Time & Perspective Quote by Gunther Schuller

Schuller’s joke lands because it turns the pious self-improvement ritual (I should read more) into a deadpan confession of creative narcissism. The first clause is dutiful, almost bourgeois: books are the respectable aspiration. Then comes the familiar alibi - no time - the modern artist’s constant scarcity story. But the punchline snaps the mask off: the scarce resource isn’t being spent on reading at all; it’s being spent on the more seductive project of narrating the self.

As a composer who moved between classical modernism and jazz, Schuller lived inside a culture that treats “serious” artists as both makers and documents. Late in life, the autobiography becomes a second composition: shaping memories, assigning motives, editing messy chronology into a clean score. The subtext is slyly self-aware: he knows the autobiography is the least defensible excuse for not engaging with other minds, yet it’s precisely what the system rewards. We don’t just want the work; we want the origin story, the annotated legend, the brand of the artist as a coherent character.

There’s also an anxiety under the wit. “I would like to read” admits a hunger for influence, for replenishment. “I would like to continue working on my autobiography” admits the competing hunger to fix one’s version of events before time runs out. It’s funny because it’s true, and a little bleak because it’s a truth about legacy: the older you get, the library becomes less a place you enter than a place you summarize.