Redtree Times

GC Myers, 2002

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has conquered all the difficulties, after one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

–Frédéric Chopin

I was going through some images of older work from the early 2000’s and was struck by the sheer simplicity of some of it. Not that my current work doesn’t have considerable simplification of form and composition. It does.

But this work seemed even more starkly simple and direct. It had a different sort of certainty and confidence than I possess now. Maybe naively bold?

I don’t know.

But I find myself envying that level of daring, that willingness to cut away all detail in order to get right to the point. It was work that went in a straight line where my later and more recent work takes a more roundabout route to get to what is pretty much the same destination.

I have no preference in comparing the two. There is a sameness in both in that I see myself in each. Then and now. Both are products and representations of their time and where I am or was in my life and where we were or are in this world. Both routes have their charms. At least, I think they do.

There’s no real point here this morning. Just a reflection on the value in simplifying things. It’s something I have to do periodically to remind myself about the value and understanding contained in simplicity. As C.S. Lewis put it:

It’s like the sound of a chuckle in the darkness. The sense that some shattering and disarming simplicity is the real answer.

We often get lost in the maze of life, seeing complexity where we should see simplicity. Maybe simplicity is the real answer to everything–to life, art, music, science as Teller points out below, and so on.

I’ve had my reminder. I can get happily back to work now. Here’s some simple Chopin from pianist Chad Lawson to enjoy as you leave.

It is often claimed that knowledge multiplies so rapidly that nobody can follow it. I believe this is incorrect. At least in science it is not true. The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler. This, of course, goes contrary to what everyone accepts.

–Edward Teller, Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics