The whole issue of this incessant ongoing external stimulation addiction that has been epidemic in US culture for the past several generations is killing all the arts and ultimately depriving the every day average person from having any kind of truly spiritual artistic experience. If you are constantly getting barraged with stimulus, your mind and body eventually starts to shut off the antennae that receive this info. Cumulative effects of this are loss of perception. (just as though you stared at the sun directly all day! how's your vision now?) Finally, when you get in a concert hall or in a theatre, all the newly acquired subconscious instincts/defenses are going to shut out half of what is presented, just out of habit. Panic ensues with silence (perhaps the single most important element in music.) (So, I guess that's why we have to have classes now to explain to people how to listen!) Soon, if this trend continues to accelerate, the only people who will ever be able to experience an artistic epiphany will be those who have been deaf and blind from birth. So far, I don't think there's been an ongoing abusive assault on the general population of braille, so using it to "read" great literature should bring back some of the kind of spiritual high you used to be able to access through the visual and aural arts (before you became numbed form overexposure.) WHOOPS-Am I over-reacting???? Well, just in case, let me go now and play the other half of that "Music to Listen to Mozart By" CD I was not really listening to while I was having a cell phone conversation in my car about the playstation game I was playing (between e-mails on my blackberry) while I was driving on my way the Apple store to have them fix my iPod before I suffer from another attack of overstimulus deprivation.
> > On Feb 18, 2007, at 12:16 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > >> >> Unlike email spam, "musical spam" doesn't have any monetary cost to >> the receivers. It's just a psychological cost. > > True, but it's a large one, and the ramifications, as you indicate > below, are wide reaching and have a substantial detrimental effect on > the lives of most serious musicians. > > Chuck > > >> >> The worst time of year for it is the Christmas holidays. The business >> district nearest me in Astoria, at Steinway and Broadway, has >> Christmas music playing over loudspeakers. Every time I go to my bank >> during that season, I wish I'd thought to bring ear plugs, because >> the music is such incredibly low quality that it drives me crazy. >> >> I fear, though, that there's nothing that can be done about it. > > If more of us would ask that music be turned off in restaurants, (I > do this often, and usually get told that they will turn it down but > not off), fewer restaurants would have music. I let them know that I > will vote with my wallet. It's lonely out here for those of us who > make this sentiment known. > > Chuck > > >> Most >> people's relationships to music is much more passive than ours -- we >> musicians cannot help but end up being actively engaged by music, >> because it's the way we are trained as musicians. We wouldn't be good >> musicians if we weren't able to engage in that fashion. >> Unfortunately, for me at least, I can't really turn it off. I can't >> tune out music. >> >> But we're a minority. I found when teaching college students that >> most young people "listen" to tons of music of all different kinds, >> but never really *hear* what they are listening to. They are passive >> and teaching them active listening is one of the things I was aiming >> to do in my class. One student wrote to me at the end something to >> the effect that now that she'd taken my class whenever she listened >> to music she would find her mind picking out various aspects and >> analyzing them. I was thrilled by this, except that here conclusion >> was "It's very annoying." :) >> >> Yes, indeed -- it *is* very annoying at times. >> >> -- >> David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com >> David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Finale mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > > Chuck Israels > 230 North Garden Terrace > Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 > phone (360) 671-3402 > fax (360) 676-6055 > www.chuckisraels.com > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
