We live increasingly in a time where soft-headed descriptions of anxiety are marketable, and cheerfully consumed. Only one analysis of anxiety in this century adds anything of value, in my judgement, to the legacy of the classical moralists and Romantic speculators and necessarily that contribution is Freud's. First, he reminds us anxiety is something felt, but it is a state of unpleasure different from sorrow, grief, and mere mental tension. Anxiety, he says, is unpleasure accompanied by efferent or discharge phenomena among definite pathways. These discharge phenomena relieve the "increase of excitation" that underlies anxiety...

When an (improviser) experiences incarnation qua (improviser), he experiences anxiety necessarily towards any danger that might end him as an (improviser.) The anxiety of influence is so terrible because it is both a kind of separation anxiety and the beginning of a compulsion neurosis, or fear of a death that is a personified superego. Improvisations, we can speculate analogically, may be viewed (humorously) as motor discharges in response to the excitation increase of influence anxiety.

Bloom, Anxiety of Influence, p. 57 - 58

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The first paragraph simply because of "We live increasingly in a time where soft-headed descriptions of anxiety are marketable, and cheerfully consumed."

Can one really be human and not feel constant anxiety?

Is anxiety addictive? Is playing music?

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The second paragraph because it speaks to the very complicated emotions that (for me) come with seeing 'great' performances. Performances by Bill Dixon, Charles Gayle, Cecil Taylor and Marco Eneidi come to (my) mind first, quickly followed by a performance by the Ahmad Jamal Trio.

In each of the above mentioned instances, there was indeed

a separation anxiety:

Each aforementioned performer mentioned have brought something to an end. Like the Plugged Nickel recordings marked the end of Jazz, Charles Gayle, Milford Graves and William Parker ended a methodology and sound by perfectly answering all the questions with an total authenticity and perfect surety.

Only one way to go = down.

Forever.

Bye bye.

(sadness)

A compulsion neurosis:

"(the) mind is intruded upon (against his or her will) by images, ideas, or words. The patient's consciousness nevertheless remains lucid and his or her power to reason remains intact.
These uncontrollable obsessions are experienced as morbid inasmuch as they temporarily
deprive the individual of freedom of thought and action."

After seeing said trio end said methodology and sound, it took a while for me to regain my will to live. The realization, and subsequent compulsion neurosis--the intrusion of Charles Gayle's ideas--was and still is "morbid."

A fear of death:

Or more to the point, guaranteed eternal continuity as invisible, ineffectual clutter. This was hyper emphasized by simply answering myself honestly when asked if given the choice between me and Charles Gayle, who would I go hear perform?

copyright,  © 2007 Stanley Zappa

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