Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille played on TV repeatedly this weekend. I've seen it several times now, and it is a marvelous movie working on many levels. But here's the part that leapt out at me this time: Anton Ego's review at the end --
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. . . . In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.
There's a lot going on here, so let me try to tease out my several reactions.
First, there is the distressing recognition of myself and my work as a music critic for The Statesman (see my post from 16 September): how easy it was, how little I risked, how I was in no position whatsoever to offer judgment about the albums that came across my desk or the people who made them, how I nonetheless thrived on the negative reviews, how much I enjoyed skewering those artists whose work I did not like, and yet how pointless and meaningless those negative reviews ultimately were.
Second, there is the idea of discovering and defending the new, that the world is unkind to new artists and their work, that "The new needs friends." I think here of my father, who taught middle school band. He specialized, in fact, in working with rank newbies, in getting awkward, achingly self-conscious 13-year-olds to play their very first notes on a trumpet, clarinet, or saxophone. I can hear him now, teaching his private lessons in the basement, hearing the honks, squeaks, and blatts of kids struggling to play for the first time, and his utterly sincere, totally enthusiastic responses of "That's great! That's wonderful!" -- because it *was* great and wonderful. Two minutes earlier there was nothing, a void, an empty space, and now there was new music in the world -- ill-formed and struggling, perhaps, but sincere as hell and a victory over inertia, entropy, and all the horrors we do to each other as adolescents. It was heroic, and he knew it, and he told them so in no uncertain terms.
Third, there is the assertion that anyone can cook, that we can all make art. We might not all become *great* artists, but we can all make art, and great artists can come from anywhere. I am still struggling, still coming terms with these ideas -- that what I make is art, that I am an artist -- still trying those names on for size, to see how well they fit, wondering how I look in them, and I have been playing music for 45 years.
Let me be plain about it:
This site is my effort to discover and defend new musicians, to be kind to new artists and their creations. I will be a friend to the new, myself included.