Saturday, June 5, 2010

In this era of constant change we see more and more evidence that our ability to concentrate is being altered by the rapidity of push-button access to everything.

All the more reason, it seems to me, why our working definition of music should tilt in the direction of inner music rather than outer stimulation.

What is the source of that inner music? Interesting question; probably unanswerable.

The other day I heard an anecdote about a woman who experienced a pivotal moment in psychotherapy with a dream involving a scream. Two years after the scream/dream she became a singer. This does not surprise me in the slightest. All babies who scream have the potential to become singers, or at least musicians.

We do get interested in the noise we ourselves generate. What is the rush to supplant that source with more acceptable forms of sound? Pauline Oliveros has audiences go back to the sounds they were admonished not to make. Stravinsky refers to them in his autobiography.