Dylan can do it all: My thoughts and questions about Music's place in our life and Accepting All Noise as Music/Art

In the readings and listenings for this week, we encounter a variety of different music/art/noise/communication forms. I’d like to present and discuss some of these forms in attempt to better understand what the authors are saying and to better understand the roles these types of communications play in our worlds.

Below are some clips of people performing Steve Reich’s pendulum music to give you a visual/audible perspective:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhVC9_e2hzQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca4JERTjJw0&feature=related

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Steve Reich is also known for clapping music, in which his goal was to make music only by using the human body. This clip is an example of a clapping performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhhIZscEE_g&feature=related

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1) One of the main points of the readings this week seems to be that we can listen to our worlds, and everything can be music worthy of paying attention to. The chapter “Listening” made the most sense to me this week. The very first paragraph caught my attention and prompted my thinking with the statement that the world “is not legible, but audible” (3). So, we don’t really read the world, but listen to it and interpret based on those listenings. Like Sabrina, I’m not very familiar with sonic culture, but I can relate to music. There is definitely a solid connection today between music and money, and perhaps that is why the sound of music is unavoidable (3). Even though music has invaded our lives, how simple or difficult would it be to ignore or function without? Would other sounds of our world be more centralized if music did not have such economic power?

We let music interpret for us – it has power, and even though we relate to it and use it to express ourselves, I have to wonder how we would go about making connections and expressing ourselves without it sometimes . Oftentimes, a list of lyrics comprises my favorite quotes. We hear music in our cars, in elevators, while exercising, and many of us have ear buds in or near during most parts of the day. Do we miss the natural music of the world because of this reliance on music? Perhaps. But, I’m pretty much alone, I feel like I need music…in my office, in the car, at home…I like having those sounds as the background to my world. Surely, we all could function without music, but how would our lives be affected? It might not even matter. We’d probably be more in tune with nearby footsteps, cars, children playing, a pen dropping, and other sounds that allow us to take in and eavesdrop on the daily occurrences of life around us. Nevertheless, what would be lost if we got rid of music? Some people would lose out on a lot of money, that’s for sure.

I think it’s important to recognize how much we value music/sound/communication in terms of property as well. Birds use sound to mark their boundaries (“Listening”). Musicians mark their boundaries, too. They try to mark their images, their lyrics, and their melodies. They profit from all of this. This reading mentions Bob Dylan, and being such a fan, I can’t go without making some commentary on the topic of him. Intellectual property is an important facet of music and creativity in general today, that sound also has territories. Dylan is best known for his songs of protest and social commentary. He is an example of a musician interpreting the politics of the day, and he’s also an example of a musician whose music is sometimes believed to be more noise than “music” or art. The Seth MacFarland clip below parodies this idea and alludes that communication via sound can exist without language, per say. (A commercial parodying Priceline Negotiator commercials with William Shatner precedes the clip.) In a way, the clip reminds me of some of the sounds heard in “Language Removal Service” where we hear sounds and breaths, but no words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ4ZXsyqsWo

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2) Reading Burrough’s, I kept thinking of the many times I’ve been in theme parks and heard sounds of things like wildlife or spaceships while waiting for a ride. Looking around, I finally find the hidden speakers in the nearby plants or other scenery. The sounds are important to the experience, though, and the sounds help prepare customers by helping them not only visualize the theme but also hear it and submerse themselves into that adventurous world for a few minutes. Recordings of visuals and sound are extremely important, and it’s interesting to think of the reactions people would have if we did what Burrough’s suggests and set up recordings of cut-ups to play in the streets. I think it’s a far stretch to say that the person recording and/or playing back the recording becomes a god (11), but I definitely think power is involved. How much power and how influential can the people who control media, like sounds and visuals (thinking of the Funcke article that discusses the Indian government showing art and technology like video to rural populations (9-11)) impress upon our culture and affect what we perceive as life?

The answer seems like an easy “yes,” but these impressions from those in power really do influence our lives in terms of what we perceive as art, music, soothing sounds versus screeching noises, etc. It’s why it’s accepted for Bob Dylan to be considered art and good music but some contestants on American Idol garner laughs and harsh critique. Nevertheless, I think it’s our job to challenge popular ideals and ourselves to see all of the sounds of our world as life and art examine them, at least in terms of purpose, even if we may not be the biggest fan.

If art can be anything, Dylan’s wordplay with these store signs can be art, too. Check out the link below to see the Poet Laureate of Rock ‘n Roll at work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eiASBBuFso

*And to end with more love for Bob – a bird singing another bird’s song – my current, favorite YouTube artist, Fretkllr, who doesn’t show his face, but only lets you hear the music from his mouth and see the music he creates with his guitar because he’d rather go unidentified.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YjKnXy5GcE&feature=channel_page

Sounds are so much better heard through a headset

1.) In Sterne’s introduction, “Hello!” he claims that “modern ways of hearing prefigured modern ways of seeing” (3), which seems logical to me. Nevertheless, it makes me question: How does seeing what is spoken affect our hearing/listening? Does it?

Sterne’s discussion of headsets in the beginning of Ch. 2 made me think about my experience wearing headsets. When listening to music through a headset, for example, I definitely feel set off from the world - more private and more focused. Additionally, I notice that I pick up on more details of the music, like some of the background instrumental sounds. These sounds add depth, texture and more feeling to the music. Listening through headphones seems like the best way to hear sound because of the focus it allows. It’s sad that we sometimes miss so much without them. I think I can pick up on these intricacies even more when my eyes are shut and my sense of hearing is primary.

Likewise, I think visuals can sometimes take away from sound because we receive information from multiple senses at once and cannot concentrate on simply sound (as we can do more successfully using a headset). During week two, I brought up this idea because I found myself focusing on words rather than sound while listening to the Tennyson recording, but I think we can take this question to a different level when we think of ways of hearing influencing ways of seeing. Is Sterne talking about seeing literally? Or seeing as in understanding? These different interpretations of “seeing” could potentially yield very different answers. In terms of understanding, hearing can prove beneficial. I’m not so certain, though, that hearing can help us see visually, unless perhaps we are connecting music, sounds, and words in a musical to comprehend the events being performed. Then again, comprehension would be the goal and outcome, not merely seeing.


2.) In Ch. 1, Sterne discusses Francis Bacon, automata, and the capabilities of machines simulating human/animal behavior (72). Sterne states that these imitations were “meant to suggest a level of understanding of and mastery over nature” (72). Evidently, human vie for an understanding of nature and try to control or manipulate some aspects of it (with science, for example). Sterne shows that we can indeed understand and imitate sound, but can we ever have a mastery over nature? I’m doubtful because nature seems so powerful and uncontrollable. I ask this question because I think we can imitate nature, including the sounds we find in nature, and we can influence nature through our actions (like how we can build structures on the earth, dam waterways, and affect air quality), but mastery over it seems like a far stretch to me.

Revive Memorization! (so I'm not so forgetful)

Here are two questions that came to my mind while reading Walter Ong’s book Orality and Literacy for class this week.

Question 1: Ong spends a good bit of time in Chapter 3 discussing the importance of memorization to education. Teachers demanded that students memorize and recite statements (55-56). I can recall having to recite my phone number and address and The Pledge of Allegiance in Kindergarten, and later the Preamble to the Constitution. However, it’s been a long time since I’ve had to recite anything from memorization. Ong believes, “Writing has to be personally interiorized to affect thinking processes” (56), which makes me wonder: How does our reliance on writing and independence from memorization affects our thinking and our learning?

I ask this question in part because lately I have found myself talking about how my memory has weakened and how it fails me. I have trouble remembering the plots of stories I’ve read within the past year, and I have trouble remembering which authors wrote which articles and what they are about. I am now beginning to think that my memory seems weak because I have not trained it nor kept it in good use and practice. I don’t have to remember cell phone numbers or email address because they can all be saved. I don’t have to remember much of anything because I can write it down. Now in graduate school, I no longer have tests for which I must memorize mathematical formulas or any other class material. I can write, look back at my notes for reference, and keep moving along. I’m known to say that I know how to use my resources and look back to documents to find what I need to know. Reading Ong makes me think I’m relying too much on writing and current technologies, and therefore letting my mind take it easy. When in reality, using memorization more often may help me use other parts of my brain and strengthen my mind. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think engaging in more memorization will improve my thinking and my ability to learn in ways that all the writing in the world may not be able to do (and I am not, in any way, putting down writing or saying less should be practiced).




Question 2: Ong states in Chapter 4, “Writing is always a kind of imitation talking, and in a diary, I therefore am pretending that I am talking to myself. But I never really talk that way to myself. Nor could I without writing or indeed without print” (101). I am not completely convinced that I never talk to myself the way I write in a diary. I admit that I have a conversational voice and a writerly voice. However, I feel like I can talk to myself the way that I write, especially the way I write in a diary. So I ask, does are writerly voice naturally differ from our oral/speaking voice? Does it depend on our purpose for writing and the audience we’re addressing? Can we even know the difference since writing is such a standard and (at least right now) seemingly natural part of our lives?

Multiple Types of Silence and No Relations: Just Enough to Confuse Me and Give Me Another Reason to talk about Barthes

A bunch of questions, a stream of consciousness. It seems that writing, music, and poetry, can be just that according to Cage (41-52). I’m right on board with most of our authors as I read them, but then when I start thinking about noise, silence, poetry vs. music all together, it gets even more complex.

This set of readings brought me back to my question from earlier in the week about what constitutes poetry. I’m beginning to think that the definition is arbitrary and based on the reader’s/listener’s ideas and interpretations when listening, and the performer’s/writer’s point of view when composing or performing.

Question 1: Sticking with silence for my first question, I wonder – how can there be more than one type of silence? In “Unheard Music,” Dworkin notes Whitehead’s six types of silence. Though, isn’t silence, silence? Even if devices are put on mute or pause or silent mode, I don’t believe they are necessarily without sound. If there’s any sounded lull or interference, wouldn’t that be noise?

Question 2: How can the idea of relation be truly absent in music or any other composition?

In “Introduction to Selected Gathas,” MacLow expresses relationships between his works and others (like Pete Rose and Anne Tardos) and encourages the performers of his gathas to “produce speech elements or tones in relation with all they hear” (649). Evidently, MacLow acknowledges inspiration and relation while composing and performing and wants others to do the same. This idea makes sense to me. It’s hard for me to imagine anything I compose not having relations with other things and being purely unique. When thinking of intertextuality, like Barthes, relationships are innate and unavoidable.

For these reasons, I have a problem understanding Cage’s idea that it is “possible to make a musical composition the continuity of which is free of individual taste and memory” and with which “the idea of relation being absent, anything may happen” (Imaginary Landscape #4). I may be able to grasp this concept once I have a better understanding of Cage’s composing process and product, but for now I can’t wrap my head around pure authenticity and lack of relation. Even if mistakes are impossible and “beside the point” in such compositions, they still must come from somewhere, right? Don’t they still have an instigation or relation? Cage’s composition process seems very precise with 12 radios and 24 performers, and so on. Though the performance occurs without individual taste or memory or value judgments and with opportunity for uncertainty (Imaginary Landscape #4), I still think relation exists and can never truly be absent (although I’m very likely to change my mind after learning more about Cage and his compositions).

More unknowns: What is a poem? Is sound more valuable than speech?

1. Just as I found myself trying to define “noise” last week, this week I find myself trying to define “poem”. In my Literary Research class on Thursday, we took time to differentiate between prose and poetry, noting that poetry has rhythm, meter, sometimes rhyme, stanzas and incorporates meaning-dense language. However, for this class we are reading about sound poetry and other non-traditional types of creating poems, like the turtle poems and other visual poems, including photocopying and painting. Thus, for my first question (which I’ll leave unanswered in the blog) I ask: What does it take for something to constitute a poem?

2. Chopin makes chaos sound pretty good in “Why I am the Author of Sound Poetry and Free Poetry” by framing it as a way to make us more alive as opposed to the “all powerful Word” that deadens so many. When I read “Word” with the capital “W”, I automatically think of the Christian Bible. However, I think much of what Chopin has to say can also relate to our use of speech (words) in general. Given that and what Chopin has to say about the significance of sound, here is my question: Is it more important to listen to the sounds people make (tone/pitch/rate of speech) rather than what is being said (words/meaning)? Likewise, is it more important for us to be aware of our own sound when reading (and writing) in addition to focusing on meaning?

A lot could be said in reply to these questions, I think. It would be interesting to rate how much attention we place on sound vs. meaning when listening to others, and how much we take in of others’ nonverbal communication. I know that I take in many messages, verbal and nonverbal, at one time; however, I think I concentrate more on interpreting/comprehending the words being said. Perhaps communication would be more successful if more direct attention was focused on sound rather than word.

Chopin claims that children are “prisoners of the word,” prisoners of education, too, in a way. Often we are directed to focus on what is being said, not necessarily how it is being said. Communication in general may be better if we spent as much or more time thinking about sound and nonverbal elements because we feel emotions, and this transmittance sometimes conflicts with the words being voiced.

When I read Chopin’s statement that “we are slaves of rhetoric, prisoners of explanation that explains nothing,” I at first felt like I was losing job security, but the more I let these words settle, the more I believe teachers have the power to act as agents of change and influence how people tune their attention to or away from sound. People may need to learn how to pay at least as much attention to sound as they do to words. Chopin implies that we need to live. We need to listen to the transmittal of emotions. It would be interesting if we abandoned the use of words in our speech for a day and tried to only communicate with non-word sounds and nonverbal communication. I wonder how difficult or surprisingly successful that might be.