Everything New is Old Again

For Valentine’s Day I took my girlfriend to David Garrett at the Pantages Theater in Minneapolis.

Yeah, I know, I hate Valentine’s Day. But she loves it, and I love her. So there you go.

I digress (I do that a lot).

David Garret is a violinist of remarkable talent who has made his niche in playing popular music in an unconventional manner.  That unconventional manner being on the violin. Stay with me. This guy was fearless. He tackled everything from Michael Jackson to Bach, Metallica to McCartney. And he did it all very very well.

Somewhere in between Master of Puppets and Beethoven’s Fifth I started to wonder why this guy wasn’t playing for an arena of 30,000 instead of the smaller 3000 in front of him then. His talent and chemistry were undeniable, and the crowd’s reaction was genuine.  The first answer that came up from the depths of my brain was, “Because this is the Midwest and violins scare people here.” I had to grant my brain a point there. But that wasn’t really it either.

I started considering the fact that most of his performances were recreations of previous works. There’s no shortage of people out there trying to ride the coattails of someone else's creativity. Seriously, right now in Hollywood the big wigs are working on a remake of the Lone Ranger and a big-screen adaptation of the board game Battleship.

Rhianna is in this? I didn't even know she could act.

In spite of Johnny Depp’s involvement in one of the pieces, both are pretty much destined for ABC Family Sunday viewings.  People know remakes and reboots generally suck (I'm looking at you, Gus Van Sant). So when David Garrett hops up on stage with his violin and says, “I am now going to play something from Wings,” most people, Midwestern or not, won’t be interested. Where’s the originality? Where’s the creativity? Where’s the artistry?

But here’s the deal: this Garrett guy was really good.

Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” might have been mostly a joke interpreted as a teen revolution anthem, but when Garrett played it I could feel barely contained frustration in a way I never felt listening to the original. Maybe Kurt Cobain didn’t aim for that, but it was there and this German violinist brought it out. When he did “November Rain”, the pain of loss wafted off of the stage in waves. Bach’s “Air” sounded, and felt, like one great apology to some jilted lover. Every song he played I had heard elsewhere, the way they had been written and intended to be played. Every song he played was brand fucking new to me, and I loved them all.

Every work of art out there is a telling of our cultural story, a frozen moment in time that, barring a zombie apocalypse, might stand for centuries to tell future generations how we lived, why we lived. Just like the stories told around camp fires hundreds of years ago, the passing on of that information is subject to interpretation. And let’s be honest, there’s an art to finding inspiration in something already done, taking something great and making it superior. It takes insight, creativity and ambition. You have to be fearless to tackle something great and make it better, keep it meaningful in a society that changes on a minute-by-minute basis and yet still be respectful to the groundwork already laid by someone else.

During the intermission I spoke for a while with a long-time fan of David Garrett’s work. He told me that the violin he plays is a Stradivarius, built in 1716. I asked him why in the world would anyone take a priceless artifact like that on stage to play Smooth Criminal. He said that old instruments become brittle and useless if not played regularly. Maybe the same theory applies to our cultural story. Maybe, if we don’t retell and reinterpret our music, films, stories and art they too will become useless to future generations. Maybe, David Garrett is on to something.

Of course, none of that changes the fact that Battleship is going to suck hard.

Maybe Hollywood could stand to learn something from David Garrett.