‘Janusian Pairs’: A Meditation
a new tradition proposed at the turn of another year
by Christopher Dawes
Darkness and
Light. Death and Birth. Old and New. The
allegorical dying Old Man and the newborn baby. Janus’ double-faced, stoic
consideration of past and future. At the turn of another year, the antonymic
binary, the juxtaposition of opposites, reigns supreme. This is titanic stuff.
So how is it
that New Year’s, holding such conflicted content, can seem so hollow and
trivial? How many January 1sts have we
awoken feeling, not reborn, but rather more like a tired (or worse) version of
ourselves on December 31st? Why do new
years in all their newness so strikingly resemble old ones, other than being
disappointingly darker and more quiet?
Why do writers annually recommit to the gratuitous use of dangling
rhetorical questions?
A “year”,
whether retail, calendar, professional, religious, academic or other flavour,
is a revolving construction which builds up, and then breaks down, “holy”
time. I use the word “holy” in the
broadest possible sense to embrace not just faith, but joy, prosperity,
sickness, freneticism, achievement and other ideas so transformative that they
dominate our experience – they “take over” life, at least for a time.
Christmas can
make you sick, or well, or both. The
last two weeks of a student’s fall term, with up-piling exams, assignments and
parties are all-encompassing, but they too give way to something else. The retailer or freelance musician who must
crazily earn 25-30% of an annual income in the last 10% of the year then starts
all over again in the quiet cold of January.
Every version of the “year” provides some similar cycle that first escalates
and then releases: a vivid birth image, potent most of all to those who have
experienced or witnessed the real thing.
That so many ‘years’ converge in December, and that light imagery is so
prevalent, are no coincidence. The
annual retreat of sunlight towards solstice has given rise, at least in our
hemisphere, to celebrations of light at year-end since time immemorial, giving
this time a profoundly heightened sense of ritual. It is this which perhaps most unites faiths
and ideologies in our world: our attraction to ritual as a marker for
change. Where words fail adequately to
express feeling, ritual takes over. For the same reason that the world’s faiths
mark special days with celebrations, the world around them holds annual award,
convocation and memorial ceremonies, parades, family gatherings, parties,
shopping sprees and other traditions.
And music, rarely far away, restores to us the sound where the voice has
ceased.
Seeking an
antidote to your own perennial ambivalence about New Year’s? I’m proposing a brand-new ritual celebrating
the teeming wealth of music at this time of year: be musically reborn every
year by deliberately constructing your own ‘Janusian’ pair of opposites, by making
“space for music” around the turn of the yearly tide.
Here’s how it
works:
choose two very different events from this issue of The WholeNote, one
in December and one in January: one, your retreat from the old year’s
tortured death-throes, and the other, your celebration of the new one’s
birth.
One of them
(probably, although not necessarily, the December one) should be familiar,
affirming what you know and love about music: your Nutcracker, Messiah
or other choral concert, worship in the place and manner of your custom,
etc.).
The other, and
this is the challenge in the sub-title, should reach away as far from your
tastes and habits as you think you can reasonably stretch: perhaps (if
you’ve never been to one) an experimental new music concert, the community band
you’ve never been to around the corner from your home, your first opera
production, or first foray into the formerly smoky and still mysterious world
of the jazz club… see elsewhere on this page for a few unique January events
you might want to look up and use as this 2nd choice.
Then, when you
have a bit of time after attending event 2, tell us about them both in 200
words or less: mail to Ideas c/o The Wholenote, 720 Bathurst Street,
Suite 503, Toronto, ON M5S 2R4, fax to
(416) 603-4791, or e-mail ideas@thewholenote.com. We’ll be sharing some of your responses to this new tradition as
the year turns, and at this time next year, while we’re reminding you to choose
your new ‘Janusian’ diptych.
I want also
to offer this
annual ritual
as a special challenge to myself and all musicians: As I write this in mid-November I am looking at my calendar,
blinking, and seeing four free evenings in the next 30 days. Paradoxically musicians are, with only a few
exceptions, the most interested, and the least able, to enjoy the musical
riches in their communities. Such is the reality of an industry based in
evenings, serving primarily the leisure time of those with day jobs. In fine ‘Janusian’ style my first thought
(that finding “space for music”, especially in December, is impossible), gave
way to its opposite: the admission that December’s busyness is all the more
reason to make it happen. Recalling a
former life of mine, let me plug lunch hour concerts as an excellent resource
to both musicians and parents with very young children whose evenings are
scarce – and doubly so to the many of us who inhabit both camps.
Time is money,
and space for music, elusive: but to quote arbitrarily from one of many sources
of inspiration in this season, “Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven… for
where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:20, 21) WholeNote wishes you and yours a
measure of extra “space for music” on your stroll from 2004 into 2005, and
hearts repaid in kind for the precious time you give up thereto.
Christopher
Dawes is a Toronto-based freelance classical, church and theatre musician,
writer and consultant. He and his
family live in Georgetown, Ontario.
Here are a
few January events you might want to try: see listings for complete
information:
Jan 7 8:00 Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. Ragtime,
Funk & Stravinsky. The New Orchestra; Broken Songs Cabaret Ensemble.
Jan 10 7:30 Associates
of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Windsong: Chamber music for
winds.
Jan 11 7:30 Nathaniel Dett Chorale. Tedde Gibson, organ. New-Jersey-based theatre organist
plays organ music for spirituals.
Jan 18 8:00 Music Toronto. Heather Schmidt, composer/pianist, her works and others.
Jan 23 1:00 Hugh’s
Room. Dare the Devil – Great Canadian Fiddling. Anne Lindsay, Shane
Cook. Bring your fiddle for closing jam session.
Jan 27 6:30 Canadian
Opera Company. Wagner: Siegfried. Opera chat at 5:45
Jan 28 8:00 McMaster
University Celebrity Concerts. Alicia Svigals, violin & Peter
Rushefsky, banjo. Klezmer music.
Jan 29 8:00 Art
of Time Ensemble/Peggy Baker Dance/Soulpepper. “If Music Be…….” Music, words & dance inspired by
Shakespeare.
Feb 5 8:00 Peterborough
Symphony and Kawartha Youth Orchestra. Fire and Ice, Haydn,
Prokoffiev, Vaughan Williams and Stravinsky’s Firebird.
Feb 6 4:00 Proteus World Music. Masters
of South Indian Fusion. Music by Ravikiran, Sankaran & Demuynck;
traditional South Indian music.
