Carry That Weight

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to introduce an individual whom I care about to something for which I have great passion: the Beatles. I find it one of the greatest pleasures in life to share with a companion something for which you have a great passion, and a further pleasure to find that the person appreciates your passion. This is really not going to be a post about the Beatles, so I will refrain from describing the circumstances. Suffice to say that my companion made a very insightful (for a beginning Beatle fan) observation: the Beatles’ songs are so short. The short duration of most Beatles songs (the perfection of “Yesterday” lasts a mere 127 seconds) has long flabbergasted me, but it has also made me think about duration and length in general. Which is better—long or short songs/movies/books/papers? What matters more—quality or quantity? What does quantity have to do with quality? I’ve decided that all that matters is that you carry that weight.
I have recently escaped my first year of law school and fascist length requirements. “Be concise,” they kept telling me. “But also be complete.” These two instructions seemed at odds to me—how can I be entirely complete if I have to cut down my content to fit within your totalitarian, Stalin-esque word requirements? I managed usually to come in at about 10 words under par, which I considered a great personal accomplishment. I began to wonder if my ability to write a great deal and to come up with ever more additional arguments and points was actually a weakness instead of a strength.
My “legal writing” (itself an oxymoron) professors also threw that old standby Shakespeare quotation at me: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” This little morsel of advice is actually highly ironic and widely misused and misquoted. This line from Hamlet is uttered by Polonius, who is, basically, an idiot. Through his scheming and meddling and eavesdropping, he gets himself stabbed to death. He speaks the line about brevity in the midst of a useless six-line introduction before finally getting to the point: Hamlet is mad. In fact, Queen Gertrude retorts to Polonius, “More matter, with less art.” If brevity is the soul of wit, then Polonius certainly has no wit. The statement, like the sharpest slices of irony, draws attention to Polonius’ own ignorance. He does not practice what he preaches. Moreover, Shakespeare includes the line about brevity in his lengthiest play, and I don’t think anyone would accuse the Bard of lacking wit.
The issue of length and duration also fascinates me in the context of art and entertainment. It seems to me that songs and movies are getting longer and longer and longer, in most cases unnecessarily. In the Beatles’ day, your average pop song lasted 2:30. The Beatles themselves broke a major rule when they allowed “Hey Jude” to expand to 7:00. Today, even the most middling, insipid songs regularly stretch past the 3:30 or 4:00 mark, throwing in unnecessary fade-ins and fade-outs and an 87th rendition of a chorus that wasn’t particularly catchy the first 86 times. It used to be that Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant could zip through a romantic comedy in an hour, with two-hour-plus running times reserved for Gone with the Wind and David Lean epics. Nowadays, it seems like every movie feels entitled to two hours of your time, no matter how tired the jokes have gotten or how many unfortunate plot twists have occurred on the way to the ending you saw coming for the last 1 hour and 45 minutes.
But I do not intend to place some kind of value on expedience. I can sit through the almost four hours of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with no complaint about length. I relish every second of the 8:03 of “Stairway to Heaven.” I can digest the hundreds and hundreds of pages of Harry Potter with no problems.
I think the real relationship between quality/quantity lies in whether the song/movie/book/whatever deserves and earns its quantity. Does the quality justify the quantity? “Yesterday” more than earns its 2:07; it probably deserves quite a bit more time. But “Stairway to Heaven” also earns every bit of that 8:03. “Free Bird” fully deserves to clock in at 10:07, but most of the songs put out today do not deserve their four minutes, or even their three minutes. They do not earn their time. Most of the movies out today do not have quality to justify the quantity of their length (I’m looking at you, The Dark Knight).
It comes down to carrying the weight of duration and length. An unabridged performance of Hamlet will set you back five hours, yet it carries the weight effortlessly, born forward on a seemingly endless supply of creation. “Like a Rolling Stone” has no variation in structure (no bridge, no chorus) yet Dylan keeps giving you something new in the verses throughout the then-unheard-of 6 minutes and 13 seconds.
I refuse to choose quality over quantity; this is an essentially false dichotomy. The relationship between quality and quantity is much more fluid and complex. Quality comes in all shapes and sizes, lengths and widths. Unfortunately, most of today’s art/entertainment seems to come down on the side of quantity trumping quality. I just want something good, and if it leaves me wanting more, as both “Yesterday” and “Stairway to Heaven” do, then I know it must be good.