As I read both of these articles I am sitting in the library. The library is supposed to be a place of silence, a place of concentration. I read the line "Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us." Now, all I can think about is all the little sounds, they are filling my brain. A cough, the turn of a page of a book, people typing, people opening backpacks. The noises are surrounding me. A flush of a toilet, a door opening. The harder I try to ignore them, the more prominent they become.
The concept that noise, when it is ignored, is almost more distracting then when you listen to it now fascinates me. I can easily do homework with headphones in and music playing. However, when I try to sit in silence, the pitter patter of the world around me swallows me up and distracts me more then any music ever could.
Now, as I sit here incredibly distracted and wrapped up in the noises around me I start to hear music. Cage's line "If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound." I am not listening to synchronization I am not listening to instruments, I am simply listening to life and its continuous rhythm of the world moving forward. The perfectly imperfect rhythm of sound in the library really has made me acknowledge how powerful sound can be.
With technology forever changing, the power of sound and all its variations has evolved. Cage's concept of being able to create the sounds of a hundred person orchestra with your computer is fascinating. You now can synchronize and organize sound with one instrument... a computer.
No comments:
Post a Comment