Hello again! I hate to realise that I’ve just had the longest break from blogging since I began on the first day of 2010. I know now, though, that I was subconsciously building up to my ‘car crash effect’ post (17 June) for so long that since then I’ve felt I’ve reached blogging saturation. But now, spurred on by a combination of unexpected circumstances, an exhaustingly long period of indecision (revolving around the unavoidable dilemma ‘on which side of the pond shall I live for the next four months?’), an alarming number of train journeys, at last some post-injury cello playing (and consequently more listening now that I don’t have the irrational paranoia that I’ll never be able to play again), a bit of reading and a disproportionate amount of thinking, I’m getting, er, twitchy for some Rabbit action.

For a long time I’ve been trying to figure out exactly why I believe wholeheartedly, though I realise controversially, that music is the superior art form. First off there are some obvious general points that I’ve always thought about, for example that dance relies on music for its existence and that music is more widely accessible than any literature or language-based theatre. But then, whilst listening to music during my seven-hour wait at New York JFK airport for my flight to London back in May, I had a sudden thought that I’ve been revisiting ever since.

I sat listening to whatever music came up on shuffle on my iPod in the usually soulless departure lounge and watching the array of people milling around, who apparently had nothing in common except for a desire to be somewhere other than here, and immediately got the sense that the people and objects within this entire space were now unified. The temporal continuity and structural coherence of the music (we’re talking vaguely ‘conventional’ music here) instantly lent the space a reassuring unity or ‘oneness’, whichever way I turned my head. It was as if music was painting my surroundings, as far as my eyes could see, in exactly the same shade but, owing to the greater complexity and emotional depth of music, the connections I now perceived between space, people and objects became far more meaningful than anything a coat of magnolia could achieve. No wonder music is used in films, worship, football games, birthday celebrations, school assemblies etc. Its ability to bring people together and to create a (real or imagined) common purpose or identity is surely more powerful than any other means (legal means, in any case). Now to stick in my headphones and create an emotional bond with my poor unsuspecting fellow passengers. If it can happen in Taunton train station waiting room, it can happen anywhere.

I’ve just arrived at (yet) another (hugely generalised) reason as to why many of us folk in the performing arts world are happier chaps than, say, investment bankers, who spend the majority of their lives having to live in the future. Living in the future can, of course, be the best kind of living of all – the possibilities are endless – but if you’re never allowed sufficient time and energy to feast on the fruits of your planning, life must be some kind of unfulfilling out-of-body experience. If your present is in the future, you’ll never get the chance to unwrap it, as it were.

There’s also the banking aspect of investment banking. Enough said.

I’m still on an injury-induced break from playing and, as ever, new circumstances have led to new relevant(ish), related(ish) perspectives…

• Musicians should perform more music. Artists don’t just paint the walls of their studios.
• Being satisfied with just playing the notes is akin to an actor standing on stage reading a script.
• Practising for months on end without ever performing (or desiring to perform) is self-indulgent, selfish and, frankly, missing the point. If we waited for a ‘finished product’, the world would be eternally silent. And nobody likes an awkward silence.

[Not to be confused with March 30: 'The Silent Musician']

Musicians should listen to more music. Artists don’t walk around with their eyes closed.

When does an appealing personality quirk become an undesirable mental condition?

The answer surely rests on tolerance. For example, it’s lucky our predecessors have been open-minded enough to grant freedom to some of humankind’s most brilliant bipolar minds. There’s a whole lot of music spanning the alphabet and centuries, from Arensky to Zimmerman, Dowland to Ives, which never would have been born had we always mistaken artistic creativity for mental instability.

If anything, reading the seemingly neverending list of bipolar-affected greats makes us feel better about ourselves, and perhaps even innovative, for putting the dog in the fridge and the milk in the kennel.

To continue from my hang-up about originality from Jan 19 (‘You Say Nature and I Say Nurture‘):

Most people, including Albert in Sophie’s World, agree that, once upon a time, in fact once before time, something had to come ‘ex nihilo‘. But, now that the world exists, can pure originality, in thought and action, really exist? Or is there just a cycle of three ‘I’s, imitation, inspiration and (re)interpretation?

Don’t think too hard about this one – someone else will have got there first.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but nobody wants to read a blog about the life of a person who sits in front a computer screen all day writing blogs. I doubt anybody would buy a painting by an artist who never emerged from their windowless studio to see the light of day. By extension, certainly for me, a musician worth listening to is not a musician who camps out in a practise room from dawn to dusk.

Without life, art becomes a science.

Having said that, I should probably stop writing and at least set foot in my practise room today before I turn into the Serial-Blogging Busker.

I often think that if I had better knowledge of psychology, sociology, history etc. I’d have been better qualified to address the issues I’ve raised in the Rabbit so far. But yesterday, after writing my post, I reassured myself with the following thought which, even if untrue, makes me feel justified in continuing my blogging activities…

The word ‘ignorance’ has such negative connotations, but remaining ignorant to existing literature, theories, experiments etc. can, in one sense, give us the edge over those ‘in the know’. Absorbing someone else’s theory can, for example, build a brick wall around our own thought capacity as the theory infiltrates our own ideas (whether we like it or not), just like listening to recordings can subconsciously influence the way in which a performer shapes a musical phrase and place limits on the development of their individual interpretation. By avoiding the brainwashing of others and the belief that we’ve arrived at answers, we can also retain that healthy sense of awe that Jostein Gaarder holds up as the key to being a good philosopher. It’s no wonder that children are so creative. [I also realise that educating ourselves can also provide us with tools needed for further independent enquiry, but that goes against today's point...]

What I’m trying to say is this… Another person’s thought could very well act as as a useful foothold (it is, after all, someone else’s book which sparked the idea for this blog), but it could just as easily stand as an obstacle on your own personal rabbity journey. Behind every big personal library there isn’t necessarily a genius/someone you’d take out for coffee.

This just popped up on twitter from Plato via philoquotes: “Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil”. I’ll hazard a guess and say he probably wouldn’t agree with this post then.