human music
I take the bus to university these days, and have noticed that at my local bus stop, three out of four people are always plugged into their ipods. Everybody has their own floating soundtrack coming from a little digital box...
One night last week my roommates and I piled into a car and drove downtown to see the Orchestra. What struck me about that huge gathering of people, layered up in the vast soaring lines of the concert hall, was how personal it was. I felt the sighs and creaks of the people around me, kept time along with the Asian guys murmuring composers' names and bobbing to the music in the next row. We enjoyed the conductor's French-Canadian jokes and the profound elegance of his hands.
And the musicians! A reminder that music is so tangibly tied to human breath and bone and fingertip. Our spirits, our minds, our lungs and elbows and wrists and thumbs -- our imperfect persons and our idisyncratic personalities -- all matter in music. Something's lost when the music's tidily packaged and mass-produced and served up without the people who made it. Which isn't to say I don't appreciate a good CD, but we all know the real stuff is better, even more real, in fact, when it's live.
Half-way through the concert, a particular oboist played a particular solo from a particular piece by Dvorjak. All these things conspired to make me cry. Down on the main floor, a woman in a wheelchair arched back and shouted aloud for the beauty of it.
She was the music, too.
One night last week my roommates and I piled into a car and drove downtown to see the Orchestra. What struck me about that huge gathering of people, layered up in the vast soaring lines of the concert hall, was how personal it was. I felt the sighs and creaks of the people around me, kept time along with the Asian guys murmuring composers' names and bobbing to the music in the next row. We enjoyed the conductor's French-Canadian jokes and the profound elegance of his hands.
And the musicians! A reminder that music is so tangibly tied to human breath and bone and fingertip. Our spirits, our minds, our lungs and elbows and wrists and thumbs -- our imperfect persons and our idisyncratic personalities -- all matter in music. Something's lost when the music's tidily packaged and mass-produced and served up without the people who made it. Which isn't to say I don't appreciate a good CD, but we all know the real stuff is better, even more real, in fact, when it's live.
Half-way through the concert, a particular oboist played a particular solo from a particular piece by Dvorjak. All these things conspired to make me cry. Down on the main floor, a woman in a wheelchair arched back and shouted aloud for the beauty of it.
She was the music, too.
posted by sparrow anne at
5:00 p.m.
7 Comments:
wow.
The only time I can listen to music with headphones anymore is on a plane or greyhound bus, when I don't want to connect to anyone around me. I find that headphones trap me inside my own head and cut me off from my surroundings. They make everything into moving pictures instead of life happening.
i love how you make music into the thread that ties humanity together. it's so true. it's a universal language no one can steal. love you! em.
I love Dvorak, except he was sort of useless, he could never score on breakaways. O well.
beautiful post sarah. my father says the oboe is an "ill wind that blows no good", but if the instrument is played correctly it's haunting reed-y-ness will surely make one cry and laugh out loud.
i was reading about the those ipods today and the way they allow the powerful to control the powerless. i think the best way to counteract those ipods would be to take your guitar on to the train and sing them one of beautiful songs. it will help them snap out of there lack of spontinaity and would be a better lateral approach to music's influence.
by "lateral" i ment horizontal as friend to friend. oops those opposites get me alot.
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