Basie, Ellington i el sentit de la vida

Us amoïna encara la vella pregunta d’algun grec antic com Sòcrates sobre quina és la millor vida per a l’hom?na, compreu-vos llavors algun disc de Count Bassie o Duke Ellington, per exemple, això ens recoma Terry Eagleton i el deixo parlar només afegint que em sembla que l’anglès hi toca

                 Take, as an image of the good life, a jazz group. A jazz group which is improvising obviously differs from a symphony orchestra, since to a larger extent each member is free to expres herself as she likes. But she does with a receptive sensitivity to the self-expressive performances of the other musicians. The complex harmony they fashion comes not from playing from a collective score, but from the free musical expression of each member acting as the basis for the free expression of the others. As each player grows more musically eloquent the others draw inspiration from this and are spurred to greater heights. There is no conflict here between freedom and “the good of the whole” yet the image is the reverse of totalitarian. Though each performer contributes to “the greater good of the whole” she does not so by some green-lipped self-sacrifice but simply by expressing herself. There is self-realization, but only through a loss of self in the music as a whole. There is achievement, but is not a question of self.-aggrandizing success. Instead, the achievement – the music itself – acts as a medium of relationship among the performers. There is pleasure to be reaped from the artistry and – since there is a free fulfiment of realization of powers- there is also happiness in the sense of flourishing. Because this flourishing is reciprocal, we can even speak, remotely and analogically, of a kind of love. One could do worse, surely, than propose such a situation as the meaning of life – both in the sense that it is what makes life meaningful-, and – more controversially – in the than when we act in this way, we realize our natures at their finest.

                       Terry Eagleton. The meaning of life. Pp. 107-108