Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 190, 1 November 1927, Page 5

Mundane Musings

“Brows” —High and Low There is no subject of which I am more tired than that of high-brows, mid-brows and low-brows. Wc are, most of us, composite, having our being partly in one and partly in another, and possibly in a third sphere. We are most of us egotistical and like talking about what we “are,” high, mid or low, and that is one reason why the subject has become so wearisome. Jtist at the moment in point of boring us the mid-brows are the worst. For a long, long while we endured the high-brows, but a steady reaction has set in, and now it is the mid-brows who are always telling us what they like and why, and pouring contempt on high and low. Perhaps it is that the mid have become vocal. The low haven’t. At least, not in that sense. Mid-brows are very complacent. They always assume that their level of appreciation is the right level, and they always suspect you of pose and affectation if you like some rather bleak author or austere composer. Of course, you may be posing, but, on the other hand, you may not. The midbrow never gives you the credit of the doubt. I am what most mid-brows would call a high-brow in reading and what all high-brows would call a midbrow in music. But once a high-brow musical friend made me listen to Bach on excellent gramophone records. He tried, gently and patiently, to make me hear what he heard. And after a while I began to hear a little, only a very little, of all the greatness that is there, but enough of it to know that there is a vast world of experience and enjoyment from which I, by my incapacity, am shut out. BACH’S MISFORTUNE This incident I told to a pleasant mid-brow friend of mine. All she said was, “I’m not crazy about Bach.” She seemed to think it was his misfortune, not hers. Surely it is always a misfortune to be shut out from appreciation of any form of art. Why do we not just admit it, honestly, humbly? Most of us know one form of art fairly well—from the point of view of the observer, reader, or listener. I believe, humbly, that I am capable of appreciating the great things of literature. But as to music, painting, sculpture, I do not know the great things from the next-best, unless someone helps me to see or hear differences. When the opportunity offers we should try to enter, if only a little way, the worlds that are unfamiliar to us. The smallest glimpse of these worlds shows us something we have not seen before in the world we know best. All knowledg , all art, we are told, are ultimately one, and even now we can discover the relationship. Do let us keep humility, and let us keep ourselves from idols, high, mid or low.