The 505 Tom Wolfe

Tough assignment from the 505: write a la Tom Wolfe.

Ooof.

But...I read Wolfe's The Electric-Kool-Aid Acid Test and Style As Argument by Chris Anderson.

I tried to capture, somewhat, this idea that elite musicians are channels for something greater. That the music comes THROUGH them, not FROM them. I first heard this reading Plato, regarding the poets. Then oddly enough, after Stevie Ray Vaughan died and Eric Clapton talked about SRV's playing:

Eric Clapton I don't think anyone has commanded my respect more, to this day. The first time I heard Stevie Ray, I thought, "Whoever this is, he is going to shake the world." I was in my car and I remember thinking, I have to find out, before the day is over, who that guitar player is. That doesn't happen to me very often, that I get that way about listening to music. I mean, about three or four times in my life I've felt that way, in a car, listening to the radio, where I've stopped the car, pulled over, listened, and thought, I've got to find out before the end of the day, not, you know, sooner or later, but I have to know NOW who that is.
...and I remember being fascinated by the fact that he never, ever seemed to be...lost in any way...It was as though he never took a breather...or took a pause to think where he was gonna go next, it just flowed out of him. It's going to be a long time before anyone that brilliant will come along again.
I didn't get to see or hear Stevie play near often enough, but every time I did I got chills and knew I was in the presence of greatness.He seemed to be an open channel and music just flowed through him. It never seemed to dry up.
I have to tell this story: We played on the same bill on his last two gigs. On the first night, I watched his set for about half an hour and then I had to leave because I couldn't handle it!. I knew enough to know that his playing was just going to get better and better. His set had started, he was like two or three songs in, and I suddenly got this flash that I'd experienced before so many times whenever I'd seen him play, which was that he was like a channel. One of the purest channels I've ever seen, where everything he sang and played flowed straight down from heaven. Almost like one of those mystic Sufi guys with one finger pointing up and one finger down. That's what it was like to listen to. And I had to leave just to preserve some kind of sanity or confidence in myself.

ENL 505 - Stylistics

Tom Wolfe Assignment

An infinitesimal minority hear the calling. Of those, few heed the call. The heeders? Many fall by the wayside; rolled over and tumbled in the wake of doubt, or block, or aesthetic attrition.
You and me? The most boring mortals never hear the call... a call. No brrinnnggg brrinnnggg for us!

But there are sentient savants among us, and they offer us, oh just: vicarious prodigy, vicarious transcendence, vicarious peak experience. We can’t have these...on our own. Pshaw!
It’s no one’s fault. Blame is moot. Why try to explain the inexplicable? Got some sort of Sisyphus complex, do ya? Why fret when you can live vicariously?

Face facts! Few will ever possess and only a few more will ever understand, remotely, the genius. Can you think of a more overused word than genius? Gawd! But it is genius proper in these carnate gods. They possess, in spades, a shrug-your-shoulders, don’t look at me, holy schnikes kinda genius. The kind of wunder mensch, beyond talented, kinda brain that can juggle sense data out the yin yang in a nanosecond over a corpus callosum thick as nautical rope:

Right Brain
            ::::left fret hand
            ::::hammer-on index-middle-pinky finger succession
            ::::low e string frets 3-5-7
            ::::low a string frets 3-5-7
            Index-middle-ring::::low d string frets 4-5-7

Left Brain
            ::::right pick hand
            ::::index finger low e (dampen strings below e with remaining palm)
            ::::index finger low a (dampen strings below a with remaining palm; thumb dampen e above)
            ::::index finger low d (dampen strings below  with remaining palm; thumb dampen a & e above)

Whole Brain
            ::::hear but don’t listen-don’t play but be played-imagine ahead-hear the notes a priori-sing the notes in your mind’s voice-feel for the bass line-feel for the drummer-feel for the chords-feel for the crowd...feel…
...with your sixth sense.
Or seventh or eighth sense...or ad infinitum sense.

Do it...ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

Unless you’ve tried to play an instrument, you can’t really fathom the magic that elite musicians pull off. You just watch in awe as the rabbit isn’t only pulled out of the hat but is ejected into the aural stratosphere and explodes to fill your existential/aesthetic void with
je ne sais quoi but something you needed!

Unless you’ve played an instrument and tried to master it to the level of even pro-am status, you’ve no clue the voodoo that they do when they do what they do indeed do. But done it is.

Maybe you’ve near-mastered something in your life. Hell! maybe back in high school you were capable of going from a back handspring into a full-fledged flip and as a result, have an immense appreciation every time the summer Olympics roll around and you watch agape the floor routines as human springs bound and coil and twist with needle-threading precision but never tire or dizzy or seem anything but unbound, untethered, unREAL.

But this isn’t even about mastering. Mastering is B-O-R-I-N-G. This is NOT run of the mill, hey hey kid’s got some talent, second place in some High School Gong Show. This is NOT even about impeccably gifted musicians who can earn a meager life-on-the-road living, performing music. Not even the same ballpark, area code, universe.
This is about those musicians that when you hear, you know...when you are in the presence of...and… when there are no words that pop up, come to mind, do justice -there just aren’t. We don’t need a vocab when we slide into aesthetic nirvana like melting into a hot bath. Seeking is suffering. Epistemic justification is as worthless as justifying epistemology.

But it is certain, oh as certain as 2+2=4. We know because we are changed; certain because we are accosted, held hostage, raptured with an aesthetic drug in our blood, as formless, metaphysical, righteous beauty fills, no sates! us...still; immobile, wordless, clean and cleansed, we cannot reckon...but reckoning is soooo beneath us now.

These musicians are pregnant with god, however defined, in eternal artistic labor, their past dedication and practice serving as the dilation that allows the deity to be delivered but never, ever, apart...always attached via an umbilical of equal reciprocity: each possessed and nurtured by the other.

We mortals never hear the call but we can always hear the music.

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Word Count: 702

Write: For this assignment, take a brief piece (500-750) you have written and revise/ write in the style of the featured author. In other words, revise so as to mimic the style

of the featured author. You can, as well, compose a brand new piece in this style.