Little Shop of Knowledge
What I found most amazing about reading Stravinsky was realizing that this man, who lived in Russia a long time ago, was telling me his personal story, his personal meaning making quest, as if on a one to one conversation. His concerns, issues with his parents, conversations with his teachers and even uncertain thoughts on whether he should like the French composers or if he should stop listening to them before he ran the risk of starting liking the compositions of men like Debussy, enthralled me. We’re all on this personal meaning making quest: our lives. The fact that he ran through the exercise of producing an autobiography, of carefully selecting those details that he found most meaningful and turning them into a coherent narrative is amazing. Not only do we have an extremely difficult time perceiving ourselves as wholes from the outside but actually attempting to convey coherent meaning from a myriad of experiences since childhood is no easy task. When he talks about how the sounds made by the crazy looking guy from the countryside with his mouth and armpit made an impact on him as to how sound can be manipulated and produced evoked in me the thought of what experiences in my early life have been so impacting.
Everyday as I live more experiences, meet more people, live more meaningful experiences with people while slowly drift apart from others, it all makes me think on how life has dynamic cycles. The person you thought one day was the love of your life perhaps wasn’t even in your thoughts a month before you could claim to have fallen in love, this same person who’s very thought wouldn’t let you sleep at night would slowly drift apart into a complete stranger a couple of years later. How do you choose what’s more relevant when value and meaning are constantly changing? How do you make of your life a coherent statement that is communicable to others? How do you write an autobiography? To be honest I had never heard before of Igor Stravinsky. I thought he might have been just another random guy, and I didn’t really know what he actually did to deserve to make it to the MPC reading list.
I am thankful that at the same time that this January of 2014, (same time as I was on vacation and read this book) the movie Inside Llewyn Davis came out. It’s also the story of a musician’s life, except he never really “makes it”. He records a couple of songs, he has fallen in love, has a sister, he breaks up, he has friends with whom he fights and laughs, he goes to the local bar, he thinks about life, hates capitalism, he moves form New York to other cities, he ate cereal and hamburgers, he lived a variety of experiences as a human being. He led a life as a human being. And who is to decide what makes it into the movie when none of his songs were ever famous? When he was actually a fictional character who never lived his “hero’s journey”. He was human and humans can do great things or not but what’s worth is our own personal journey for the sake of it, not simply for the “final result” but for our thoughts and actions one very moment, on how they affect others, on how our existence allows us to interact with reality in so many different and crazy ways. Both Stravinsky and Davis walked this earth, heard sounds, and tried to transmit emotions through their movies. One became the most famous composer of the century, the other one barely made it to small town bars to play a couple of songs on a Thursday evening. Every person’s life can be the most amazing story, and what I was left with after reading Stravinsky was the impact of how his values, his perspective on life, and his person guided him to write the book that he did. How he perceived himself and the events in his life were not completely dependent on reality and on what went on in the actual events, but on how his mind perceived them and how he made meaning out of them. This reminds me of the daily reflection, such a small, perhaps even perky exercise because of the insistence on the faculty to do it. The daily reflection is not about writing an objective recap of the day, but of recording the meaning we had at the moment, on the spot, with the current information, perhaps for later uses or perhaps simply to raise awareness, in the end what matters is our discernment of what we decide to give meaning to, what feelings and actions we decide to acknowledge and keep forever in our hearts and minds.
