Rather than go into some of the music lover threads and act clueless, I thought I'd start my own thread. I wrote my whole Nanowrimo without really listening to much music.
Maybe it's that I'm not an ADD type. I don't function better with music going. When I'm in a hot tub, I like the jets off.
I like to make music. I think singing is very therapeutic, both on an emotional level and for breath lymphatics (long exhalation). I have been learning piano at a glacial pace.
And there are sometimes old songs that take me back. But music just doesn't seem to do for me what it seems to do for some here. Am I just weird or are there others of my kind?
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
not weird at all.
Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
You're weird. Kidding! As much as I love music, I cannot listen to music and do other things, like writing or reading. I have t actively listen to the music, unless i am cleaning the house or something.
I remember a little friend of my daughter's who would start screaming if we sang in the car. He really hated it. Poor kid. We are big car singers, and would always forget.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
*Scandalized* I got to have music CONSTANTLY or I get all twitchy and miserable. I love music, it's my life's blood. Also, it smells and tastes pretty good if it's good songs and not that stupor-inducing tripe they play at the supermarket. It also has some nice colours in it too. But, this means I get to be 50 times more annoyed than anyone else when they play bad music.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
mothertree, though I do love music, I'm also in the camp that does not in fact function better when music is going. I actually find it to be distracting. I also appreciate silence (in the car, for example, or in my quiet house). You can appreciate music without having to go into raptures over it. Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Is listening to Gypsy Kings, typing on Hatrack and filling out paperwork for work...
I haven't been productive recently. I just put my headphones back on for the first time in months, because kat posted that music video and I wanted to hear it. The music is definitely helping me focus.
AJ
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Good music makes me high and makes it easier for me to concentrate and makes books better. Opera and Harry Potter is a good combination.
Posted by IdemosthenesI (Member # 862) on :
Oh, mothertree.
I know exactly how you feel. For the longest time I listened to very little music at all (and what I did listen to wasn't really all that good.) I always felt completely alien from all of the people whose first question upon meeting somebody new is "So what music do you listen to?"
I tend to listen to more now, simply because I moved back in with my family, and my little brother has excellent taste in music. You should try listening to some really relaxing mellow stuff, like Icelandic band "Sigur Ros".
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I don't know if I would have the same appreciation if I weren't a symphonic musician, that's why I cringe when I hear about orchestras going under.
There is something intoxicating about digging in with 80 people to play serious music. There is a commitment and responsibility to the music and to each other that's incredible. It's not the same in a band, or even jazz. Fun music is fun, and I've seen that technicolor band on tv, but I'm not sure that music is supposed to be fun as much as it's supposed to be important and consuming, and playing with an orchestra is both.
[ February 02, 2005, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
I think people who are primarily band or jazz performers would disagree with you rather strongly.
Also, I don't think you have to be a performer to really appreciate music...but neither do I think everybody needs to appreciate music the same or even at all. It's a matter of tastes. I, for example, do not enjoy sports at all, no matter how hard I try. I cannot comprehend passionate discussions about football, or tennis, or soccer, or basketball, or whatever. Baseball, I marginally get, but only marginally. It's one of those things that just isn't an important part of my life in the slightest, and that's just my tastes.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I have played jazz and in bands, and I think the people who don't see the difference in the severity of the music are wrong. They may disagree with me, but they are wrong.
I don't have a problem saying that some genres are better, more important, than others.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Naw, it's about what moves you.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
Irami, I had a feeling you had; that's why I added the word "primarily." And, I think whether you call a genre more important or better than another depends a GREAT DEAL on what aspects you use to define that quality. That's why I'd be very, very hesitant to make a judgment call like that without explicitly defining what I was talking about.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
I agree, Irami, I loved playing in orchestras, back when I did that kind of thing. And I think it gave me a better appreciation for symphonic music then I would have had otherwise.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
Singing choral music is pretty awesome, too. There's something exhilarating about being a part of a group of voices all working together to make music. I loved that. Posted by Narnia (Member # 1071) on :
Word. Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
"I don't have a problem saying that some genres are better, more important, than others."
I'd like to know what music you feel is disposable. I am interested in hearing more about a narrow view of music, as the concept is so foreign to me.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Some people really like comic books, and there are virtues and dignities that can rightly be explored in a comic book, but am I supposed to pretend, with a comic book on one hand and "East of Eden" on the other, that they are equally important works?
There are reams of bad classical music. People have been writing for hundreds of years, and on the Brahms thread, we are lauding a few tens of pieces. _______________________________
Edit:
I feel comfortable saying that the sixties and seventies are better musical decades than the 80s and the 90s. The overwhelming percentage of Punk bands, and I'm talking about the kids who are actually trying-- and who, you know, practice-- are disposable. It could as simple as time. Brahms studied and thought and didn't finish his first symphony until he was 45, maybe Avril Lavine could take a lesson from that.
[ February 02, 2005, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
I wasn't looking for a metaphor, I just want to know what specific music you feel is cast-off trash.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
I don't know... Have you read Nausicaa of the Valley of Winds or Kabuki? Those are some pretty deep comic books. Best of all, it's visual and condense, therefore, more accessable.
Posted by Brian_Berlin (Member # 6900) on :
Philosophically (and from my point of view) music is a medium to carry words. It is a tool, like rhyme and meter to help convey the message of the text - the lyric. But of course, notes without words can convey their own "message" albeit an abstract one. But the music is a tool. It is a way to allow an entire church to recite the same text in unison or harmony. It is a memory aid... how difficult it'd be for a child to learn the english alphabet without the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star serving as a memory aid. And as we have more and more musical experiences in life, we develop a love of music from passionate (in the most generic term of the words) encounters which also accompanied music. That's why when we hear Barber's Adagio for strings - we think of apocalypse now and the -whatever- of war. We get melancholy because the movie used the pattern of the notes to underscore the passion of the movie. Listen to popular Italian light opera and we can't help but smile and be happy because for most of us, we are reminded of Bugs Bunny. Passion and pattern... will have to ponder this some more. Sorry for the rambling post.
May I ask, what DOES do something for you? What draws out a passionate feeling for you? It could be that those things that do make you feel passionately about something weren't underscored by music as you grew up. probably something Pavolovian about it. passionate experience accompanied by music= passionate feeling
over time, revoving the passionate experiece - just having certain music could = passionate feeling.
$0.02
Posted by Jay (Member # 5786) on :
I like talk shows. They are very informative and help with current events. Makes it so I can do multiple things at one time.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Brian,
Music, art pertaining to the muses, the muses being the daughters of memory and zeus. You can't separate music from memory, and what music helps us remember is more important than the alphabet or the antics of Bugs Bunny.
Properly speaking, all important writing and speech is music, the muses speak through us in tones.
[ February 02, 2005, 01:05 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by IdemosthenesI (Member # 862) on :
Sorry, Irami. I was with you until you said that Twinkle, Twinkle was more important than the alphabet.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Yeah, I didn't say that.
Music is inextricably tied to memory and thinking about all that is good and bad.
Music isn't just notes, it all art that pertains to the muses, including speech.
Posted by IdemosthenesI (Member # 862) on :
Sorry. Forgot the smiley. That was intended in jest.
Posted by Brian J. Hill (Member # 5346) on :
I LOVE music. I've found, though--and it is demonstrated here--that the more people immerse themselves into music, the more discriminating their tastes become. As far as influencing our culture and society is concerned, a comic book can be just as important as, or more important than, "East of Eden."
The same can be said with music styles. Just because a person happens to have spent their life appreciating, for example, Hip/Hop and R & B, that doesn't make it better or more important. I especially see this tendency to judge music among members of the Music Department at the university I attend. They are truly wonderful people, but when it comes to music, they are much more discriminating as to what is "good" and what is "crap."
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
*never realized that the Alphabet Song is to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
*is musically inept
[Seriously, I'm pretty sure a lobe of my brain is missing. Tom and Christy have graciously agreed to try to drum something into my head. I think it will take a few years, but something might happen.]
[ February 02, 2005, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:I LOVE music. I've found, though--and it is demonstrated here--that the more people immerse themselves into music, the more discriminating their tastes become. As far as influencing our culture and society is concerned, a comic book can be just as important as, or more important than, "East of Eden."
The people who immerse themselves in it probably know what they are doing. I imagine it's the same with being a doctor. To me, everything looks like a liver, but I think that CT's eye is more discriminating, and furthermore, I don't think our opinions should be held as equal with respect to all things in the body.
I don't have to listen to CT when she tells the difference between a kidney and a liver, but it seems that it I'd be fooling myself.
[ February 02, 2005, 01:29 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
It's a liver.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
This is why I stick to analogies that I know. I can't even joke about the difference between a kidney and liver. I just know that if I drink water and don't drink alcohol, I'll do okay. Right?
[ February 02, 2005, 01:32 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
You're just fine. A little [light] on the black bile, but all in all, pretty balanced.
[ February 02, 2005, 01:37 PM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]
Posted by Brian J. Hill (Member # 5346) on :
quote: The people who immerse themselves in it probably know what they are doing. I imagine it's the same with being a doctor. To me, everything looks like a liver, but I think that CT's eye is more discriminating, and further more, I don't think our opinions should be held as equal with respect to all things in the body.
The problem with that logic is, those who immerse themselves in music usually have specialized in a particular area of music, so their affinity for that area of music is to the exclusion of other styles. Those who has spent their life studying and practicing Theraveda Buddhism are no more qualified to give their opinion on Christianity than are western-trained doctors qualified to give their opinion on Eastern Medicine.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
It's a liver.
Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
For me, all music is folk music. It is made by folk, and tends to reflect the culture it emerged from. To cast off certain styles of music as not "real music" is belittling. Furthermore, much music feels rather spiritual to me. When I listen to my little boy play his guitar, there is something more there than little hands plucking strings. His music is coming from someplace else. It sounds goofy and corny, but I really believe this.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Well, I'm tempted to say that the Monkees, Menudo, and Backstreet boys were disposable music. It was music designed solely to pander to a popular taste. And yet there is something joyful in campy music. And the thing is that apart from the general "importance" of the band, Mike N. was a pretty good musician. So what made Mike a musician and the tamborine guy a musical actor?
Is the tamborine guy so different from Keith Lockhart who directs the Utah symphony? The question wouldn't usually occur to me except for the ridiculous promotions of Keith!(tm) that I see on graphics banners downtown. I'm sure Keith has an advanced degree in music, but he also has this splashy personality that they try to promote the symphony with, and I am not attracted to it. Part of the symphony is the oneness. Glorifying the conductor... reminds me of that guy who kept the Red Sox ball.
Anyway, I think there is something about music that is unifying. That is the value of boy band crap, because it draws together many people of that generation. It is a wide, loose net whereas "better" music is a narrower, tighter net. (Better = more discriminating, takes effort to appreciate, or eclectic) I guess the idea that music should bring together is what puts me off about people who go for extreme uniqueness in their music tastes.
But I also think it's possible for a crazy musician to be pursuing some kind of union with an ideal rather than other humans.
[ February 02, 2005, 01:52 PM: Message edited by: mothertree ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
What's interesting is that Irami's assertion boils down to this: that East of Eden, if it also were beautifully illustrated, would be a less "important" work. That merely becoming a "comic book" somehow reduces its quality.
Because if that's not what he's saying, everything else he's saying is meaningless. Because if a comic book could be as important as East of Eden, then it's not the genre that's holding it back: it's the quality of the content. And while I agree that some forms of media are inherently limited by their structure -- in that checkers will never be as transcendent a game as chess, and even the world's greatest yodeler will never be as illuminating as a full symphony orchestra -- the simple fact is that there is SO MUCH good stuff out there, in every genre, that it's not necessary for someone to feel ashamed that a genre they enjoy might not hold as much potential for greatness if, in fact, they enjoy it a great deal more.
Culture is not a duty. Once it becomes a duty, it ceases to be culture.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
quote: Culture is not a duty. Once it becomes a duty, it ceases to be culture.
Awesome quote!
Most "cultured" people though seem to imply that it is a duty to oneself to be involved in some for"culture", be it art, music, dance, photograpy, haute coture etc. Is culture a duty or not? I'm not really sure. How does culture differ from socialization? I think there are multiple meanings of the word culture that need to be differentiated here.
AJ
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
quote: Music doesn't do a lot for me
This thread title made me sad. I know not everyone can appreciate everything to the fullest extent, but it still made me a little sad.
Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
Allegra, there are people I know who absolutely hate "the great outdoors." They think it is highly overrated. There are lots of people who don't need music, or who listen to it pointedly, not as background for life.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
I love music, and I've been involved in music for most of my life, but I rarely have it on, especially in the background. I feel I have a fairly deep appreciation of it. I listen to it in controlled bursts, usually when I can devote most of my attention to enjoying it.
We have a small boombox at home, and that's pretty much all we have for playing music. And we hardly ever use it. But my wife and I both love music.
Like mothertree said, both of us would rather be creating it. We have devoted a corner of our living room to what musical instruments we own, which include a large keyboard, several guitars, and my old trumpet.
And I have to agree with Irami in part: There is nothing like creating music in a large orchestra. It's a beautiful experience. And I've been in bands, jazz bands, dixieland bands, trios, quartets, and choirs as well. Just watching the violin bows move up and down and the whole string section swaying during the slow parts, the serious look on the flautists' faces, and the blur of the timpani mallets. Plus, you're right in the middle of this huge, saturating sound. The whole experience is like nothing else.
Posted by Brian_Berlin (Member # 6900) on :
>>>mothertree wrote>>>Well, I'm tempted to say that the Monkees, Menudo, and Backstreet boys were disposable music. It was music designed solely to pander to a popular taste. And yet there is something joyful in campy music. And the thing is that apart from the general "importance" of the band, Mike N. was a pretty good musician.
AGH!!!! How dare you lump the Monkees in w/ Menudo and Backstreet Boys.
Monkees rocked! Ever heard Tork cut loose on Cripple Creek? Dolenz's vocal range was tremendous. Jones... eh... well, forget him. And like you said, Nesmith was good too - prolly the best musician of the bunch.
They had great songwriters! (boyce and hart) Sure, some were forgettable or overused - but most of their songs were pretty damn good.
Anyway, this comment is all in good fun from a die-hard Monkees fan. ;-)
[ February 02, 2005, 06:02 PM: Message edited by: Brian_Berlin ]
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:Culture is not a duty. Once it becomes a duty, it ceases to be culture.
This sounds like one of those aphorisms that's supposed to be common sense.
This seperation between culture and duty seems to denigrate both. It seems to me that culture arises from duty as the vehicle that allows one to meet their responsibilities.
quote:Because if a comic book could be as important as East of Eden, then it's not the genre that's holding it back: it's the quality of the content.
Tom, Problem is that being a 100,000 word novel was a constitutive element of the quality of the content. I'm not sure that one can tell the content of the story in a thirty thousand word comic book, and I wonder if 700 addition graphic representations would add or detract from overall story.
[ February 02, 2005, 06:36 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: I wonder if 700 addition graphic representations would add or detract from overall story.
That's an interesting question, of course. Would East of Eden be a "better" thing if, instead of necessarily reading a description of a setting or a character's expression, you could see a powerfully evocative picture of the same setting or expression along with a little caption that also included those parts of the textual description which would be necessary to the story or style?
And if that wouldn't work for East of Eden, and I'm not saying it would, would it work for some other book? Would it work for something designed to be both a visual and textual experience -- like, say, Maus or Pseudopolis or A Dream of Cats?
There is no manual on how to be a good human being that includes a list of symphonies you must appreciate, operas you must enjoy, games you must play, and novels you must read. Tiresome people frequently put out such lists, inevitably to advance their own agenda and promote what they think "culture" should be, and in so doing cheapen the appeal of those things they're recommending by demeaning them into responsibilities. The real culture sticks around, the reason it lasts, is that it speaks to its audience. If something doesn't speak to you, there's no point in insisting that it should.
Posted by Uhleeuh (Member # 6803) on :
quote: There is no manual on how to be a good human being that includes a list of symphonies you must appreciate, operas you must enjoy, games you must play, and novels you must read. Tiresome people frequently put out such lists, inevitably to advance their own agenda and promote what they think "culture" should be, and in so doing cheapen the appeal of those things they're recommending by demeaning them into responsibilities. The real culture sticks around, the reason it lasts, is that it speaks to its audience. If something doesn't speak to you, there's no point in insisting that it should.
I love this quote, Tom. Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
What is a duty?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:The real culture sticks around, the reason it lasts, is that it speaks to its audience. If something doesn't speak to you, there's no point in insisting that it should.
I don't agree. I actually think that that way of thought breeds a culture of ease and immediate gratification.
Sticking around is neither a necessary or sufficient condition for anything important. Crap sticks. Baseness and appetites sticks. Laziness sticks. The Da Vinci Code has been on the best seller's list forever, that sticks around.
Sticking around just means that it has stuck around, and is probably readily accessible, but it does not mean it is very good or worthwhile. I'm not saying that one isn't allow to disagree with the great thinkers, but one should listen to what they have to say, and seek to engage them, even if it doesn't immediately speak to one.
[ February 02, 2005, 07:46 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
I hate to break it to you non-musical types, but you really don't like to be without music. Whenever you're reading or writing or driving and you think you don't have music on, you're wrong. You've really got 4'33" on repeat.
So when you say that you're not into music, it would be more accurate to say that you're actually just really big fans of John Cage.
[ February 02, 2005, 08:02 PM: Message edited by: Speed ]
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
What? What the devil are you talking about? 4'33"? Who is John Cage?
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
heh. I disagree. 4'33" implies that you're paying attention to the way that non-musical sounds fill the silence. If you're not paying attention to the sounds, there is no piece.
Besides, it's really more of a philosophical statement than an actual piece.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
4'33" is a "piece" by John Cage; there are three specifically-timed movements marked by someone closing and opening a piano's lid. There aren't any notes; it's silence. The idea is you're supposed to listen to the sounds that fill the silence (ambient noise, crowd noise, etc.). The real philosophical basis behind it, though, is the question of what defines music: is it organized sound? if so, then 4'33" qualifies. You get the idea.
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
I don't have to listen to music much, but that is largely because it continues to play in my head even while there's none to hear physically.
Irami, I'm wondering by what standard you judge classical music to be important, if not that it has "stuck around". I admit that I say that as someone who has real difficulty analyzing or understanding the arts, but I have never yet seen an argument explaining what it is that makes great music (or any other art) great, other than "it lasts".
I also have difficulty with the idea that immersion in something necessarily allows one to understand it better. Sometimes immersion allows you to see more clearly--and sometimes it blinds you, like a fish to water. I wouldn't suggest, exactly, that studying the arts is like "experiencing" a drug--but it doesn't seem to me to have a great deal to do with the intellectual as I understand it. Maybe I just don't move in the right circles.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
Well, I'll spring the trap even though the bear is dead. I don't think Tom believes in duty so what point is there in saying culture for duty is no longer culture?
So which came first, 4'33" or the Longines symphony?
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
Not familiar with the Longines Symphony, but 4'33" dates to 1952.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:Irami, I'm wondering by what standard you judge classical music to be important, if not that it has "stuck around". I admit that I say that as someone who has real difficulty analyzing or understanding the arts, but I have never yet seen an argument explaining what it is that makes great music (or any other art) great, other than "it lasts".
It informs your sense of responsibility, dignity, and, yes, duty. It's fully appropriate to exit the concert a better person for being remind of the glory and sorrow in the world and the relation of beings.
Some will laugh outright, but bare with me: the greek gods were not gods of something, they were the thing. We don't have that understanding of life in the world anymore, but, for example, when the Goddess of childbirth didn't visit a mother, then the mother stayed pregnant forever. It was an understanding of life such that everything in life was of something or the presence of somebody.
It's the same thing with music: the themes are alive. You watch them grow and tell stories and change, and become damaged, and find their way back to a whole, maybe in a different key or a different instrumentation. This is evident that folk song called, "The dueling banjos." The musical lines are actually dueling, and in a great piece of music the themes are not just themes, they are alive.
The Tchiakovsky violin concerto isn't a series notes nearly as much as it's about a dandy of a melody traversing it's way through a difficult and beautiful world given life by an orchestra. Concertos are personal narratives, symphonies are space operas, and a solo sonata is a soliloquy.
That said, just as there are teachers who confuse education with information, there are writers who confuse length with depth, there are composers who confuse music with math, and that's a sad thing.
As you can imagine, there are a lot of pieces I don't think highly of.
[ February 02, 2005, 09:37 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
I couldn't find anything on the longines symphony either. So maybe it's the same thing as 4'33". But the one I was thinking of was a symphony of elaborately detailed rests. It was more of a joke to look at the sheet of music.
P.S. Learn from my mistake! Longines symphonette is a radio that looked like one of the old-timey tricorders from ST:TOS. It seems increasingly likely that what I was thinking of and 4'33" are the same thing.
[ February 02, 2005, 08:50 PM: Message edited by: mothertree ]
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
quote:there are composers who confuse music with math, and that's a sad thing.
Just to clarify, as was recently discussed in another thread on music, music has clear, undeniable mathematical aspects. In fact, the connection between mathematical systems and music has produced some absolutely stunning music (quite a number of Bartok's works, for example). It's one thing to declare yourself a purist with regard to repertoire; it's another thing to deny something that is widely accepted in music scholarship.
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
Irami, naturally I can't argue with your experience of the musical themes as living beings...but that's basically because it is an experience--a rather subjective one, it sounds like.
Can you explain to me how to distinguish it from other people's identification with, say, comic book characters?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Megan,
It's like calling "making love," copulation.
They almost have the brain figured out, and it turns out that anger is just some neuron firing. And maybe it's true that anger is inextricably tied to the firing of some neuron with some chemical, but if that's all it is, and the great dramas in fifty years will refer to "You are making my c-5 neurons fire," as opposed to, "You are making me angry." And maybe that'll be called progress, but it'll be a sad day.
Mabus, Subjective is one of those Latin words that causes all sorts of trouble. The themes I'm talking about are there. Right there, in the world, it's not all in my head. Granted, they only come to life when they are thought to, but that's one of the reasons that computers can't appreciate music. It's also a danger in a society that doesn't think!
I think there is something in the comic book genre that makes it the case that the stories can't be as rich. There maybe something facile in their representation. It's possible that I've just never read a great comic book.
[ February 02, 2005, 09:28 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
I'm just saying that the underlying structure is mathematical, and it's beautiful. That's not what your ear perceives, but that doesn't make the structure any less amazing. To me, it's along the same lines as the pictures of fractals and of microscopy art. It's not at all the way you're describing it; it's not "sucking the soul" out of music (which, it seems, is what you're saying without actually saying it). It's a different kind of basis, a different kind of soul. Just because it's not full of sappy, droopy, drippy romantic sentiment doesn't mean that it's soulless.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I actually believe in duty quite strongly, and like Irami believe that one has a duty to society. However, unlike Irami, I believe that a participation in culture is only one of many possible means to the same end -- which is, of course, a worthwhile contribution to society. I think we would be hard-pressed to identify cultural touchstones which, if shared, make individuals more likely to contribute to society in an "optimal" way.
Irami searches for the optimal in everything he does, and pretends to dismiss the enjoyable. I used to do this, until I realized that a) it's really, really exhausting and b) no one out there has satisfactorily been able to define an "optimal" life, and so I'm pretty much free to make my own roadmap. If that means playing Dungeons & Dragons instead of Go and preferring iced tea to quality scotch on most evenings -- with, mind you, an occasional willingness to sample a scotch when I'm in the mood; there's no need to close oneself off to experience just because you have other favorites -- then so be it.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote: I weren't a symphonic musician
What do you play, Irami, and where? That is very cool, I played a number of instruments when I was younger, but the only one I still play (rarely) is the flute.
Jenni plays percussion, and sings all the time. I don't mean sing like I do, for my own enjoyment; she sings at weddings, funerals, special occasions....she sings in multiple languages even!
Music to me is something closer to what Irami sees it, almost all consuming when ti is good. I do enjoy some popular music though, even if it is primarily mindless enjoyment.
Nothing in my life has ever been more consuming to me than music, or more enjoyable. I love my wife, and am very glad that she understands what music means to me...if she didn't, I doubt we would have been married.
Tom, I think that a VERY strong case can be made that music has almost aways been one of the central unifying themes of human societies. The earliest known tribal societies had music as a backdrop for almost every important occasion, from healing chants to wedding songs, and it has been a primal human urge for hundreds of thousands of years. We, as humans, have used music (in a multitude of forms) to celebrate, to honor and cherish, and to morn from the dawn of time.
Kwea
[ February 02, 2005, 09:26 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
You may be right about comics, Irami. I have yet to come across any truly great ones. On the other hand, that may be because we Americans rarely use them for serious messages; I understand that the form is used for serious political discussion in countries like Russia, for instance. I have encountered real sophistication of thought in comics, from time to time, but so far it has always been marred by other problems, such as overcomplicated plots.
If other people also experience your identification with musical themes as people, I will acknowledge that there is some underlying objective substance behind it. What I'm pointing out is that many people experience the same identification within media that you consider less worthy. What, then, is the distinction?
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Kabuki sort of colours outside of the lines of comic books. Literally. The first time you read the black and white beginning you might think, yet another comic book filled with attractve women posing and violence. But, then you keep reading it and see the way he does the art... and once he starts to write it in colour and characters like Akemi appear... It's excellent.
Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
If you really want to know what 4'33" is, I can email you an mp3. I recorded it at an extremely high bitrate to get all the audio fidelity possible, since it's such an amazing piece. Still, I have a feeling you'll have enough room in your inbox to receive it.
It's a good thing to have handy. Next time you're driving around town and you stop next to someone with enormous subwoofers blaring out some gangsta rap, just turn up 4'33" and show 'em who's boss. Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
Incidentally, as a technical note, 4'33" can be played on any instrument. And, as originally written, the movements aren't broken up by doing anything with the piano lid. If played on the piano, the lid stays closed the whole time, and the only thing the performer does between movements is reset the stopwatch.
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I know not everyone can appreciate everything to the fullest extent, but it still made me a little sad.
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AGH!!!! How dare you lump the Monkees in w/ Menudo and Backstreet Boys. ![[Mad]](mad.gif)