So I went to watch the Foo Fighters on the weekend and had a few moments when I achieved a philosophical appreciation for the excellent drumming of Taylor Hawkins.
Taylor Hawkins – according to Dave Grohl ‘The answer to the question – “What if Freddy Mercury had a surfboard”? – is one of the better drummers I’ve seen live. And I think the fact that he’s clearly a Queen fan is no coincidence. Hawkins has a remarkable ability to enter into the moment and alter it both with his singing, drumming and presence more generally.
Don’t get me wrong, Dave Grohl is also a consummate showperson – every time I’ve seen him (3 times now) I’m impressed by his commitment to perform. He’s always interested in reactions, and responsive to them, 1 and I usually spend some of the show thinking about whether his musical legacy is more important than Kurt Cobain’s… and I generally answer ‘yes’, and that’s some testament to his talent and endeavour.
But with Hawkins, he is equally in control and also (at least seemingly) possessed by the performance – just like Freddy Mercury. When I’m watching him I get the impression that what he’s producing is in and of the moment. Possessing ‘haecceity’, or ‘thisness’ that makes something truly unique.
As a communication theorist the reason I find this fascinating is that communication is typically understood in our world as a process of ‘information exchange’. That is, according to both scientific and empirical theories of communication, when I’m listening to Hawkins and the Foo Fighters I am receiving information – here’s the high hat, here’s the kick drum and so on. However, the experience of being at a Foo Fighters concert is significantly more than that information. Hawkins slight altering of the tempo and beat patterns are in and of the moment and adaptive to the feeling of the music which is immanent to the crowd and the occasion.
I have previously written about why live music experience cannot be replicated and I touched on this issue there. There is something incommensurable (incommunicable) about such experiences and that is – in essence – the thing. I also know that great theorists like Ron Bogue and, of course, Heidegger, have written about time and experience in far more interesting ways.
However, my take away, and something that I think is helping me think through these issues, is that communication (real communication) is a process, not information exchange. In identifying it as a process you come to understand the difference between information and communication. We have the ability to exchange information globally, and indeed you can even see examples of Taylor Hawkins performance on the weekend right here.
But while the information has complete parity with what happened on the weekend, it is not communicating the same thing. The reason is because there is a process involved in watching music live that is not replicated in reading a blog.
While understanding that process is important seems to replicate McLuhan’s ‘Media is the message’ what I think is really important is to understand what is not happening in ‘information exchange’… a reduced appreciation for iteration and immanence for one, a failure to appreciate our human capacity for another… and an absence of reduction to purpose, a celebration of experience in its place.