Talking about music is like dancing about architecture

It's a cute line from a cute movie about a dysfunctional family with a catalog of relationship issues, all of which are tidily resolved in just under two hours. Something about "Heart" in the title. But I still like that line because it addresses the incommensurability of different art forms, which I find interesting because it lets me use one of my favorite words [IN kum EN sur uh BIL uh tee]. But it can also be frustrating, because sometimes those experiences that I would most like to communicate are the most difficult to put into language. Know what I mean?

I don't read many music reviews. Besides the generation gaps, culture gaps, and education gaps separating me from most rock, classical, jazz, you name the genre, critics, it is rare indeed to read a music review that succeeds in conveying something about the music that engages but doesn't gag me. I prefer to listen to the music, thank you, with or without an understanding of its theoretical, historical, or social context. My loss I guess. Dance reviews are similar. I see an article in the Sunday Times and think I'll read it, but it's written in dancecriticese, so I get as far as the second paragraph and turn the page. Visual art, forget it, I don't speak ze lingeau, capiche?

Theater and movies, on the other hand, like poetry and fiction, history and philosophy, I can read ABOUT because, duh, the work in question, like the review, is in, duh, language. It's not that I have any "training" in theater, movies, poetry, fiction, or history, and I'm therefore schooled in the special discourse of the discipline. I don't and I'm not. I don't speak theaterese or filmese or poetrese or literaturese or historish, and when I'm around those people at the party, I'm either observing them as an anthropologist observes the social habits of an exotic band of islanders or I'm crossing the room to talk to the jocks.

Am I belaboring the obvious? Yes. Am I betraying the fact that I personally am more of a "word person" than a musically or spatially intelligent person, in the jargon of Howard Gardner, whom I happen to like and respect because he writes well about those boundaries? Yes. Am I realizing, for the umpteenth time, that my vain attempts at a liberal arts education have not made me into a renaissance man? Sad but true.

Part of the difficulty, I'm sure, is my lack of education in the arts. I haven't studied art, so I don't have much of a vocabulary in which to discuss visual arts. I haven't studied music, so I am similarly handicapped in discussing any period or style of music. My name is Sven and I'm illiterate. (Hi Sven) In both cases, I can have an emotional response, but I can't articulate what caused it or where it fits in the larger scheme of things visual or musical. Maybe there's a 12-step program for people with my problem, but I don't speak their language either.

On the other hand, I have studied writing a little, so I am better equipped to write or talk about it, alright in a kind of a limited way for an off night, and I have studied movement and sport, so I have a vocabulary that's commensurable with it. In short, I guess it's all about me. Or you. Us.

There's a drum circle that meets the first Monday of the month at Central Swingstate Percussion on High Street across from Graceland. Last night there was a nice little group, maybe eight people, that got some hot rhythms going, let me tell you. And I would tell you if I could. You'd have to be there to hear the rhythm move around the circle, pull someone in, build in volume and intensity, change a little here and there, accents coming and going, and eventually come down again, get real quiet, and disappear. One of the proprietors of the shop was giving a tiny bit of instruction to help us novice hand drummers, but 99 percent of it is experiential, whatever that means. You grab a drum, sit down, listen, try your hand, pick up on something, see where it goes and go with it. What can I say?