In love with the plain girl
March 31st, 2007
I’ve always liked people who are plain in the best sense. I am a rather ordinary person, and I am married to an extraordinary person who is in disguise as an ordinary person. I rather like people who are plain, not only in the Quaker sense, but also in the sense of having well-defined lines and a simplicity of manner. I don’t mean simplicity of speech, particularly–I love words and wordplay. I mean a directness of idea, even when the idea is itself subtle or elusive. I find this form of circuitous straightforwardness anything but ordinary.
They say that people find attractive things in symmetry. The symmetrical face apparently causes Pavlovian mouths to water more consistently than the uneven face. Yet I find myself drawn, in people and in music, to an asymmetrical plain-ness.
We all have our moments of personal epiphany. A frighteningly small percentage of the time they arise from experiences we have in school. I recall, for example, the poet Jack Butler (later the author of the wonderful novel “living in little rock with miss little rock”) coming to my high school.
I had never understood the possibilities in poetry until his visit. I cannot say he inspired my best verse–I remember my rhymed poem he critiqued, which finished with the immortal line “oh where, oh where, is that plowshare?”. He instead gave me an idea that poetry did not only do things (rhyme, tell a story) but sometimes just managed to be something. I found this a plain revelation.
I had a similar epiphany in a college introductory course called “Music Lecture”. Even if you never went to an American university, or indeed, university at all, you can easily visualize “Music Lecture”. A packed lecture hall of kids in metal folding chairs experience music appreciation, in a light-hearted, unchallenging section.
There I met Harry Partch, albeit a celluloid Partch. The instructor showed the well-known Partch documentary. I learned of a man who was plain in the best sense.
Some fret and tussle when confronted with aesthetic uncertainty. Partch did something about it.
Just like the small town boy who is elected president because he is from a town too small to squelch his dreams of advancement, Partch elected to supersede what troubled him about western music by inventing his own theory of intonation. What did he do when no instruments could play these new scales? Simple–he invented new instruments. This roundabout and eccentric way of thinking was plain in the best sense. Do you sense a problem? Simply invent a solution–no matter what anyone says.
As I dabble in music, I find over and over the importance of working within limitations and formats. I use non-traditonal interfaces, such as the IXI-software.net freeware, a gift to non-musicians and music everywhere. I use a lot of freeware, donationware and shareware. I am not hunting the perfect commercial product mimic. I am hunting a kind of plain-ness.
Although I have a folder full of VST synths, lately I’m dating a musical software synthesizer which stands alone rather than plugging into a host. It’s the Cutter Music program Sawcutter 2.0. It cost me the grand sum of 25 dollars, but it offers me thousands upon thousands of dollars’ worth of learning experiences.
Sawcutter 2.0 allows one to sample wave files into its system, and then write songs. Its sequencer permits a four-instrument attack of alternating patterns of melody. It’s got all the knobs and twiddles for interesting effect. Yet it’s fundamentally a simple synthesizer. I love making it rhythm tracks based on home depot bolts, or jazz piano sounding pieces made using a faux theremin sample.
I have used it in many pieces, but lately I find myself drawn to it as my first weapon of choice.
Its very limitations are in some ways virtues. I find it remarkably plain and easy to use–plain in the best sense. Something about its Shalimar-scented old-fashioned allure draws me into seeking out a permanent relationship. I am more the courtship type than the fling type.
I like my courtship to focus on the essentials–honestry, kindness, intelligence, communication (the truest graphical user interface)–and a plain-ness in manner and integrity.
I have found this love, speaking in synth-metaphor, in a simple synth called Sawcutter 2.0. As with so many things, I am far more plain than Sawcutter is, and yet I find that the beast in the jungle is springing long before she is dead to me.
Leave a Reply