Embracing entropy

[David Simpson]

Richard Romeo wrote:

The film's aesthetic bias is best exemplified by Albert Murray's on-camera pronouncement
that "you can't embrace entropy." But isn't that what modern improvisation is largely
about?

No way. All art, even post-modern art, is a holding action, a check, against entropy.
Bird's solos, Gillespie's on-the-fly improvs, even John Cage's orchestrated silences,
have a deep structure, a plan.

But you raise a good point -- and an old paradox -- about the limits of art and
randomness ; consider:

A. A violent order is disorder; and
B. A great disorder is an order. These
Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)

            -- Stevens, "Connoisseur of Chaos"



--
"The spirit grows, strength is restored...by wounds." -- Nietzsche.
-------
homepage: http://www.depaul.edu/~dsimpson