Systems theory

For quite awhile now I have disliked poetry and I am trying to get better. My dislike is biased, it is not rational and reasonable and based on sound principles. I am in fact getting myself to read, enjoy and understand a little more poetry these days. But this post isn't about poetry, except when it is.

I think I reacted badly to poetry because it was rigid, it force words and phrases into a sort of marching order. And I was probably in my rebellious you can't tell me what to do phase (from about noon on my first day of 7th grade until about three that same day). And then I learned that poetry could be anything when I was shown free verse. And at that point I decided that was just lame. So the bind of course is that it was too rigid on one side and far too open and inherently hippie on the other side. Free verse poetry is like poetry without teeth. They have been unnaturally ripped out and what is left in the mouth is a mess of blood and holes. Now sometimes that can be artfully rendered and earthshakingly beautiful...and sometimes it can be a bloody mess. All this is to teach me something. That something in the value of imposed systems. But it is also the 'for god's sake don't just go imposing systems on people' clause.

I think the best way to commune with a system is an instrument. Musical instruments are rigid, they have a way they are supposed to be played. Again, as in poetry, you can manipulate this and play an electric guitar with a bow or an ice pick, but instruments are built with one thing in mind and as such are infinitely more rigid than language.

When you learn to play an instrument you are conforming yourself and usually your body to its shape and structure. And the precision to which you adapt your body results in beautiful music. There is, in a manner of speaking, a way to do it right (that hurts even to say, but there sort of is). Now I am all for the beauty and power of fucking with systems, of manipulating them to you instead of you to them. But this is the same old 'learn the rules before you break them' thing. And it is also the 'be malleable yourself' dictum. But here is the thing: it is good to force yourself to do thinks like pick up a foreign instrument and fiddle around with learning it. Same goes for language. Same goes for engine maintenance. But let's say, take a shot at one of those. And we'll save me preaching about the specific benefit of playing music for another day.