Exaptation of the Guitar, Part Two

(Continued from Part One.)

Every adaptation is a hypothesis, the projection of meaning onto whatever we're given.  And so, mathematically speaking, exaptation and adaptation are sets that contain each other.

So how do I exapt exaptation to inform my creative process?  What does this boon from biology mean for music?

It means that every creative act includes a moment of decision, a deliberate projection of function and meaning onto the artist's environment.  And this is what blows my mind the most about exaptation:  When I pick up my guitar and play, I'm agreeing that this is an instrument, that this is a guitar, that I play the guitar, and that I play the guitar in some specific way.  That this is what it's "for." 

But there are an infinite number of ways for the universe to express itself through the functional relationship between a human being and a guitar.  It was a definite act of creation when my friend dipped his hand into the soundhole of my friend Kate's guitar and rolled his eyes back in his head to communicate his attraction to her.  Jimi Hendrix - with the help of LSD, that unparalleled sire of iconoclasts - communicated something by burning his guitar that could never have been said by strumming it.  And that's just with the same old guitar that you and I know - luthiers have done some incredible things with the design of the instrument itself, like Manzer's "as many strings as possible" Pikasso Guitar, commissioned for Pat Metheny (pictured above).

And so it is for this feisty young man, privileged or burdened as I am with unceasing progressive inclinations, that many of my favorite musicians prefer to consider themselves as practitioners of music in general rather than the tradition of their specific instruments.  As I love to remind people, the great bassist Victor Wooten insists that his medium just happens to be the bass, and that he is not a "bassist," any more than a self-consistent practitioner of the Buddha's teachings would actually declare himself to worship "Buddhism" ("or," in the words of Ferris Bueller, "any other ism for that matter.")  Likewise, Kaki King grew up on the drums before translating those sensibilities to the acoustic guitar.  In her early interviews made it plain that her whole agenda was to "fuck with" people's ideas of what the acoustic guitar even is.  Never mind that she wasn't the first to play it like a percussion ensemble; there's no such thing as being completely original, anyway, unless you're willing to grant all phenomena the same courtesy.  On even the most newly-poured volcanic island of thought, there are as many exaptations as there are participants.  There is something utterly unique in even the most mundane copycat playing.  There is something wild and new about every instant's spontaneous perspective on the fact of the previous moment.

If I can stay wide open enough to hold every creative moment in the light of an ever-present and ever-renewing genesis, each instant is an equally wild idea.  It is absolutely creative because it happened at all.  If we take the past as a given and define it according to the standard of the present, we deny it as a moment creative in itself, and rig the game in favor of our current interpretation.  "My, how we've grown."  "What were we thinking?"  "Behold primitive man, living as a savage...the poor heathen."

And so to cherish the unique exaptation of every moment in this way is not half-blind futurist zealotry, disrespectful of tradition - it's more like telling a girl that you like her eyes, when you know that everyone else compliments her on her breasts.  It's an attempt to appreciate the whole package, past, present, and future, inside and out.

But that's a hell of a lot to appreciate, and I can rarely do it for long.  Like everyone else with limited energy and attention, I deserve to be convicted by a jury of myself for identifying with a particular set of preferences and positions, relative to a single observation platform floating one way across time.  I still often make the mistake of declaring the so-called "progressive" art forms to be more creative and therefore more interesting than their predecessors - perpetuating the false distinction between exaptation and adaptation, as if to play the guitar fretboard like a piano is a more fabulous idea than playing it like a normal freaking human being.  (Kaki King:  "Are we to have another century of guitar when the best instrument in the world is still the piano?") 

Consequently, maybe nine out of my ten favorite guitarists are doing things on the guitar that were unimaginable fifty years ago.  These people have carved out their homesteads on the freshly exposed terrain of that new island.  They have my respect for being its first inhabitants, collectively discerning (and deciding) the rules of this new land that is just now peeking over the splashy boundary of unconsciousness.

As a male mammal, I will always have a special place in my heart for the journeyers, the rogues and rovers, the wanderers and frontier families.  My love for the music coopted from its original context is just one incidence of a broader pattern in my being:  a love of reclamation, the same reconstructive postmodern desire that fuels the creation of urban gardens and beautiful graffiti murals, all manner of tattoos and piercings, circuit-bent instruments, remixes, redefinitions, and reimaginations of literature (such as Julie Taymor's film production of Shakespeare's Titus and stage production of The Lion King, and chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound's performances of Aphex Twin's often-aggressive electronic music).  I can hardly call this "ownership," because we have inherited all of it and we will all sooner or later pass it on to someone else.  But it is beautiful and affirmative, restorative and inspiring to know that we are capable of exapting our world to the meaning and purpose we see for it now.

In this spirit, I encourage you to look upon the world with fresh eyes, to see it and feel it, not as some rigid predestined machine, but as a gift of creative jubilance inviting us to assist in the unfurlng form and function of everything we know and are.  Don't assume that you know what that guitar is when you pick it up, or that pen, or that hand.  Don't assume you know what you've got riding in your chromosomes, or that their full potential has been explored.

Every instant is a new world, with new opportunities.  It falls upon us to learn how to avoid the hamster wheel of endless adaptation to external fortune by exapting the world and playing with the flux instead.  This is a profound change of perspective.  If you have found your purpose, don't refuse opportunities for amendment.  If you still haven't found your voice or calling, relish in the flexibility of an undetermined existence. 

Find a new meaning for your guitar, and maybe - just maybe - you'll find a new meaning for your self.

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For more info on exaptation, you can find numerous related papers here and here.