After reading Annie Dillard's article called "Seeing,” I began again to consider the flaws and benefits of my mind’s library of associations. I expected Ms. Dillard’s stories of the blind first learning to see, about childhood fancies, and about the wonders of nature to be more allegorical. She didn’t distinctly tie her thoughts into a metaphor or overall message, either, but as for herself, in the end, she seemed to be hoping to shed her predispositions and see the world through virgin eyes. It’s a beautiful idea. It seems, though, that this pursuit must be individual one and alone – it shouldn’t, or likely, couldn’t be shared or imparted. This places the artist in a sticky situation. Everyone, especially the artist, should be eager to see the world in a new way, but if there is indeed a parallel universal before our eyes which reveals itself by a tiny shift in perspective, as Dimitri Martin suggests in “If I," and if the artists gains this sight, the new perspective should be presented to others in a way they can understand. People need a frame of reference, a way to relate.
Les Baxter, in his exotic orchestrations, innovated but also relied and built heavily upon the shared experiences of his audience. Let me explain through my pictures. Each of the eight pieces I constructed has a felt pen outlined and colored-pencil filled central image. The outline and two dimensional central piece is a cartoony representation of reality. Les Baxter’s songs use exotic instruments and international (usually tropical) music as influence, then he orchestrates them in a sort of cartoon form of the real deal. Then, my watercolor backgrounds come from the silky mystique of the pieces. When I listen, I don’t see the details of the jungle, but I feel more like I’m in a haze, a tropical dream with all the images associated passing into and then out of view.
It was a deliberate choice of Les Baxter in this song and in most of his others to create this adventurous, seductive, tropical feel. And this is why I love his music. I love to imagine this overly dramatized excitement of the Western man (that’s me) on some exciting or romantic jungle adventure. What then would this music be to me if it didn’t remind me of Polynesian chants, African Drums, and sparkling harp-like waterfalls? How would it be different from Thelonius Monk or Stravinsky?
So I didn’t listen to the music with infant ears. I didn’t try to hear it only for the complex sums of sine waves moving through the air as compressions and rarefactions, detached from my catalogues of timbre recognition. I heard some blatant, sensational, romantic, westernized, exotic sounds, so I painted and drew the same.
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