↩[LWC 50]

This is a guest article written by lelangir in response to the July 2008 Minimum Tempo article, “[Dinner Discussion] Manga aisle freeloaders.”

I buy most of my music. Anime OST’s I usually don’t buy unless they really warrant a purchase – i.e. Honey & Clover insert songs by Shikao Suga; Eureka 7 OST, anything by Joe Hisaishi or Ken Muramatsu (which is only two series anyway). Jazz, classical, rock, etc., all that I buy. I don’t know why, maybe since I can get the latter list at independent record stores that are slowly getting kicked out by raising rents and competition, or that I’d have to spend exorbitant amounts of money for international shipping: jazz CD’s can be cheap, at Borders they’re usually 11.99 USD to 18.99 USD (bleah). Old school record stores can be anywhere from fifty cents to around $12, and ones that are going out of business have very attractive 8 for $40 deals. Classical music? I’ve seen Naxos on sale for a dollar a pop.

Actually, I was recently at Borders trying to find Silence by Shusaku Endo, yet they didn’t have it (such is life – and they only had this one crappy edition of The Tale of Genji). I was shocked at how expensive books can be. The Name of the Rose (Eco) was fifteen dollars and supposedly that Endo work was in the twenties. The two Joe Pass CD’s I bought were 11.99 each.

Now this brings up my principal question: given that works of art are pragmatic, that is to say every inch of sound, space or word they utilize is not without purpose (not inefficient), how can we judge their “worth”? Of course the financial and technical stuff has to be taken into consideration, like the technology, energy and manpower needed to produce the art, but I was getting more into the “usefulness” of the finalized product. However, I think that the efforts of the artists are equal insofar as their works are masterful and pragmatic – that should be a no-brainer. Essentially, what is the influential difference between reading, listening and seeing? – between literature, music and visual art (I’m sure I missed some mediums, like, uh, interpretive dancing).

At first thought literature seems to be the easiest to make use of – the usefulness of the book goes a long way, I’d say. Music, on the other hand, can be more of a challenge to “use”. Perhaps this depends on the receiver. The bibliophile or literature student will get more out of a novel than a concerto and perhaps vice versa for the music major. However, the music major will inevitably have to rely on print – on books – to complete his or her studies. Print, that is, archiving plays an essential role in the development of all art forms because it is the centralized receptacle of language, of the passing down of concepts, directives, manifests, theories, ideas. Music cannot do this – music cannot say “go get me a ham sandwich.” It cannot say it verbatim, nor can it relay the message or meaning of the phrase. But is that to say music is a “less useful” thing than literature to the effect that it should have a lesser exchange value? The distinction between exchange value and use value here is important (me being no political economist [or expert on Marx]). As said before, the use value of all art is equal since it’s impossible (or at least fairly difficult) to put a quantitative value on the “usefulness” of art (such a notion as “usefulness” is in itself rather implausible).

I think one large concern to address is the space used. A novel can be any number of pages, although a hundred at least would seem “necessary” to be considered a “good novel” (well that depends on the font/size/margins/page…). We can probably here say “I know a good novel when I see one”. But what about music? Can we equate measures to pages? To sentences? To paragraphs? Is it possible to compare quantities between mediums? Should I be paying $X for this book of Y pages length while I pay $(1.5)X for this CD of (Y?)60 minutes? Again, this is where the juxtaposition breaks down. X : X :: Y : Y; well, we can’t compare the two Y values since pages cannot be equated to minutes. The duration of the musical piece also has two implications – (1) the time the listener spent listening and (2) the time the musician spent playing. This is clearly different than literature because for the author, “time” is “effort” – authoring literature doesn’t necessarily take place in “real time” as music does, specifically improvisation and performance – although composing is essentially authoring (not in real time).¹

When we go to the music store or bookstore, the prices we see are largely political, acutely “real” (indiscursive?). That’s why Bach is only $2 while Green Day is ten times that amount; why Harry Potter is $20 while Du Bois is a quarter that amount. Yes, I know I was comparing dead people to living people, but that’s exactly why use-value has no part whatsoever in the economic say of things. Don’t get me wrong, I was ecstatic when I saw that The Souls of Black Folk was only five dollars! [Then I got pessimistic when I started writing this thing.] Am I saying that Bach has more use-value than Green Day? Du Bois more than Rowling? Yes. Am I equating use-value to influence? Perhaps, given that influence is historical and cannot be readily observed only a decade or so after publication – but it’s not like I can historically trace the musical influence originating by and from Bach (although if my “physics” serves me right, need I mention more than well temperament?). Then is this to say that all forms of influence are equal – good or bad? Regardless of the content of Hitler’s influence, did he not influence? Did not Gandhi influence? Is juxtaposing Hitler and Gandhi a sure way to go to hell? Yes, probably. Is influence a quantitative thing? Perhaps, though trying to assign a value would be a daunting task indeed.

I’ll briefly reiterate several problems I’ve run across in trying to think about this issue:

1. Archived art forms will invariably make use of language to propagate such archiving.
2. We cannot equate time and space between the mediums of literature and music.
3. Influence cannot be easily measured nor deemed relative between people, acts or works.

Thus, inherently, should music have a lower exchange-value than literature? Vice versa? In struggling to come up with a decisive answer, I’d resound with a simple, basic “no”.

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1. To clarify, when I say “real time” I mean that, in the case of composing, the time the composer writes does not flow in tandem with its actual playing (unless he is godlike). The composer may go back several bars and correct a note, whereas that would not happen in a performance; to an extent, the same can be said for literature. [↩]

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