Apocalyptic is not only a genre but an impulse.
The genre uses terrifying symbols of worlds ending to wake up readers to imagine a better world in the present. The apocalyptic impulse threads through religion, politics, and culture whenever we are stopped in our tracks by truth, led behind the “veil” to a deeper experience and perception of reality. I’m following the inspiration of a writer named David Dark, whose book Everyday Apocalypse scours pop culture for marks of the apocalypse. But like me, he's not chasing down conspiracy theories about the end times, biblical code-breaking about what texts like Revelation “really mean,” or divine world destruction. He’s looking to television shows like The Simpsons, writers like Flannery O’Connor, or musical bands such as Radiohead, to demonstrate an apocalyptic way of being in the world.
Here's a quote:
Apocalyptic changes everything. Its attentiveness to the minute particulars, to the infinity forever passing before our eyes, can leave us feeling ashamed of our ongoing impenetrability to the immediate. It creates an unrest within our minds, and it can only be overcome by imagining differently, by giving in to its aesthetic authority, by letting it invigorate the lazy conscience. (10)
Apocalypse is about seeing reality and ourselves as they are.
Apocalypse is about old certainties being shattered.
Apocalypse is about the inbreaking of the new.
I had an experience of apocalyptic music this past weekend. Every year, the famed avante-garde music organization Bang on a Can hosts a summer institute at MASS MoCA, the contemporary arts museum near me. Music students come from all over the world to hone skills of new music composition and performance. These days, the summer institute is capped by a marathon festival: two and a half days of experimental music.
I was never interested in what passes for traditional classical music. I’m still not. I find it incredibly boring. But several years ago, I walked into my first Bang on a Can marathon concert and experienced twelve hours straight of cutting-edge, classical music. Who knew that classical music could be cutting-edge? I didn’t. I didn’t understand what the cellist, violinist, electric guitarist, saxophonist, and electronic beat maker were doing. I couldn’t verbalize what I was hearing, but it was as if someone had turned classical musicians into punk rockers and created a new style altogether. I had never heard such music before, never even imagined such music before, and it unlocked something free in my soul.
Bang on a Can announces new worlds, is fearless in tearing down established idols of what “counts” as classical music, and compels listeners to see reality—or at least the present moment, full of music—differently. They describe themselves as “dedicated to making music new.” Bang on a Can is, to put it in the words of this newsletter, apocalyptic.
The original Bang on a Can in 1987, in SoHo, broke down boundaries within classical music. They brought together dueling aspects of the avante-garde, the academic and the free-spirited, and programmed them beside each other. They played in a museum for a full day and through the evening until 2am. They supported new composers and old. They dared to believe that experimental music could be fun and that there could be an audience for it. (See this book).
At this year’s festival, I joined listeners on a hill in a MASS MoCA field overlooking the Berkshire hills and the museum’s red-brick industrial buildings. Twenty-four Panasonic tape-deck boomboxes formed an oval behind us, all with the play button pressed, to experience composer Phil Kline’s aptly named last words before vanishing from the face of the earth. The sounds omitted were meditative and eerie, as if we were peacefully awaiting an alien ship to arrive from the sky.
Another piece, Steel Hammer by Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe, uses folk instruments like banjo and mountain dulcimer, alongside three female singers, to tell the multi-faceted tall tales of folk-hero John Henry. The trio of voices sang different aspects of different John Henry legends—one stressing his home state of Georgia, the other Alabama—to place the truth-stretching nature of legend at the center. Yet another breathtaking, hard-to-describe piece assembled thirty-six percussionists across an enormous courtyard for an hour of sound. Here’s Bang on a Can playing Philip Glass:
I’m still unpacking what it all means, but the impact, at least for this listener, is to see the world anew, fresh, and alive. Apocalyptically.