Whereupon Teddy Drops A Chocolate Yule Log on the Ambivalence of Retarded Listeners, Jazz Administrators and Pattern Based So-Called Improvisation

The ambivalence of the retarded listeners has its most extreme expression in the fact that individuals, not yet fully reified, want to extricate themselves from the mechanism of musical reification to which they have been handed over, but that their revolts against fetishism only entangle them more deeply in it.  Whenever they atempt to break away from the passive status of compulsory consumers and "activate" themselves, they succumb to pseudoactivity.  Types rise up from the mass of the retarded who differentiate themselves by pseudoactivity and nevertheless make the regression more strikingly visible.  There are, first, the enthusiasts who write fan letters to radio stations and orchestras and, at well-managed jazz festivals, produce their own enthusiasm as an advertisement for the wares they consume.  They call themselves jitterbugs, as if they simultaneously wanted to affirm and mock their loss of individuality, their transformation into beetles whirring around in fascination.  Their only excuse is that the term jitterbugs, like all those in the unreal edifice of films and jazz, is hammered into them by the entrepreneurs to make them think that they are on the inside.  Their ecstasy is without content.  That it happens, that the music is listened to, this replaces the content itself.  The ecstasy takes possession of its object by its own compulsive character.  It is stylized like the ecstasies savages go into in beating the war drums.  It has convulsive aspects reminiscent of St. Vitus' dance or the reflexes of mutilated animals.  Passion itself seems to be produced by defects.  But the ecstatic ritual betrays itself as pseudoactivity by the moment of mimicry.  People do not dance or listen "from sensuality" and sensuality is certainly not satisfied by listening, but the gestures of the sensual are imitated.  An analogue is the representation of particular emotions in the film, where there are physiognomic patterns for anxiety, longing, the erotic look; for smiling; for the atomistic expressivo of debased music.  The imitative assimilation to commodity models is intertwined with folkloristic customs of imitation.  In jazz, the relation of such mimicry to the imitating individual himself is quite loose.  Its medium is caricature.  Dance and music copy stages of sexual excitement only to make fun of them.  It is as if desire's surrogate itself simultaneously turned against it; the "realistic" behavior of the oppressed triumphs over his dream of happiness while being itself incorporated into the latter.  And as if to confirm the superficiality and treachery of every form of ecstasy, the feet are unable to fulfill what the ear pretends.  The same jitterbugs who behave as if they were electrified by syncopation dance almost exclusively the good rhythmic parts.  The weak flesh punishes the lies of the willing spirit; the gestural ecstasy of the infantile listener misfires in the face of the ecstatic gesture.  The opposite type appears to be the eager person who leaves the factory and "occupies" himself with music in the quiet of his bedroom.  He is shy and inhibited, perhaps has no luck with girls, and wants in any case to preserve his own special sphere...He brings nothing home which would not be delivered to his house.  The adventures of pseudo activity have already organised themselves on a large scale...all this is carefully fostered from above...It is irrelevant to him what he hears or even how he hears; he is only interested in the fact that he hears and succeeds in inserting himself...into the public mechanism without exerting even the slightest influence on it...Others are more expert, or at least more aggressive.  These smart chaps can be found everywhere and are able to do everything themselves: the advanced student who in every gathering is ready to play jazz with machinelike precision for dancing and entertainment; the gas station attendant who hums his syncopation ingenuously while filling up the tank;the listening expert who can identify every band and immerses himself in the history of jazz as if it were Holy Writ.  He is nearest to the sportsman; if not to the football player himself, then to the swaggering fellow who dominates the stands.  He shines by a capacity for rough improvisations, even if he must practice the piano for hours in secret in order to bring the refractory rhythms together.  He pictures himself as the individualist who whistles at the world.  But what he whistles is its melody, and his tricks are less inventions of the moment than stored-up experiences from acquaintance with sought-after technical things.  His improvisations are always gestures of nimble subordination to what the instrument demands of him.  The chauffer is the model for the listening type of the clever fellow.  His agreement with everything dominant goes so far that he no longer produces any resistence, but of his own accord always does what is asked of him for the sake of the responsible functionary.  He lies to himself about the completeness of his subordination to the rule of the reified mechanism.  Thus, the sovereign routine of the jazz amateur is nothing but the passive capacity for adaptation to models from which to avoid straying.  He is the real jazz subject: his improvisations come from the pattern, and he navigates the pattern, cigarette in mouth, as nonchalantly as if he had invented it himself.

Adorno, Fetish Character in Music and Regression of Listening

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Whenever Adorno starts hating on "jazz" I think of "jazz" as including all the things Bill Dixon hated in "jazz".  When I think of all the things Adorno hates about "jazz" and I subtract those things from "music" I feel like that's Dixon's music, Son of Sisyphus forward. 

Adorno hated plenty of other things in music, and chances are I've collected those hatreds somewhere on this blog.  My sense (and there's no way to check if I'm right) is that Adorno's imagined, idealized music and Dixon's actual, realized music are pretty close to one another.

Though he loved it so, and saw it as the foundation of his work, Dixon took every opportunity to let it be know his music was not "jazz."

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Am I the only one who loves how Adorno breaks down archetypes?  Kind of like Jung, but a little different.  Who hasn't met:

the eager person who leaves the factory and "occupies" himself with music in the quiet of his bedroom.  He is shy and inhibited, perhaps has no luck with girls, and wants in any case to preserve his own special sphere...the advanced student who in every gathering is ready to play jazz with machinelike precision for dancing and entertainment; the gas station attendant who hums his syncopation ingenuously while filling up the tank;the listening expert who can identify every band and immerses himself in the history of jazz as if it were Holy Writ. 

It's not mean if it's true, right?

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Further on,

The chauffer is the model for the listening type of the clever fellow.  His agreement with everything dominant goes so far that he no longer produces any resistence, but of his own accord always does what is asked of him for the sake of the responsible functionary. 

I don't have a problem with chauffeur per se...my problem is more with the people who hire them.  But better the chauffeur archetype drive cars than drive culture, or curate festivals, or run recording companies, or head PR firms--no, the chauffeurs of the world should drive Town Cars to and from the airport.  We need responsible functionaries when it comes to arriving at the airport two hours in advance of departure to allow adequate time for TSA hazing. 

We do not need responsible functionaries when it comes to Art.  Responsible functionality is boring and inevitably rewards the boring (and obsequious) for generating more boredom.  Like attracts like.  We do not need responsible functionaries choosing "who's next" or opining on "what's now."  We do not need responsible functionaries curating "well rounded" festivals that have "something for everyone."

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And then Adorno whips this on us

the sovereign routine of the jazz amateur is nothing but the passive capacity for adaptation to models from which to avoid straying.  He is the real jazz subject: his improvisations come from the pattern, and he navigates the pattern, cigarette in mouth, as nonchalantly as if he had invented it himself. 

Can you possibly dig it?  I'm looking at you Mr. Berk.  Not that I'm hating on said institution, but it really is an epicentre for improvisations that come from the pattern.  If Berklee is the fourth temple, Jerry Bergonzi's Inside Improvisation are the apocrypha of the apocrypha.  I'm not hating on the Inside Improvisation series either--quite the opposite.  Volumes 1, 2 and 3 live on my music stand.  I don't have volume 4, volume 5 lives on a very high shelf in a different room.  Maybe one day Santa will bring vol. 6 and 7.  I'd love to check them out.  They sure do scoot you all over the horn, which is a good thing.  The CD's that come with are a series of blog posts in and of themselves.

What about improvisation with no patterns?  Is that even possible?  If it were, do you think it would be the sound of use value, exchange value, neither, or both?

Is the pursuit of improvisation with no patterns a waste of a life?

Dixon had his patterns.  The one that comes to mind is the 3 notes a fifth away lick, (i.e. C - G - D) transposed all over the instrument.  Jimmy Lyons had his things, Cecil Taylor has his things...but they are their things.

That's the thing.

The heater guy came by the house, which I am given to understand is the first step to having a heater in one's house.  As he looked at our plumbing in a state of frightened confusion and disgust, we got to talking about the [blank] who designed and partially installed it.

Our heater guy knew the [blank], as undoing and repairing his mistakes is a fair amount of his income.  He also made this point:

He's good at unclogging toilets.  I don't do that.  Let him do that.  We need toilet uncloggers.

Unclogging the toilet is very important and the task of doing so is hardly a punishment.  It is also, undeniably, a task better suited to some than others.  I have to believe once class stigma and wage differentiation are removed from all tasks there will be a more natural pairing of tasks and people predisposed to execute them.  What would the world be like if everyone had a job they were good at and enjoyed?

Let the toilet uncloggers unclog toilets--because they sure can't design or install plumbing/heating systems worth a fuck.  Let the responsible functionaries chauffeur artists to and from the "jazz" festival which they, the artists, curate themselves.

Let the pattern based improviser be recognized and understood as, at their very best and in the most generous of lights, equal to those improvisers for whom pattern constitutes "error."