussing visual language the same is not necessarily the case. Sure Artaud misunderstood the complex system of signs in Balanese dance just as Brecht misunderstood the Carefully constructed Daoist symbolism in Chinese opera. Yet each of them in their own way were affected by these systems and able to take away a powerful experience. And while there may have been a literal misunderstanding, there was, functionally, a powerful and transformative communication.
El Greco had to move to Catholic Spain for his work to be fully understood. Chagall, a Russian Jew, needed Paris. In the same way Brecht and Artaud both needed to lose their native language to find a deep inspiration so too may a deep inspiration need to lose its native language.
This, in many ways, is the power of dance and opera. Opera, even when you speak the language, may only communicate a small subset of the actual words. The emotional and energetic arc of the piece is carried musically. It is the music and the staging that tells the story. The words are there for plot not story. It is the poetry and music that is alive. When the plot is forgotten, the true story gets told. When Mimi stops talking about her job and sings “I stay alone in my tiny white room, I look at the roofs and the sky. But when spring comes the sun’s first rays are mine. April’s first kiss is mine, is mine!” Then the story is told.
The Situationists were fond of the Derive, the random goalless walk through a city, for this very reason. It is only when the goal is forgotten that it can be achieved. When the plot is pulled away, then the story can be revealed. Joseph Campbell might argue there are a finite number of plots. And he may well be correct. But there is an infinite number of stories that can be told.
Tags: el greco, la boheme, painting, situationists, theory
i was very disappointed with my first opera experience today. it was largely due to the music, i believe. it was dynamically flat. there was no attack, no drama. it was just there. i don’t know if it was the acoustics, the performance, the conductor, or some combination thereof. i was also unimpressed with the visuals of the production. they had two or three sets, or versions of the same st, and although they were aesthetically pleasing, they were, with a couple of exceptions, uninteresting.
Yeah Wagner’s a bit slow. I tend to be more of a Puccini or a Bizet fan. Baz Luhrman’s Boheme was fabulous. He did it on Broadway a few years ago, but there is a DVD of his original verision of it with the Australian National Opera. Quite dynamic, though watching video recordings of opera is difficult. Santa Fe Opera does some good work in the summer, might be worth a mini vacation.
Interesting thought — cultural appropriation as remixing and mashup.
Though I may be misunderstanding what you’re saying and putting my own interpretation on it. But isn’t that what you’re talking about?
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A lot of Opera is bad. It is really a shame. There is an inability to break free of many of the conventions that have held the medium hostage for a century or more. But when it is good it really is transcendent.
What piece did you see? Where?
Well . . .sort of. But you not wholly getting it is more what I am talking about. I have another post at some point that will be something along the lines of “The Beauty of Misunderstanding” though I will hopefully find a more pretentious subject heading.
Every experience, to an extent, is a remix or a mashup. In the sense that every textual encounter in an intertextual experience. I am not sure if looking at things in such a broad way makes them devoid of meaning, but there is a degree of truth to that way of thinking, so it is probably worth exploring.
the flying dutchman, here in tucson.
ah — not just cultural appropriation but any understanding of another consciousness has the potential for remix and mashup.
that’s a pretty hot idea. it’s like the encode/decode of speaking (or playing an instrument, whatever) and listening opens the door for a different decoding every time.
as an academic and a linguist, that concept invokes both awe and fear. So it’s probably right.