Chamber Music Valentines

C omputers are useless. All they can give you are answers.”
  — Pablo Picasso

CMT: What have you planned for your Valentine?

DSM: That’s always a bit of a challenge! You know, regarding gift-giving we both prefer activities or consumables or symbolic donations to our favorite non-profit orgs, rather than “things”. Here are a few thoughts, though, in a SlideShare deck:

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CMT: I have the following rules I try to follow:

• The gift should be extraordinary in some way.
  
• The gift must be something that has a reasonable chance of evoking a pleasurable emotional response from the giver, the receiver and anyone else nearby (friends, kids).
  
• The gift should be as ageless and timeless as possible, and should not shout any particular age or income.
  
• If the gift is performance art, it should generate real emotion and meaningful affirmation of the connection or relationship.

DSM: We have progressively less free time today and tend to live farther apart. This has a profound impact, I think, on all facets of our social lives, not just choosing gifts. Social scientists say that, even under the same roof, family members are spending less time together. This raises concerns about family cohesion, particularly between the young and old. And it has an impact, too, on the kinds of gifts we should give . . .

CMT: At highest risk are young people in dire need of guidance and nurturing. The prospect of “going it alone” is difficult for many elders as well. Undesired social isolation is often associated with physical and psychological stress and decline. Gifts should be designed and chosen so that they reduce isolation and continue doing so after the gift-exchange moment . . .

DSM: Remember how in James Joyce’s “The Dead,” the axis around which Gabriel Conroy’s after-dinner speech turns is the hospitality of the hostesses. In Gabriel’s words, “the Three Graces of the Dublin musical world” exemplify “the tradition genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality”. But the real reason for the party is that it is a way for the aunts, Julia and Kate, and their niece, Mary Jane, to advertise their music school. The hospitality Gabriel celebrates is tainted by this ulterior motive. In fact, even though the motif of generosity appears various points in “The Dead,” it is not dealt with positively anywhere. By contrast, the ideal Valentine should be good art, without any strings or dangling ends!

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O ne cannot treat the gift, this goes without saying, without treating its relation to economy, even to the money economy. But is not the gift, if there is any, also that which interrupts economy? That which, in suspending economic calculation, no longer gives rise to exchange? That which opens the circle so as to defy reciprocity or symmetry, the common measure, and so as to turn aside the return in view of the no-return? If there is gift, the given of the gift must not come back to the giving. It must not circulate, it must not be exchanged, it must not in any case be exhausted, as a gift, by the process of exchange, by the movement of circulation of the circle in the form of return to the point of departure. If the figure of the circle is essential to economics, the gift must remain aneconomic.”
  — Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I, Counterfeit Money