Sunday, January 26, 2014

How Can Music Be So Complicated?

If only the world would stand still!

Something like that was on Goethe's Faust's mind when he was being dragged under by the devil himself.  But the world does not stand still.

The soundscape is constantly changing.  Do we change along with it?  Interesting question and not easily answered.

From my perspective, we all crave human connection. Tone is one of the primary ways in which we experience that connection.  In the absence of tone we are lost, disoriented.  Tone arouses us to memories of other tones we know or might think we know; recognition of sounds of nature or of another moment in our lives.

Many elements conspire to remove us from our spontaneous experience of tone, not the least potent of which is recorded sound.  Take care to become aware of the quality of what you hear coming at you all the time.  Is it real?  Does it have any attributes of "real"?   If not, why not?