The Experience of Jazz

As we all know by this point, it is extremely difficult to express secondhand experience. This, however, did not stop Toni Morrison from striving to achieve this goal in her novel, Jazz, a narrative set in the 1920s New York, dealing with a myriad number of events and emotions. As can be agreed upon by many, one of the most significant constituent events of the novel occurs when Joe shoots Dorcas. There are many theories about why he committed such an act, one being that he gained a strong sense of desire as a result of the emotional separation between him and his wife. In either instance, Morisson did not simply account to us what this experience would have been like, she told us what this experience was. Joe’s desire for Dorcas was not simply like enjoying a piece of candy, something that can be savored for a while and then forgotten, Joe’s desire was concrete. Joe’s experience was this: he had become emotionally detached from his wife as a result of her feelings of regret of not having children, he meets Dorcas and finds something in her that rekindles old feelings of love in his heart, she rebuffs him, he seeks her out, finds her, and kills her, and now she is forever with him. That is Joe’s experience, and there is no other simple way to put it. Morrison understood that the emotions Joe was feeling should not be generalized to other situations. Joe’s desire had a specific hunger, a specific flavor, primarily in the mode of belief. As we have discussed in class, belief is not based on reason or science. Shooting Dorcas was obviously not a rational action to keep her love and his emotions, but he believed it nevertheless. “You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden…Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.” (Morrison 133-135) As can be seen, emotion (pleasure/pain, experience, aesthetics) have no place in the realm of reason, but have everything to do with motive founded in belief.

As can be seen from the referenced chart on the categories of both belief and reason, aesthetics plays a large role in the former class. Morrison conveyed the experience of Joe shooting Dorcas by implementing the simultaneity of two artistic modes at once, music and narrative. By lending the work and various characters themselves a “rhythm”, “beat” or “instrument-like quality”, we are able to better ascertain the emotions of the characters themselves while going through their own experiences. For this reason, our newly found definition of Joe’s experience would have to be altered slightly to include his emotions leading up to and at the time of the shooting. Joe’s experience was this: He felt himself aging with the emotional detachment between him and his wife as a result of her feelings of regret over not having children, he “can’t stand the quiet” (Morrison, 49),  he meets Dorcas and swears he “became new” (Morrison, 130-135), she rebuffs him, he seeks her out, finds her, and kills her, “wanting to stay right there…catch her before she hurt herself,” (Morrison, 130), forever feeling her love.

Morrison’s implementation of “beat and rhythm” while striving to express the experiences of other individuals serve a myriad number of purposes. It allows the reader to gain a better understanding of the personalities of the characters themselves based on the instrument in which Morrison has lended them qualities. For example, Joe has a very upbeat personality and friendly demeanor, and can be best characterized as a drum or even playful sax, while Violet’s varying violent and mournful demeanor seem to me characteristic of a piano. This instilled me with the understanding that art may borrow qualities of other modes of art to serve the same primary function and in fact bolster its assertion. And it is through this emotional emphasis brought upon by the simultaneity of these modes that greater subjective understanding of the character and their motives can be gained, thereby allowing Morrison as an author to better express their experiences, and we as readers to better understand these experiences as well.

 

Experiment Number II

“The anecdote seemed to me redolent of the proud hopelessness of love mourned and championed in blues music, and, simultaneously, fired by the irresistible energy of jazz music. It asserted itself immediately and aggressively as the seed of a plot, a story line.” (Morrison, xvi)

This epiphany on behalf of Toni Morrison on the manner in which she would begin writing the experience of Jazz immediately brought to mind the discussion our class held on creating a new mode of expression for experiences we ourselves have not been through. Just as it is impossible to express a disaster, the expression of experience of another entity must be done in an indirect manner. In this case–and this is just a prediction, I’ve only read through the “Foreword”– Morrison clings to an ideal that can be juxtaposed with the one which she is striving to express. Implementing the “beat” in which jazz music is written and experienced, she creates a “beat” for her novel, changing the tone and message as she goes, much like in a song.

It isn’t surprising that music would be a method of thought in which to create a new form of writing. Differing types of art intrinsically all work to express the same ideals and experiences, just with slightly differing modes, appealing to varying senses and awarenesses on our part as the reader. In our struggle to invent a mode of thought and expression, this is something significant to consider.