A Bell That Rings True
Photograph by Tony Cearns
When the robot revolution comes, this lady will be in big trouble.
I eagerly co-sign my buddy Austin Kleon’s desire to become a professional human loser.
Stanley Cavell, writing in 1994 about the Marx Brothers: “I have been aggrieved to hear Groucho called a cynic. He is merely without illusion, and it is an exact retribution for our time of illusory knowingness that we mistake his clarity for cynicism and sophisticated unfeelingness.”
A decade ago, Jeremy Denk wrote about Bach and Paul Elie’s big wonderful book on Bach:
In pieces such as BWV 1018, arching forms, in which the last perfect logical permutation clicks into place heartrendingly (one last contribution of the violin, a new counterpoint to the keyboard’s dissonant sequence), Bach draws a distinction between truth as compressed into aphorism (the truism, the talking point, the slogan) and truth as a practice. The sort of musical truths that Bach sketches out — unrepeatable, as no other composer ever came close to replicating these foundational experiments — are the opposite of the inspirational pronouncement. Unfolded over time, in an uncanny mix of narrative and repose, they are not intended to dazzle. They are intended to be lived in; they are well-made like a blade or a bell that rings true.
I wrote not about Tolkien, or about Charles III, but about the return of the King.
