Die, Magic, Die!
I've recently taken to reading biographies. I'm currently reading "If They Come in the Morning" (autobiography of Angela Y. Davis), and a biography of James Baldwin and Miles Davis. (Yes, I realize that I am not black--I am not even easily tanned). Baldwin is my favorite author, Miles my favorite musician, and Davis's story--or more specifically, the story of the Black Power/Black Panther movement--puts both my favorite literature and my favorite music into a bit of 'street context.' So, this is my trifecta of biographical wonderment.
However, despite satisfying my hunger to contextualize everything (hello, anthro degree--thought I'd forgotten about you, huh?), I'm wondering if I'm actually killing the magic. I mean, once I learned how my microwave actually cooks things, I no longer got to believe that death rays were shooting through my campbell's soup for three minutes, setting off little bombs which cooked my tomato soup. Once I learned how my refrigerator worked, I could no longer pretend escaped eskimos had implanted magic ice cubes into giant boxes, thus keeping my leftover soup delightfully cool.
Really, learning about things can sometimes kill that delightfully magical and enchanted belief structure with which we have surrounded and explained those mysteries in our lives.
Now Baldwin's literature was a bit less of a mystery than Miles' music. Perhaps it is because, while conspicuously white, I identify with many of the themes contained in Baldwin. Miles, however, with his ever-changing and revolutionary music was always one of those wonderful mysteries. Placing these works--but Miles in particular-- into a broader social and historical context has brushed away that curtain, and I now see both the music of Miles and the literature of Baldwin in a more connected, more obvious (in the sense that it is painfully clear why they pursued their chosen arts in the way in which they did) way. But it's also killed a bit of that magic. They're both human, after all.
i found this quote today, reading about Bill Withers. It comes from a conversation he had, and his response is in regards to the interviewer's question of how he came up with his amazing songs: "I don't really want to know too much about how I do it. Because then it's not magic anymore. Early in my life, I was an airline mechanic, so my life was full of, you know, you attach this to that and you put so much torque on it, and this causes that to happen, and that causes the other, and your life is full of rules. And then you get over 60, and you can't eat nothing that's not green, and you got all of these things to deal with. So the one magical thing for me is when something comes from somewhere and I don't know where it came from. It just crossed my mind."
Ah, but disenchantment is always bittersweet ~ Weber.
However, despite satisfying my hunger to contextualize everything (hello, anthro degree--thought I'd forgotten about you, huh?), I'm wondering if I'm actually killing the magic. I mean, once I learned how my microwave actually cooks things, I no longer got to believe that death rays were shooting through my campbell's soup for three minutes, setting off little bombs which cooked my tomato soup. Once I learned how my refrigerator worked, I could no longer pretend escaped eskimos had implanted magic ice cubes into giant boxes, thus keeping my leftover soup delightfully cool.
Really, learning about things can sometimes kill that delightfully magical and enchanted belief structure with which we have surrounded and explained those mysteries in our lives.
Now Baldwin's literature was a bit less of a mystery than Miles' music. Perhaps it is because, while conspicuously white, I identify with many of the themes contained in Baldwin. Miles, however, with his ever-changing and revolutionary music was always one of those wonderful mysteries. Placing these works--but Miles in particular-- into a broader social and historical context has brushed away that curtain, and I now see both the music of Miles and the literature of Baldwin in a more connected, more obvious (in the sense that it is painfully clear why they pursued their chosen arts in the way in which they did) way. But it's also killed a bit of that magic. They're both human, after all.
i found this quote today, reading about Bill Withers. It comes from a conversation he had, and his response is in regards to the interviewer's question of how he came up with his amazing songs: "I don't really want to know too much about how I do it. Because then it's not magic anymore. Early in my life, I was an airline mechanic, so my life was full of, you know, you attach this to that and you put so much torque on it, and this causes that to happen, and that causes the other, and your life is full of rules. And then you get over 60, and you can't eat nothing that's not green, and you got all of these things to deal with. So the one magical thing for me is when something comes from somewhere and I don't know where it came from. It just crossed my mind."
Ah, but disenchantment is always bittersweet ~ Weber.
posted by slickaphonic at 8:55 PM
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