the difficulties of invention

On the drive up to Monterey, we listened to a Malcolm Gladwell lecture (a New Yorker Festival talk available via ITunes) about the American obsession with precocity. In the talk, Gladwell dabbles in different cultural arenas: prize-winning runners (and how they burn out, or shine late, with Gladwell's personal anecdotes included!); the mechanics of musicianship and how young star musicians can be made through intense practice, but musical innovators -- people who change the very nature of music and how we listen to it (whether composers or musicians) -- tend to have passions and investment that drive them in distinctly non-mechanical, non-technical ways; the obsession with IQ tests that evidence youthful genius; and experimentally 'innovative' schools that challenge the best and the brightest which, in fact, produce happy and contented upper-middle-class citizens (doctors, lawyers, bankers and the like), but not necessarily Field Medal winners. Gladwell argues that, in fact, many of those who are known as geniuses flourished later in life. Not necessarily in the sunset years, but well beyond their early twenties, after finding their passions, and investing time, energy, willpower, and then sacrificing creature comforts -- personal and otherwise -- for their art.

But the Mozart part of his talk -- the part about Mozart being this violinist-product of his father's slavedriving and how wee Wolfgang Amadeus had practiced so much by the time he was 6 that he was as good as a professional orchestral violinist today -- tapped into two interests of mine (which I got to discuss with my friend Liz tonight): invention, and the fatigue of invention. I'm interested in the idea that it takes X amount of hours to become a concert violinist (on average), and that the amount of hours or skill to becoming a virtuoso is absolutely different. Perhaps not necessarily a matter of skill, changing a medium or inventing something entirely new is not a matter of technical mastery, but a different kind of understanding of the medium entirely; a reworking of vision. And even then, there is a point -- a "just so" point -- when it can be deemed 'inventive' but not necessarily insane or useless or far-gone. I'm fascinated by what invention is because it implies that someone has created something very original and very different. Yet this difference -- the object or idea of such striking qualities -- still fits perfectly in the world. Sure, it sometimes requires the approval of more progressive thinkers and doeres, but usually, like the IPod, an inventive thing will start popping up all over the place. The IPod is perhaps a typical example: it's something that at one time never seemed needed--i.e. when CDs and their randomizers first arrived on the market and, by golly, there were walkmen into which we could put hand-picked mix tapes. But the cogs of those inventive individuals turned, and then, suddenly, digital whizzes enlightened us about the IPod's small screen, its portability, its ingeniousness. Its usefulness and innovations were hailed; it picked up momentum among the techies; and then became a widespread, unmistakable phenomenon. This, of course, is a Gladwellian trend (oh, how you haunt me, you fan-addled `fro!), the kind he illustrated in The Tipping Point. But perhaps it is also worth considering that now, sometimes, we have to remember to not take the idea of "shuffle" for granted, and how there are so many previous inventions that are just taken for granted. Indeed, on a larger scale, phones, planes, autmobiles, subways, radios--all these, we already deem ubiquitous, useful, normal. Thus, due to new inventions themselves, and the way we adapt to them as a society, old inventions become wrapped in and up with the everyday. It is not a matter of nostalgia, but a matter of course, a matter of how society continues to evolve.

In painting, Julie and I used to call the best paintings inevitable. The oft-cited painter example was Laura Owens. She came out of RISD, then Skowhegan, and then CalArts just doing her paintings and whammo!, consistently crafted inventive, inevitable paintings that are initially playful, and then lodge themselves in one's mind fully, completely, purposefully. They have all the manners of the typical painting -- canvas, stretcher, paint -- but they take hold in a different way. They're gentle and unpretentious in their pastels, yet bold and patterned in their weaving of gobs of paint and confident brushstrokes. And when one has toddled out of the gallery, and thinks back to and about a Laura Owens painting, the world doesn't seem right without her eyeglass-wearing monkeys and her fanciful, painterly unicorns, because they've already become part of the world. Their invention captivates, and then becomes part of a catalogue of invented things (i.e. the inevitable), and it is not that they're forgotten, but they are ultimately part of a past and mark a specific moment in history. They lose that initial burst of freshness. I suppose this has more to do with the fad-ism of the art world, but also a great deal to do with cultural moments, and their palpability. Some things stick, while others don't; some things are meant to continue to mesmerize, others are better left in the collection warehouse, waiting to be reappropriated--or rediscovered--later on.

And there are some things that can no longer be reappropriated. I was thinking of that strange 'joke' that used to be in movies (probably most notably "L.A. Story") about an agent or executive who was talking on his gigantic cell phone. He would be speeding through Los Angeles, and then suddenly start hugging a canyon (Laurel, Beachwood, or what have you), at which point his cell phone would start breaking up. The call would crackle, and the line of communication would be chopped and dropped. The joke was that one could use this excuse to stop talking to some exasperating twit. But with fake pine-tree mobile towers going up all over the place, and Motorola coming out with flat, sleek vessels of connectivity, can a person still use the excuse? Indeed, isn't the joke tired because cell phones are no longer subjects of exclusivity, but, rather near omni-presence? What would my friends and I have done if we hadn't had our cell phones handy to tell each other where to meet? What would contractors do if they couldn't ring up their favorite painters or worksmen at a moment's notice? How would one deal with a car broken down on a misty, uninhabited highway? What, I wonder, is the new, technologically exclusive joke now?

(more to come...)