Music that comes to the ear as a hot summer day where nothing much is happening; just the sound of the colour of the sun. There is something that appeals to me very strongly in art that presents a sameness along the surface. Particularly in the case of music, I am drawn to the ‘minimalist’ aesthetic: long drawn-out pieces that seem to go nowhere, and are much more about texture and local regions of melody and rhythm that get projected onto larger regions of the piece. The extreme case is the drone, or the hook that just goes round and round, and eventually fades away. What the hell was that?
In the case of literature, there is nothing worse than being trapped in a barely changing landscape of words, or being in a place where the narrative is at a standstill or where events recur over and over and over… no doubt because the modality is eluctable, so we elect to eluct when we can.
It’s worth trying to overcome the impatience we’re supposed to feel when works of human creation don’t meet the needs of the moment. We all feel a dangerous tendency to use our own tiny worlds as the measuring stick for someone else’s attempt to communicate. The things that stretch out, take their (and our) time, make themselves at home: these needlings and discomforts are the price of learning to step outside the circle of the usual. And it’s a good thing.
