Less is more
I've been thinking about minimalism lately. Usually the way it goes is I have a thought about music, or something artistic and I wonder if I'm referring to that term correctly in my head and the uncertainty prompts me to want to look it up. I've done this of course, but the problem is I want a more abstract academic definition, in the way that impressionism can be defined in a way that's derivative of what the impressionists were and what the artwork itself is. I know there are the "minimalists" who fall into the definition with a capital "M" and I don't think that's what I'm looking for exactly either. It makes me think of other broad artistic descriptions like "Post-Modernism". What do you call words like these? They are highly abstract descriptors of abstract things, like art, music, painting, and literature. Are terms like these definitions alone, in the way tango just describes the dance and has its own connotations therefrom? Or are they words given to a time and place or thing after the fact, once something has already happened and you have to bundle that all up and cart it around with other things related to it in some way, through form or function or common thought? Sometimes we make these adjectives up just for one person, like Kafkaesque, or Aristotelian, as if that one individual somehow gave spark to the countless other things deserving that description, or that they managed to synthesize some pervasive element themselves which we only now can see for what it is, making the word an honorary name for their discovery. I suppose these rather trivial questions are best left up to the many busy and probably over-tired literature students who think about words in seven layers of the abstract just for fun. I'd be happy with a cursory synopsis or hour long chat with someone who truly cares.
I've often thought of my approach to music as minimalist in many ways. I think I got it from Elliott Smith somehow, and even though I tend to give him the credit for a lot of my inspiration I think he's just a useful synecdoche. What entranced me in my teenage years about Elliott's music the most was the tremendous depth and charisma of just a single guitar and a voice. The production, such as multi-tracking vocals and sometimes being backed up by other instruments added to the overall magic of course, as did poignant lyrics and his having lived in Portland, but this simple idea of conveying so much with so little did and continues to grip me more than anything else.
The phrase "brevity is the soul of wit" is one which I try to employ when speaking when I remember to, and is an aphorism which I find most true, if not difficult to uphold. Brevity seems to be the essential element in some of the best poems and lyrics as well, though not always by being literally laconic. I have a dim recollection of an interview I watched with some old country singer explaining that writing a good country song is about packing the most story into as few lines you're allowed in the form of the song. Same thing goes for folk music, some of the best lyrics ever written I'm sure it goes without saying are ones which can be sang very quickly and understood very slowly. It's not at all easy to do this, and I think that while there are many ways to say and write beautiful and truthful and important things the unambiguous truth of doing so as briefly as possible is self evident and refuted only those who cannot do it.
I don't mean to suggest though that all things must be chiseled away at until there is only the most essential elements of truth and beauty left to remain, on the contrary, countless important and beautiful and truthful things must be said in hundreds or thousands of words or gestures. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts and if you try to write a novel of short witticisms I wouldn't expect to find it on a bestsellers list.
(I'm finding out as I look up the following quote that this guy Antione de Saint-Exupéry wrote the Little Prince, a book I think I should read although maybe that only applies to French students?)
"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away" is more the aim of my argument. Even lengthy, luxurious passages which seem to go on unending could be a more perfect creation than a haiku, but only so long as they have been excised of superfluous information. But that gets at the heart of it in a rather tricky way, doesn't it? What is considered "superfluous information" in a violin solo, or a speech, or meal? And what is so bad about have a little bit of extra, a little something unneeded in any of those things? Well, obviously to any one enjoying something casually, which is to say almost everyone almost always, there's nothing wrong with it at all, at least not usually. The superfluous note played live might come off as unneeded to get the point across, but frankly if it's a product of free expression isn't that already much more beautiful and truthful than a deliberately measured performance? An extra page describing a feast might not do much harm to the casual reader as they glaze over mid-paragraph or flip ahead in mild disgust, and maybe the author really wanted you to smell it all, and some other readers were absolutely there for the feast, and it made the passage that much more vivid. Those don't sound like bad things, really, and already I can feel myself hesitating at the inherently pretentious nature of thinking there is some hierarchical approach to art and beauty, so I want to reiterate that I don't mean to make the point that the extra information is always bad. I mean honestly if we could leave it all behind and only speak write eat and sing exactly what we needed to, sign me up that sounds great, but that's also unrealistic and vain.
When you are in a non-casual headspace, when it is time to ask if this creation is new or inventive or profound or whatever you want to judge it on, asking how concise it makes its point is one of the primary questions. This lense of minimalism, of cutting away the unneeded parts is a way to more accurately get to the bottom of what you're fundamentally saying, or what your fundamental interpretation of something is. The funny thing is, when I try to apply this in a sort of verbal sense to Elliott Smith as a songwriter, I can't really come up with a sentence about what that point he's trying to get at is. Is it the lyrics, and the song is just a vehicle for them? Well probably not, and even if they were, the lyrics are also a finite and metaphorical glance at what his real feelings were and frankly no one but the artist can ever really understand what a given song is about I think, so the pit of truth in the fruit of a song seems impossible to get at from the outside. My inclination that you say the most by saying the least is paradoxical then, because what is it you are saying but that thing itself? More likely, as with all things, such a strictly reductionist way of looking at art won't always work, least of all at the very bottom of the form of something. Why sing about a breakup you had when at best it will be a parody of the actual breakup itself and to write a song about it is to muddle the truth of the reality. It's not so simple as distilling truths and emotion into art and then dispensing it. The creation, the act, and the form are all just as essential to the truth as the thing itself in the end. So if you're trying to whittle away your work to the core truthful values, remember that the creation owes only truth to itself, as you see fit.
Maybe what's more useful for me lately has been thinking about a more practical application of minimalism in music. I want to make dance music. Music that makes people dance, and while that is so absurdly broad and stupid because literally all music has been trying to do until very recently is exactly that, and I spend hours in the day thinking about what makes music danceable, but I can't help but frame it that way. It's a good guiding principle though I think, because in contrast when I'm writing "acoustic-y" songs as I often do, I'm stuck trying to nail down a modus operandi like in the above paragraph, finding truth and beauty in the thing itself without actually having that much of an image in the marble to carve from any way. With this idea of dance music it's very easy to grab at a tool box of desired effects and then find the most direct route to producing them. Dancing for instance is wildly broad, and can be produced in countless ways, but the basic tools I would like to use are drums, certain ranges of BPM, and the nebulous idea of excitement or energy.
Interest is one of the most, if not the most important element in music today and possibly for centuries, simply because no one cares about things that are boring (incidentally I don't think the idea of something being boring really came up until about 100 years ago but regardless the modern era is a sickening rat race for excitement and it's no use trying to deny that now). What makes something interesting is much harder to get at, and unlike danceability which is only subjective at a back patio, smoky basement, or record producers office, intrigue is subjective from one person to the next in a venue, and from screen to screen online. It's almost impossible to know what people will find is more interesting than the old version or than something else, though clearly not entirely so because media and consumption continues to ask that question and outdo itself over and over in the name of some new rush.
For making dance music today, interesting means surprise, intertextuality both sonically and otherwise, "phoning it in" or copying recent trends in production value, certain styles or even rhythms to get a certain point of reference, and above all else interesting means novel. People want to hear something that makes them say "whoa", or better yet, something that makes them shout "hell yeah!" or "oh shit!". It'd be stupid to suggest I can bottle the "X" factor or write a book or a paragraph on it, not only because "the dao that can be named is not the holy dao" and all that but because the ephemeral nature of what really bops at any given moment is random, not entirely, but enough to make trying to predict it a waste of time. It reminds me of a conversation my acting instructor Dr. C said in class one day; she had asked everyone "what makes actor ___ so good?" or "what makes an actor good?" or something along those lines and though most people prattled on about authenticity and meaningful emotive performances (myself included) she got her classic movie moment in by giving us the obvious answer: "because we all agree they're good!". It's that simple, and if there's one thing you cannot predict, bottle, or manufacture it's widespread agreement.
All of this said, what I personally think would be a novel step in dance music today, something interesting if not simply likeable, is a very stripped down, simple and organic song with discernable instruments, ragged, decisive, and glamorous vocals, and a return of the early 90's post-punk "loud and soft" contrast in song writing. Even if this isn't universally appealing (I'm sure its not) or even new and novel (I don't really think it is) it's something that I would like to make and I think would be fun. It's my way of bringing the minimalist approach to my growing fetish for electronic music and a way to, ultimately, perform effortlessly in a high energy and eye catching way. I want to be able to make a big change suddenly, as in bring it 3 new instruments, change keys and effects and dynamics all at once for a chorus, but make it free form enough to play with the outro. I want just the right amount of control: enough to be playing music instead of to a backing track, but not so much that I need a 9 minute build between each track to set up any new pattern. I want something so melodically simple you can hum it after the 3rd repeat, and be able to contrast it with a small number of very dense, very well placed and texturally ambiguous sounds that make you wonder how it's all possible. I want the terrifying mangled sounds of industrial with the graceful force of the power chord. The unrelenting simplicity of techno with the flexibility of punk rock. Lyrically it's 100% hook, all present tense, like Peaches, mean and distorted like riot grrrl but languid and careless like Julian Casablancas. Funny but honest, and vague enough to be applied to all sorts of contexts, hopefully mostly sexual.
Most of all I want a set of songs I can pick up and play as easily as picking up a guitar, songs that I can do a different version of everytime I play it that are simple enough, like a guitar chord, to be rephrased individually but structured enough to matter to the melody and rhythm. Songs that I can play from my phone speakers to strangers and not have to explain away, songs that speak for themselves, whose purpose and meaning are self-evident and unapologetic. Deliberately not cerebral, not laboured over, but spontaneous and ongoing, songs that I just do and don't think about. Songs that don't depend on a gimmick or genre or signature sound to be given license.
To me these goals help embody what I see as an ethos of minimalism in my life, one which continues to manifest in many ways and one which I feel I can comfortably tie myself to the gallows of.
To say a little and mean a lot, to act boldly without thought, to find a truth without a name, show differences are all the same.
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