"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

10 January 2018

Washing.


Whitefish Review's Brian Schott interviews Russell Chatham and Rob Stern ...

Rob Stern: Mood is everything. Sometimes it’s the only thing.

Russell Chatham: If you could translate one medium to another medium i.e. visceral response to colors and shapes and forms to words, it’s like poetry. It’s like trying to translate poetry to prose. You can’t do it because it can only exist in its natural form. So a painting at its very best trans- mits its message in a nonverbal way, that you can’t really discuss it. You can’t explain it in words. And scholars are constantly trying to explain paintings in words and you can’t really. I mean you can try. It doesn’t hurt anything. You can go ahead — hey, give it your best shot.

Brian Schott: Right.

RC: But that’s not going to be it.

RS: Sometimes the more you try to explain a painting, just the stu- pider you look. It’s like, “Oh, it’s such a vision of strength!” It’s like a violin solo or something. You just close your eyes and melt into it and you can’t explain it.

RC: Exactly. It’s like somebody asked me the other day. They said that musicians or composers have over the centuries talked about certain melodic constructs being seen in their mind as if it was in color. And I listen to classical music relentlessly, compulsively, and they asked me if I saw the music in color and I said, “No, I don’t.” Right or wrong, I don’t care. That’s not how I listen to music. I respond because I don’t understand music. I tried to study music theory and piano and I couldn’t really understand. It’s too complicated. It’s mathematics. It’s just too complicated. I respond to it out of an emotional basis. So certain pieces of music evoke certain emotional responses and that’s as far as I can get.

RS: When you’re composing something, at least for me, I never say I want this to look a certain way.

RC: No, I never do either.

RS: I always say I want this to feel a certain way. I want it to make me feel a certain way.

RC: I think if you do that — if I’m listening to some piece of music — I tend to like a great number of great composers — I feel like the music is washing over me and I’m just crazed at how beautiful it is.

RS: Yes, you can’t sit there and go, “Oh, I really like how that trumpet over there goes high and the guitar goes over here like this.” You are completely immune to the process.

RC: It’s like this. I think to myself, if I can make somebody feel this painting the way I am now feeling about this piece of music, I’ll be happy.

RS: Right, right.

RC: Certainly like Mozart — what was it Benny Goodman played? Clarinet concerto. It’s like the purity of the notes. I am thinking to myself, I can even listen to this ten times in one day and never get tired of it and I’ll cry every fucking time that song plays.

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