We’re saying goodbye to a young kid – blond, maybe 13 years old, who is J. S. Bach. Everyone says goodbye and thank you, and I say – because I feel like I ought to say it – “Thanks for The Art of Fugue.” It’s not very sincere, and he seems to know that, and accepts my thanks awkwardly, nodding. (It’s an afterthought. I was just going to say “Thanks. Bye.” or something like that.) I feel like I probably should have said something like “the Brandenburg Concertos” instead.
Later the same day, I read Laeth's latest post. His posts typically end with some jazz, but this one was different:
today’s musical portion is not jazz. or is it.
my favorite JS Bach is the stuff people considered as academic, exercises good for teaching, but not real music. i must have student ears. The Art of the Fugue is at the top for me. the more involved it gets, the more i like it. i prefer the versions with organ, but couldn’t find this specific one, so string quartet it is (rather than piano, which doesn’t do it justice).
it sounds to me half Wayne Shorter half Villa Lobos. Bach really invented everything.
This shares with the dream the idea that you aren't really "supposed" to like The Art of Fugue, and that preferring a different work by Bach would be a sign of better musical taste.
I've never pretended to have good taste.
1 comment:
What caught my attention here is that you ended the post about your lack of good taste, and the dream involved a character named John.
I thought back on your dream of Terry the Giant Irishman, who had something to say about your taste in reading material. Since my guess was and still remains that this Terry represented John (the Terry/ Tarry word game being one of the reasons), this seemed interesting to have another character name John in the form of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Bach refers to a stream or brook, and Johann is a form of John. Sebastian means "venerable, revered", and I suppose could be viewed in this game as a descriptor for both John and for the river most associated with him: the Jordan River, where tradition has that he baptized Jesus. So a venerable John associated with a venerable "bach" could point to John here.
The fact that you weren't really sincere in thanking him for a work about "Fugue" is then also interesting and ties back to Terry and his book critique. He claimed you liked a book that was about fighting, when he thought you should be more into a book about a Wily Whale. "Fugue" means literally "Flight", but also in the sense of "a running away, the act of fleeing".
At some point in the future people will "fugue" or flee to Zion, one reason being because they will not fight. In my story, that quite literally involves a flight in the more literal sense of the word as well, in that people will depart up into the sky.
John plays a critical role in allowing that to happen - the Art of Fugue. Flying whales have been a symbolic theme, so that also fits in well in terms of mapping Terry's book critique and what you weren't really thankful to Bach for.
I saw a whale on the back of a car yesterday on a license plate, which held my attention for some reason (first time I had ever seen that license plate) and which I am oddly tying in here. Next to it was the personalized number which read simply "Lux". Lux means "Light", and I saw it just as we were pulling into the airport, which is where people get on flights.
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