The history of art is a dialectic between monism and dualism.

[Below are some thoughts on aesthetics I’ve been developing for a little while, and am still fleshing out.]

The history of art is a dialectic between monism and dualism; virtually all art falls into one of these two aesthetic categories. I use the terms “monism” and “dualism” in a slightly different way than they are commonly employed; I’ll explain below.



On Monism:

In traditional western philosophy, the term “monism” refers to a unity of mind and body. From an aesthetic perspective, monist art therefore describes the human experience as being contained within and part of the world around it, and especially as being subject to the laws and forces of nature (including human nature).

Realism, naturalism, romanticism, tragedy – these all traditionally reflect a monist perspective. Works featuring themes of interconnectedness, wholeness and unity, works that are built around archetypal or mythological motifs, works that emphasize instinct and human emotion (for good or for ill), fundamental unchanging truths (for good or for ill), tend to be works from a monist perspective.

Ironic distance is nowhere to be found in monist art, and is in fact the antithesis of it, as irony immediately creates a separation, simultaneously depicting the object and the critique of the same object: a dual perspective. Monist works do not seek to place the viewer/audience at a distance; instead, the goal is immersion, the suspension of disbelief. The monist work does not “wink” at the audience, it is played straight, intended to be taken at face value. This is not to say monist works are not often complex; in fact, monist works often operate at multiple levels simultaneously. However, the monist artist will take care to “hide the brushstrokes,” literally or figuratively, so that the viewer/audience does not necessarily have to be consciously aware of the many layers of meaning beneath the surface (in fact, it’s usually preferable for the deeper themes to remain at the level of unconsciousness, rather than calling attention to themselves). Genre storytelling—western, sci-fi, crime drama, romantic comedy—is traditionally monist, depicting a familiar moral universe that follows an agreed-upon set of rules in which the world is made balanced and whole by the end. Most popular and folk art (though certainly not all) is fundamentally monist as well; country music and folk music, for example, are prime examples of monist art, with organic, traditional instruments and familiar stories of fundamental human truths.

This description of monism can sound deceptively traditional; however, a monist perspective can be seen in many contemporary works of art. The second half of the 20th century witnessed a partial return to monist artwork: notably, the minimalist music of Glass, Reich, Adams and their contemporaries, which turn repetitive ostinato figures into immersive rituals; also, too, the action painting of Jackson Pollack and the later Rothko paintings, while abstract, could arguably be called monist, as they seem to depict the fractal patterns of the natural world (in Pollack’s case) or the pure sensation evoked by deep, saturated colors (in Rothko’s case). What these musical and visual works all share is an emphasis on art as something pre-logical and pre-intellectual, something to be felt physically as an emotional and intuitive experience.



On Dualism:

In western philosophy, “dualism” is the opposite of “monism” – the notion that the mind and body are separate entities (Rene Descartes is one of the most famous dualists). From an aesthetic perspective, dualist art therefore emphasizes, through form or content or both, the experience of feeling oneself, or even all of humanity, as something separate from the natural world; it often describes the self not as an organic whole, but as a fractured and fragmented construction.

Dualist art emphasizes the artificial, the manmade, the unnatural structures and symmetries that civilization has imposed upon the world. Both Modernism and formal Classicism are prime examples of dualist art; Classicism by celebrating humanity’s achievements as breaking away from the primal state of nature, emphasizing smooth shapes and ideal forms, and Modernism as Classicism’s shadow, emphasizing the alienation of existing in a machine-haunted environment, even to the point of resembling a machine. In dualist art, the presence of humanity is always felt – grids and straight lines, visible brush-strokes, irony or “self-awareness” that calls attention to the artifice of the work itself (as in Brecht’s “alienation” technique); these are hallmarks of art expressing a dualist perspective. Picasso’s famous definition of art as “the lie that tells the truth” is a classic dualist statement, not only because it contains a paradoxical dualism in and of itself, but because it describes the goal of making the viewer aware of the artifice, awareness of the artifice being the quintessential dualist description of the experience of reality.

The dualist perspective, especially in modern works, often places the viewer/audience at a critical distance from the work, signaling that the viewer/audience should not be “fooled” by emotionally manipulative techniques often employed in works of art from a monist perspective. The fracturing of perspective itself is a dualist trait, as in Cubism, conceptual art, and a great deal of modernist and postmodern literature (e.g. metafiction). Most popular art is monist, but a notable exception is hip hop music: its mechanized grid-like beats and frequently-ironic use of musical quotation through sampling reflect a strongly dualist perspective.

personal guidelines for creating a musical

i liked this post from Peter J Casey; most of his advice is about making sure form follows function, which i totally endorse. he also appears to recommend having a show planned out from first to last before the writing begins; i'm not as sure about that. i've found that writing from an outline constrains my story and characters before the writing begins; i usually don't really know who these people are or how they will act until i've written from their perspective for a period of time. i like to have a vague sense of how things start and how they will end, and maybe i'll have a few key moments envisioned, but also i like to have some freedom of movement when the actual writing is happening.

still, there are some questions that i know must be answered before too long; if i'm halfway through a draft and still don't know the answers, it's probably not going to work. here are a few, in no particular order:

musical questions

- what does the show sound like? generally, what world am i trying to create sonically? specifically, what are the instruments and what are the genres i'm using to create that world? i like to narrow in on a suite of sounds that stays consistent; after i've written a few songs, this usually comes into focus. the question of genres is tougher, but just as crucial (and i use the word "genres," plural; there had better be a wide range of genres referenced over the course of the evening, or else the songs will wash together and numb the audience with predictability). i've lately thought of it in terms of putting together a band: great bands can evoke multiple genres within the framework of their particular set of sounds and instruments. so i start to wonder - what's the band? what types of rhythms do they like? do they draw on traditional forms but use modern instruments? do they do the reverse? are there enough contrasting sounds in the band to create a wide palette -- unpitched percussive instruments (drums, straight percussion, for pure rhythmic functions), bass of some kind (bass is its own category, obviously, but has a rhythmic and a harmonic function, though normally not a melodic one), pitched percussive (like a piano, guitar or banjo, or pizz strings, to create rhythmic lines that also function as melodic or harmonic lines), and sustained-note instruments (string, brass or wind instruments, or their electronic equivalent, to create sustained harmonies and melodic lines)? those four categories need to be all covered, i've found, especially when you're writing music that is driven by rhythm, as i believe musical theater mostly needs to be (you might note that three of the four categories involve rhythm, and i've found rhythmic counterpoint should involve a minimum of 3 parts unless i want the arrangement to sound really boring).

- what does each character sound like within the world of the show? this is partly about genre, and i really try not to have only one genre happening at a time; again, it gets too predictable. what usually happens is the instruments are each suggesting a slightly different genre -- for example, maybe the piano is playing a philip glass-style ostinato, while the strings are slurring and bending notes like bluegrass fiddlers, and the bass line is on a low synth in straight quarter notes, evoking new wave or EDM, while the drums play some version of the traditional "be my baby" phil spector girl group beat. so, with those four sounds all rubbing up against one another, what is being said about the character? what information do those four genres communicate to the listener about the person and the situation? what sort of conflicts are built into those contrasts? sometimes i start with the music, and let the music tell me who the character is, and sometimes it's the opposite, depending on how the writing evolves. by about the halfway point, though, i need to have a good sense of how the character sounds musically. genres will tell us other things about the character, also -- for instance, does the character wear their heart on their sleeve? are they guarded? are they tortured by something deep? are they blissfully unaware? are they always trying to "sell" something (a car, a point of view, a religious or political doctrine)? do they only express themselves ironically? again, there should be a contrast -- some characters reveal themselves and some work to conceal, and the music should reflect those differences. i find that no one should be too simple as to be reduced to one particular genre (this guy sings springsteen anthems! this woman only sings 12-bar blues!) but should evoke several at once, preferably in ways that the audience won't really have an immediate reference for. i've seen plenty of shows in which the book is doing a ton of heavy lifting with character development, only to have the music start and tell us from the opening bars that the song is going to be like a thousand others i've heard before, obliterating any uniqueness and specificity that i'd come to associate with the character. predictable music tells me i'm watching a predictable person.

story questions

- what is the point of the show? what about the human experience is being illuminated by the show? what makes this show necessary? a musical takes years to bring to fruition, and i don't want to invest that time and energy if i can't answer the question of why this show should exist in the first place.

- am i telling the audience what they want to hear, or am i getting as close to the truth as possible? this one doesn't require much elaboration, but is a question that i am constantly posing to myself, throughout the writing process.

- why am i drawn to this story? what am i wrestling with that is working itself out on this script? i find that i need to constantly interrogate my own perspective, and be brutally honest about why i want to write a particular story. i just finished a draft of a piece that is ostensibly about slavery and the civil war, but is, on a much deeper level, about loss of historical memory. i was about three quarters done before i realized that i was being pushed along by unresolved anger at a piece of family history that was swept under the rug for a number of years and only recently came to light. this realization helped me to focus that theme and bring it out as much as i could; it became the burning emotional center of the whole show.

- what is the dialectic? this is a fancy way of saying, what are the opposing principles or points of view that battle amongst one another? this doesn't need to be intellectual; it can be as simple and fundamental as, one character believes in the interconnectedness of all things while another believes we are each ultimately alone in our existence. the dialectic should be what i think of as an unsolvable riddle; the show isn't going to present an answer or declare a winner.

practical questions

- is this show about an event that happens to a community of people? if it's not, it probably won't work as a musical. there are exceptions (Hedwig comes to mind) but normally a musical is about a group of people going through some sort of change event -- a small town in Iowa, a small town in Oklahoma, tenement residents of the west side of manhattan, tenement residents of the east village. it's rare that a show can work that doesn't involve a community dealing with some kind of disruption.

- is the story in some way archetypal? if not, it probably won't be a good musical. musicals have one foot in the real world and one foot in archetype - i can't really think of a classic show that becomes part of the repertoire that isn't telling an archetypal story. this is what's tricky; it can be hard to create an archetypal story without becoming predictable.

more questions to come as i think of them...

about me

i am a texas-born brooklyn-based writer/composer/lyricist working mostly in the theater. my music incorporates both traditional instruments and electronic composition techniques, including samples, with a strong emphasis on fusing various "American" genres and framing older forms in a contemporary way. i'm obsessed with the mythology of the United States. and with rhythm. and with post-minimalist music. and with the fuzzy line between "high" and "low" art. i write a whole lot about race and the legacy of white supremacy in America. and sometimes about robots.

my shows have been performed in New York in various concert performances, and in full production at the New York Musical Theatre Festival (STREET LIGHTS, 2009; WHITE NOISE, 2006). after winning a Summer Theater Award for best score, WHITE NOISE was optioned by Whoopi Goldberg for Broadway. it almost made it there, but closed out of town. all my songs had been cut by that time. i'm not suggesting those two phenomena are related, just giving you guys the information. STREET LIGHTS got picked up by the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego for a production, but the creative team fell apart in rehearsals so it never quite happened. we all learned so much, though, you guys.

i studied composition for a year at Berklee College of Music in Boston, but left after a year. the tuition was too damn high. but mostly i just wanted to get to New York as fast as i could.

other interesting tidbits: i worked as the primary speechwriter for Howard Dean's failed presidential campaign in 2003, and got to write a number of great speeches, several of which Dean actually delivered. i didn't write the one you're thinking of. but i did get to write this one, which a prominent African American periodical called "the most important statement on race in American politics by a mainstream white politician in nearly 40 years". i also got to write a 5,000 word essay on poverty in America for Vanity Fair magazine. under the name "Howard Dean", of course, but it was still pretty sweet.

ABC Primetime also did a segment on WHITE NOISE in 2006, so i can credibly say that my music has been featured on national television.

my first musical, SKY'S END, was produced when i was 18 at the Blank Theatre Company in Los Angeles. i got nominated for an L.A. "Robbie" award for Best Music and Lyrics. Back Stage West published a scene from the show, so i can credibly call myself a published playwright.

snippets of music to come...

On the Creation of Art versus the Creation of Porn

what is art? as one who considers myself/aspires to be an artist, i've lately felt compelled to answer this question. i've always had a vague, "i know it when i see it" approach to determining artistic merit (a standard once famously applied to pornography; more on that below). i've come to believe that this approach is not sufficient, and after some reflection, i've hit upon the beginnings of my own understanding of the term as i use it. the breakthrough happened when i hit upon what i believe to be the opposite of what i mean by "art": namely, porn.

i should note here that i'm approaching this as a practicing artist, not an academic; i have read some aesthetic theory, but am by no means an expert on aesthetics, so i'm sure that some of what follows is not original to me. however, i'm eager to hear about any academic writing that has been done along these same lines, if only to sharpen my ideas, so please feel free to enlighten me if i'm treading on familiar ground.



PART ONE: DEFINITIONS.

a definition of "art". my broadest, most comprehensive definition is this: art is the conscious attempt by an individual, or coordinated group of individuals possessing a singularity of vision, to comment on some aspect of human existence through the use of non-literal representations.

breaking the definition down a bit:

"...the conscious attempt..." this is to say that art is not simply anything we observe which inspires a revelation; art must be created with deliberate intent. a sunset or a flower or even the bustle of commuters at grand central station observed from above may be beautiful, may arouse emotion, may even trigger a breakthrough in awareness, but the end result is not enough. if these phenomena are art, then the definition of "art" can be applied to any and all aspects of reality, according to the subjective experience of the observer. if art simply means anything that inspires someone, the word becomes meaningless. art must be created intentionally, as it must contain a "comment" (more on this below).

"...by an individual or coordinated group of individuals possessing a singularity of vision..." see above re: deliberate intent. it is obviously possible to create a work of art through the collaborative process, but the difficulty lies in the singularity of vision, since individuals are very likely to have different and conflicting goals, either with regard to the substance of the "comment", the best techniques for achieving the "comment", or the goal of creating art in the first place.

"...to comment on some aspect of human existence..." the crux of my definition is this word, "comment". to be art, it must "say something". the substance of whatever is being "said", along with the artist's success at "saying" it, is what makes some art better than other art, but the comment is required. i'm not talking about anything political or pedantic here; in fact, any "comment" that can be reduced to rhetoric falls into the category of art's opposite (see below), due to its predictability. the perfect symmetry of a bach fugue or a da vinci painting, the multiple perspectives of cubism or "the rite of spring", the dada of duchamp's "fountain" or the absurdism of a kafka story -- all these are departures from reality which create a comment on reality in the audience's mind. bach's music--or da vinci's painting--says, reality is more beautiful and symmetrical than you realize. "the rite of spring" or "les demoiselles d'avignon" says, there are more perspectives existing simultaneously than you realize (and they can crash into one another with great force). duchamp's urinal sculpture says, art itself is more than you have previously envisioned. kafka says, life can be as ridiculous and inexplicable as the experience of waking up as a cockroach one morning. (these are obviously simplistic reductions of the effects of these works of art, but you get the point.)

"...through the use of non-literal representations." art must depart from a literal depiction of reality, and by doing so, draw attention to that particular aspect of reality. non-literalism is how the comment is achieved. a reproduction of reality, in other words, is not art, even though it may be created using the same techniques. it contributes no new information, it contains no comment. like the spontaneous phenomena discussed above, reproduction of reality may coincidentally inspire some sort of breakthrough or awareness, but it does so only by accident. art must depart from reality, and this departure is where the "comment" happens, as it is this departure from reality, this non-literalism, that catches the attention of the audience. (even duchamp's "fountain" discussed above, while seemingly plucked from reality, is a deliberate departure from the reality of an art exhibit, forcing the audience to reckon with a new notion of art itself.)

the opposite of art is porn. porn is faux-art, often produced with the identical techniques as art, but which does not go beyond pure gratification (which includes intellectual gratification – i.e., flattery of the audience’s assumptions and prejudices). i believe that most of what humans create, even in the guise of creating art, is actually porn. its goal is to satisfy, to gratify.

i will note there that these two distinctions -- art and porn -- are not hierarchal. one is not superior to another; both are necessary in their own way. gratification is a wonderful experience, and we long for it, as surely as we long for the revelation produced by art. that being said, the creation of art is a far more difficult task, as there are so many traps which the artist can fall into and in so doing, create porn instead. i would even venture to say all artists create porn sometimes, and some even do so most of the time (however, no one who is intending to create porn can create art, since the intent is not there, and therefore any comment is accidental). incidentally, i don't exclude myself from this category; most of what i have created in my lifetime would be categorized as porn. part of the reason for me writing this essay is to bring the distinction to light in my own mind, and apply it to my own process, so that i understand what it is that i am creating. there is nothing wrong with creating porn, i just don't want to create porn while deluding myself into believing i was creating art.



PART TWO: GUIDELINES FOR THE CREATION OF ART VERSUS THE CREATION OF PORN.

this is not a comprehensive list; it is a continuously updated work-in-progress.

first guideline: art is a form of communication, and therefore requires an audience. artwork with no audience is self-gratification, i.e. porn.

second guideline: art presents a point of view; it cannot be value-neutral. a work of art, by definition, takes a stand with regard to its subject. it presents a way of looking at the subject that says, in effect, it is this way, and not some other way. art that strives not to offend by not taking a stand on its subject defers to the gratification of the sensibilities of the audience; it is porn.

third guideline: the tension in art is between the fulfillment of the audience’s expectations and the subversion of those expectations; art ultimately must never err on the side of fulfillment. all art sustains its tension and momentum by maintaining a balance between the fulfillment of the audience's expectations and the subversion of those expectations, but if the ultimate effect errs on the side of fulfillment, what has been created is not art, but porn.

fourth guideline: art uses aspects of porn, but does not succumb to them. since it requires the engagement of the audience, much effective art uses the techniques of porn in service of the larger goal of the comment. "art" does not mean "boring" -- the artist must hold the audience's attention, often fooling the audience into thinking that they're watching porn by creating moments of gratification. incidentally, porn, too, may use the techniques of art (mostly to flatter the audience into believing they have had the experience of artistic revelation rather than a pornographic gratification).

fifth guideline: the subversion of expectations is how the comment is achieved.. this is related to the discussion of non-literal representation above. it is only by subverting the audience's expectations that art can call attention to itself and its intent. fulfilling the audience's expectations simply gives them information they already have.

sixth guideline: a work of art communicates that which is beyond the power of description and cannot be fully explained, only experienced. if the point of it is only to communicate an idea that can be explained rhetorically, it is pedantic, and ultimately predictable (ultimately fulfilling expectations), i.e. porn.

seventh guideline: a "good" work of art reveals something new to the audience. A "great" one forces the audience to acknowledge a reality which already exists, but which the audience has been concealing from themselves.This is what makes the creation of a "great" work of art so difficult; its intentions are almost indistinguishable from the intentions of porn (which is why attempts to be "great" are so often so bad). the task of revealing something already known to the audience is almost exactly the same as fulfilling their expectations; the difference here is that the artist is able to identify that which is being concealed, and know how to force an audience to admit it. this, for example, is the essence of tragedy in theater: with, say, death of a salesman, the title tells us the ending beforehand, but the audience has a hard time believing that either (a) willy loman will die or (b) if he does, that it will be not because he broke the rules and conventions that he is supposed to live by, but because he followed them. the greatness of the play is that the audience knows the truth -- that the conventions of the "american dream" can be a lie and a trap -- but hopes against hope that what they know to be true is not in fact true.

eighth guideline: with art, the artist is the ultimate dictator. In porn, the audience is the ultimate dictator.

ninth guideline: art exposes, and makes the audiences aware of, the gap between our personal or cultural illusions and the realities of our existence. as indicated above, the primary tool for exposing this gap, and creating the audiences awareness of it, is subversion of expectations. porn, on the other hand, works to conceal the gap between our cultural illusions and the realities of our existence. that is its goal -- to assure the audience that all is right with the world, and that the illusions they walked in with will not ultimately be shaken.

tenth guideline: the expectations of the audience are a constantly-shifting target; what was "art" yesterday is "porn" today. this is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of being an artist, to continually adapt his/her tools and techniques to stay one step ahead of the audience's expectations at all times, since today’s audience will be wise to yesterday’s subversions. a replica of yesterday’s "subversive" techniques produces today’s porn.

more thoughts as they arrive...

UPDATE:

eleventh guideline: all art is, by definition, experimental. if art requires comment, and comment is achieved through subverting expectations, it follows that every new work must be, in some sense, an experiment. if there is no part of the work that is an experiment, if it is using techniques in ways that have already been proven to "work", then the piece comes with a set of pre-existing expectations that will be fulfilled. this is porn.

twelfth guideline: most of the experiments required in the course of making art will fail. this does not push the experiments into the category of porn; however, it means that the artist is constantly running the risk of having his/her experiments fail to connect with audience in the way that the artist intends. repeated failure is often the price of attempting to create art. this is also what makes porn so seductive; any experiment risks failure, whereas sticking to a tested formula is more likely to create (temporary) "success".

this

TNC:

I don't have any gospel of my own. Postwar, and the early pages of Bloodlands, have revealed a truth to me: I am an atheist. (I have recently realized this.) I don't believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice. I don't even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos. I believe powerful people who think they can make Utopia out of chaos should be watched closely. I don't know that it all ends badly. But I think it probably does.

I'm also not a cynic. I think that those of us who reject divinity, who understand that there is no order, there is no arc, that we are night travelers on a great tundra, that stars can't guide us, will understand that the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us. Or perhaps not. Maybe the very myths I decry are necessary for that work. I don't know. But history is a brawny refutation for that religion brings morality. And I now feel myself more historian than journalist.

the sexless musical genre known as "musical theater"

it was never supposed to be its own genre, really. american musical theater grew out of the vaudeville tradition, where wildly different sensibilities were thrown together on the same stage for the sole purpose of entertainment; imagine something between the Ed Sullivan show and "America's Got Talent," but bawdier and more brazen with ethnic and racial stereotypes (blackface was a staple), and you have a fair idea of what an evening at a vaudeville theater was like. one thing it was not was cohesive, especially musically. a harlem dance number (the word "jazz" came later) could be followed by an aria from a popular operetta or a cohan-style patriotic tune.

it took several decades of gershwins and berlins and kerns and rodgerses to shape the various musical strains into what we now think of as the "golden age of american songwriting". it's hard to imagine now, but in its time, this music was dangerous and sexy and not a little bit transgressive. in the 20s and 30s, anything with jazzy rhythms conjured the same association among small town whites that hip hop currently does -- it was urban, decadent, promiscuous, and very "black". at the same time, the lyrics of the golden age carried a whiff of effete sophistication that further emphasized the cosmopolitan outlook of the tunes. these songs were on the cutting edge of american pop culture, snatched up by recording artists as soon as they appeared on the broadway stage. and from Cole Porter's "Let's Do It" to Gershwin lyrics like "s'exceptional", the songs pumped with sexual energy. and it wasn't just the lyrics; the rhythms were earthy and physical and encouraged all kinds of inappropriate dancing and drinking and rulebreaking. "jungle rhythms," is what they were called.

what happened? the 60s, for one. sex and trasngression were culturally appropriated by rock n' roll (and later, plain old "rock"). the loud, electrified sound was hard to reconcile with dramatic storytelling, and musical theater (with a few exceptions) mostly ignored it, paving the way for its own cultural obsolescence. this can't be the whole story, though; there were other pop music trends that could have worked in a dramatic format (the motown soul sound, for example). it's still not clear to me why the major musical theater composers of the 60s and 70s -- i'm thinking of Sondheim and John Kander especially -- were so reluctant to experiment with these new sounds. instead, Sondheim and Kander, both gifted at the art of pastiche, mined past musical paradigms for their shows of the 60s and 70s which, while off-the-charts innovative from a theatrical standpoint, featured music that was explicitly retro. in the 60s and 70s! just when a new "golden age" of pop songwriting was happening all around them. it seems to me to be the most spectacular missed opportunity in musical theater history.

i suspect it has something to do with the audiences, also. in the late 60s and 70s, the audience for musical theater didn't look like the Bobby Kennedy or George McGovern set; it looked like the Nixon set. and i respect the idea that in order for innovators like Sondheim and Kander to tell the stories they wanted to tell to the audiences that were keeping broadway alive, more traditional music was probably the best vehicle.

however it happened, the consequence has been that several generations of musical theater composers have mostly reacted to pop culture in the same way that contemporary jazz and "classical" composers have; that is, by defining themselves in opposition to it. this is suicide. musical theater thrives when it synthesizes contemporary pop music sounds into something greater than the sum of the parts, but comtemporary musical theater composers, by and large, have been stuck for a while, recycling a a sound resembling sort of a watered-down sondheim or steven schwartz (whose music is like a watered-down version of the singer/songwriter pop balladeers of the 70s). rhythmic invention, forever a staple of american pop music, took a backseat to post-impressionistic harmonic noodling in theater music (that is, when songwriters didn't revert to a Amy Grant-style christan contemporary-ish uplift). almost every musical theater composer since then has been a piano composer, a "chord composer". the sound became more localized, kept alive by countless cabaret singers and shows (Songs for a New World, for example) written to be performed in such venues, abandoning the goal of communicating with a larger audience that continued to be interested in music that sounded modern and danceable and sexy. it's true that every so often, a show will come out that has "modern" music (which usually means music that would have sounded modern two decades prior) and everyone will herald it as The One, the savior which will finally bridge the gulf between theater music and pop music. Rent, say. or In The Heights. or Once, the savior-du-jour. but institutional pressures will revert everything back to form soon enough, and whether because of timid producers or songwriting talent that doesn't come to the new york musical theater scene if it has an ear for what's modern, new musicals will continue to be written by the current crop of very gifted keepers-of-the-flame who are good at using music to describe the vulnerable inner monologues of white twentysomethings (themselves!), but not much else.

sex is really the key concept, i think. of all the theater folk i have met, i don't know anyone who finds modern musical theater music sexy. as in, i would put this Wicked OCR on to get me and my baby in the mood. (or, if you're more highbrow, Light in the Piazza. nobody is getting busy to Adam Guettel.) modern musical theater songs can certainly describe sex (usually in a gee-whiz-my-first-time-was-so-awkward-but-tender sort of way), but that's a function of lyrics. the music sounds absolutely nothing like our popular cultural musical description of sex. (here's a test: picture a sex scene in literally any hollywood film, and then imagine the music that would be used: does it bear any resemblance to anything written for the modern broadway or off-broadway stage?) again, what is lacking is a rhythmic sense. this is amazing to me; rhythm is the heart and soul of 20th and 21st century pop music, including all the great musical theater music of the 20s and 30s. in a great pop song, every part of the song is driving and contributing to the rhythm. every single element. the melody, the lyrical rhyme scheme, the bass line, whatever harmonic instruments are being used (guitar, piano, strings, whatever), they're all contributing to the rhythm, and each in a different way. (even if they're not contributing to the harmony or the melody!) my friend sonny paladino, who conducts on broadway and gets this concept more than anyone else i know in the theater business (admittedly, not a huge universe of people), says that in a pop song, every single instrument is playing a hook, by which he means a rhythmic hook. pick apart the arrangement of any classic pop song, and you'll see what i mean -- every part is filling in the rhythmic space in a slightly different way, and every part is signable as its own little "hook", a good drum groove included. i blame a lot of this on the piano-bound songwriting technique most of my colleagues employ, but gershwin obviously had no problem writing intricate, swinging rhythms on the piano (then again, he was one of the most brilliant stride piano players of his day, so that's a pretty high bar, but i guess that proves my point; gershwin was thinking in terms of multiple competing rhythmic lines, trying to make his piano sound like an entire swing band).

among other things, sexless music does a huge disservice to the hard work that the bookwriter does. a character who sings songs set to music entirely drained of sex is no kind of character at all; it's a puritanical fantasy of a character. and the lyrics really can't compensate for this; an audience member will trust what the music is saying first, and sometimes only. (case in point: the least convincing moment in Wicked is the sex scene, even though there's no song being sung; based on the music we've heard, these characters have no sex drives, and the scene therefore feels totally false.)

there is some fantastic, thrilling, sexy pop music to be heard on broadway, though, and audiences flock to hear it. it lives in the confines of the dreaded "juke box" musicals. every theater professional i know disparages these shows, but audiences are not fools. they want to go to broadway to hear great singers sing and dance to great music that will wow them, turn them on, make them want to sing and dance themselves. if contemporary composers aren't giving it to them, they'll take The Four Seasons. this is depressing, but i can hardly blame them. is there any musical theater song written in the last 30 years that's as tuneful, singable, danceable, romantic as any song in Motown? we should all be ashamed of ourselves for this reality. once the place where pop songs were born, the broadway stage has lately become their graveyard. as for contemporary musical theater music, to paraphrase gershwin, it's got no rhythm, and audiences are asking for literally anything more.

health care is the great moral cause of our time

the invective coming from the uglier corners of the right wing aimed at the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has always been colored by a particular cruelty. here's senator ted cruz saying that those who lack health care should just get a job. here's mitt romney blaming his 2012 loss on the affection minorities have for obamacare, which he also described as something like a bribe in exchange for votes. the video above depicts a republican crowd cheering for the death of a hypothetical uninsured man.

recently, though, the rhetoric has escalated from garden-variety poor-bashing all the way to DEFCON 1. opponents are reaching for the grandest, most spectacular historical crimes in describing the dangers of the law: the holocaust, slavery, eugenics -- no atrocity is too great to warrant a comparison to the health care bill.

there's a particular--and in my opinion, fascinating--focus on american slavery; elected officals, respected pundits, gubernatorial candidates have each mentioned slavery in discussing the law.

there is, i believe, a good analogy to be made here, though it's not the one the opponents are attempting to make. like slavery, or civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, health care is the great moral cause of our era. it shares with those struggles a debate over who is to be considered worthy of protection by our society.

we are currently in the midst of an extremely bumpy rollout of what may or may not be a successful piece of legislation, but the details of website functionality or even the individual mandate should not obscure the fact that the question itself -- whom should we let live, and whom should we let die -- is the most consequential political question we've tackled in several generations. i believe that there are many ways to get to full coverage, but the principle should be beyond question: no american should be denied the right to live. the rancor inspired by the health care bill shows that many americans believe otherwise.

i further believe that history will judge opponents of this principle in the way that history has always judged those who seek to deny equal protection to certain groups of people: that is, damnably. it will be difficult for future generations to explain why radicals shut down the government to prevent access to health care, just as it is difficult today to explain how anyone could have taken up arms to defend slavery, but take up arms they did, and if nothing else, the ugliness of the current debate will serve as yet another perennial reminder that equal protection requires constant struggle, and the brotherhood of humankind is not a given.