Maya Angelou
via nihilnoetia
Goethe in The Sorrows of Young Werther
via booklover
On Listening and Music
In a speech delivered by Benjamin Britten in 1964 he astutely pointed out that going to listen to music before the invention of the wax cylinder required a special level of investment:
It demands some preparation, some effort, a journey to a special place, saving up for a ticket, some homework on the programme perhaps, some clarification of the ears and sharpening of the instincts. It demands as much effort on the listener’s part as the other two corners of the triangle, this holy triangle of composer, performer and listener.
Listeners would have to invest themselves in a composition nearly to the level of a composer or a performer. Of course the old adage applies as well: the greater the level of investment, the greater the level of return.
Furthermore, Bob Shingleton, from whom much of the inspiration of this post was drawn, proposes that listening, like meditation and learning, are even more fulfilling when experienced as a group. Listening cannot happen casually. Unfortunately, the majority of music listening does. The simple accessibility of it makes this the case. Compressed music, portable music systems, digital music libraries, satellite radios, streaming web-based music; this amounts not to a condemnation but a simple statement of fact that we listen differently now than we did roughly 100 years ago. At that time, if you wanted to hear music in your home, someone would have to play it. There simply was no personal music listening unless you were also the performer - again another level of investment.
I’m not sure what the end result of this is. I do know that music is more often played like sonic wall-paper rather than something we’d normally think of as music. Just as we don’t think of manufactured linoleum as art, much of what exists merely for ubiquitous aural mood-setting might not be thought of as music. In the very least, it is perhaps less-so than John Cage’s 4’33”, a famous composition of “silence”.
It’s much less of an academic discussion than it seems. If aesthetics are important then we need another word for this so as to never confuse the two. These words are also the first step towards listening with intention. For example, it’s not the existence of Muzak that is the problem - it is the listener’s acceptance of it as music that is at the root of our everyday negligence.
Cherry Picking is the Enemy of Soul
Matt over at 37Signals recently used this title for one of his postings. I really liked his point on art and design. The premise:
In “A Talking Head Dreams of a Perfect City,” David Byrne describes what he loves in different cities.
There’s an old joke that you know you’re in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it’s the other way around you’re in hell. In an attempt to conjure up a perfect city, I imagine a place that is a mash-up of the best qualities of a host of cities. The permutations are endless. Maybe I’d take the nightlife of New York in a setting like Sydney’s with bars like those in Barcelona and cuisine from Singapore served in outdoor restaurants like those in Mexico City. Or I could layer the sense of humor in Spain over the civic accommodation and elegance of Kyoto. Of course, it’s not really possible to cherry pick like this — mainly because a city’s qualities cannot thrive out of context. A place’s cuisine and architecture and language are all somehow interwoven. But one can dream.
Byrne’s article is fascinating, but so is this inital warning about singling out individual elements — the idea that cherry picking is a pipe dream. Qualities cannot thrive out of context. Everything is interwoven.
He goes on to say:
The sum is often greater than the parts
In today’s isolate then cut-and-paste world, it can be tempting to go around trying to single out just the best parts of things. Think of the “show three comps” method of delivering designs to a client. Inevitably the same thing happens: The client picks a few elements from design #1, a couple from #2, and a few others from #3. Then the designer(s) try to frankenstein these pieces together into a “perfect” hybrid — which turns out to be quite imperfect. All that cherry picking destroys any sense of cohesiveness. The end product looks like a collage instead of something unified.
When you cherry pick, you lose integrity. You lose the below-the-surface aspects of what makes something great. You cut the invisible strings that hold the whole thing together. You wind up with a mash-up instead of something that’s got soul.
Of course, the entire identity of post-modernism is this cherry picking and self-referencing. This is why so much post-modernist work fails to stand on its own - until you get what it’s referencing, it is difficult to see its value. At one extreme of music sampling, this is the case as well. The sample is often not chosen because of its inherent beauty but because the musician is interested in the collage of cultures. Unless you get this, a sampled bar of music looped over and over again seems sterile.
This picture is composed of a SOHO image of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light for each year of the last solar cycle, with images picked to illustrate the relative activity of the Sun.
[Nasa.gov]
Scientists have recently observed the golden ratio in full display on the quantum level in chains of magnetically linked atoms spaced one atom apart that behave as if they were a nanoscale guitar string when “plucked” (quantum uncertainty). In sum, there is a perfect relationship between the first two notes of the overtone system. Their frequencies amount to a ratio of 1.618: the oft-cited golden ratio that can be observed throughout nature in our everyday world.
The universe is an ordered place with patterns that can be seen throughout the smallest and largest systems. That order is what comprises our entire identity as humans. When we venture from it we feel disconnected and so we work to tap into it. Music, art, empirical study, religion. They all speak the same truth.
