I did not know the man's music, although I imagine my father has some stories.
I remark on this man's passing because it appears he had a significant and colorful life, and because there is something lovely and terrible in what this E Online obituary says about the man.
But in 1954 he stopped playing the clarinet, claiming he could not achieve the level of artistry he desired.
As he explained to Reuters in a 1985 interview, "I am compulsive. I sought perfection. I was constantly miserable. I was seeking a constantly receding horizon. So I quit."
"It was like cutting off an arm that had gangrene. I had to cut it off to live. I'd be dead if I didn't stop. The better I got, the higher I aimed. People loved what I did, but I had grown past it. I got to the point where I was walking in my own footsteps."
There must be something terrible in discovering, at the age of 44, that you have outlived your artistic peak, that you have begun walking in your own footsteps. And yet ending one's career on such a note is an ideal of sorts and one that many hold. Musicians in the rock genre are regularly chastized for continuing to record and perform well after they have hit the peak of their careers. It is even said, in some cases, to discredit their earlier work.
Part of this is the fickle and immature tendency of fans and critics alike to see artists as merely the facilitators of otherwise autonomous artworks, rather than, in any substantial sense, their creators. All art that's worth a damn is the product of commitment and energy and risk. This is what artists (although most who say so are defensive twits) respond to when they identify critics as parasites or carrion-eaters. Truly great criticism is perhaps an art in itself. I respect all good writing, and the job of separating wheat from chaff is important culturally and socially.
Again, there is something simultaneously quite brave and quite sad about Shaw's decision. My perspective as a young and inexperienced and naive artist is that Shaw made a deal with the long shadow of his own mortality a good fifty years before he came to die.
I understand that this is something that athletes experience perhaps much more intensely, and generally much sooner. I think of Olympic gymnasts or figure skaters who reach their peak before they are my age.
To recognize one's fragility and mortality is a terrible thing. People spend decades attempting to shield themselves from these truths, through distraction, intoxicants, plastic surgery and the other weapons of self-delusion. There is something about Artie Shaw's decision that bespeaks an integrity I can't help but respect.
Also: Contrary to the author of the obit, one does not read vociferously; I imagine voraciously was the word desired.
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