Thursday, March 24, 2005Tapping the SourceTook the kids to see Savion Glover tonight. A tap dancer who was sooo much more than a tap dancer.I never quite got it before, but tap dancers -- at least of his caliber, of which I doubt there are more than a small handful -- are not dancers at all. They are musicians. He riffed with his jazz ensemble and they watched him as sharply as they would any lead player. He would dance in front of the sax player, mimicking riffs, bantering back and forth. Then, almost dismissively, he'd end that section with some heavy repeated stomps ... and then move on to dialog with the pianist. I realized that when you get to be an artist of supreme mastery, you are using your art form to tell a story, to weave a spell, to entertain and please and beguile and seduce. We are all Sheherazades, saving our lives by spinning out fantasies. I have it the easiest, some would argue, because I use words. I use building blocks for my tales that everyone else is familiar with and uses daily. This makes my job both easier and harder. I did not have to learn a second language. I also have to live with people mutilating my art form constantly. Visual artists, whatever their medium, can choose to create pictures that in some way reference the reality we all see with our eyes. Musicians have it a bit harder, but humans can hum and sing and so we can hear their music (most of the time) and understand what it is we're supposed to be feeling. Viscerally at least, the story line can be perceived. But what about an artist who uses his feet to tell his story? Feet on an amplified piece of wood. Tapping out wild intricate syncopated rhythms. Some of his riffs I could count out in series of 8s. That helped me understand what he was saying. He would say one thing several times until we got the way the story was going. Then he'd stray away, getting further and further away, but always coming back to the original pattern. It was playful, it was a display of virtuousity, and I got it. Other times, though, he tapped like Charlie Parker played sax. He was doing rhythms upon rhythms, playing the harmonics of the rhythms until all we could do was sit there, jaw agape, and go on the journey. We didn't know where we were going or what we were seeing. It was beyond words and all that was left was pure awe and wonderment. With tap, and probably with other art forms that I haven't been thinking about all evening, there is nothing denoted whatsoever. It is all connotation. Words have specific meanings and we know what those meanings are. A foot pounding on a piece of wood and amplified to fill a theatre has zero intrinsic meaning. There is nothing there whatsoever to read. So all that's left is the connotation. It's as if the words suddenly lose all meaning and all we are left with is pure subtext. In a sense it's just like listening to a different language. But the messages were way more primitive and deep than just listening to Chinese. When you walk by two people speaking Chinese (if you're not Chinese and don't know Chinese), it sounds soooo intricate and mysterious. But if you watch them for awhile and look at their faces and gestures, pretty much you eventually get the feeling that they are, indeed, pretty much standing around yakking. It sounds like they are discussing the wild giraffes of Ghengis Khan, but really they're complaining about how the trash guys always drop a plastic bag or two as they drive off down the street. Listening and watching Mr. Glover dance was like being escorted into a world of meaning and harmonics of meaning. The stomps sounded angry and the twirling tapping slides felt like pure ecstasy. The rhythms were his words and paragraphs and he wove them together with intention and skill. Pretty soon the language processing part of the brain shut down and all that was left was the part that marvels and is renewed in the presence of artistic mastery. I don't know what other people think about when the watch a master at his art. All I can think about is that I crave to reach that pinnacle of excellence. I become refocused and re-energized, thinking that if this person can achieve what I'm experiencing, then I can reach my own heights as well. My kids watched with big eyes and open mouths. It was the first time they'd been exposed to so much jazz and I could tell that it got in under their skin. I can only hope that's true. Great jazz well played is orgasmic. The biggest problem I've ever found with great jazz is that my brain shuts down after a certain amount of time. It's too much, it's too good, it's too beautiful, it's too inspiring. So thank you, Mr. Glover. You gave my children an example of supreme mastery that they will carry with them the rest of their lives. And you gave my soul a necessary respite. It felt like it was sinking into a hot pool of utterly luxurious mud. The muscles unkinked, the relish of the goodness of it all was complete. And I listen to my fingers as they tap on the keyboard and I think, oh. I get it. I'm tapping out words, too. I'm always looking to be "tapped in." And when things get too much in JKD, we "tap out." Tapping is a word that connotes getting right there down into the source. It's the perfect word for the kind of art we saw tonight. The results of my tapping appear on the screen, but they follow the same vibe, the same rhythm, the same intent as Savion Glover's feet do. They tap in, literally and figuratively. They have their own patterns and fire off rapidly, in spurts, in crazy trills and lovely extended beats that start to have long lovely patterns of their own. Whether it's with the tapping of the feet or the tapping of fingers on keyboard, they are both the tapping out of the creative heart, communicating with others of similar species. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 11:17 PM  
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