perception
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Aim
aim—[verb] point or direct at a target; from the Latin aestimare ‘assess, estimate’ When I’m playing music I’m continually aiming and re-aiming my attention as the music goes along, and my aiming happens on different levels of perception. Since I play mallet percussion, there’s a spatial aiming of my mallet-holding hands along the marimba keys, Continue reading
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Notes On Vybarr Cregan-Reid’s “Footsteps: How Running Makes Us Human”
“When running, thinking plays sixth fiddle to sensing–for hearing, seeing and feeling how places present themselves to our consciousness takes precedence over careful consideration.” – Vybarr Cregan-Reid, Footsteps, p. 56 Vybarr Cregan-Reid’s Footsteps: How Running Makes Us Human is a lucid and literary exploration of running. Cregan-Reid is an academic (professor of English) who has turned Continue reading
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Lessons From Italo Calvino’s “Reading A Wave”
If I were a fictionalist, I would write in the analytical-introspective manner of Italo Calvino (1923-1985). In Calvino’s novel Mr. Palomar, we follow one man’s attempts to increase his inner awareness by increasing his consciousness of his surroundings. Mr. Palomar is a practicing phenomenologist who tries to understand the world through all of its perceived details Continue reading
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Music As Perception
(Birds over the parking lot at Ikea.) Music has many practical uses, among them: it organizes us into communities, soundtracks our rituals and every day routines, accompanies our films, sells our products, and so on. But perhaps music’s most fundamental purpose is perceptual: music exercises our attention this way and that, stretching our body-minds in Continue reading
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One Way To Listen To Music: Notes On Mark Fell’s “Multistability 6-B”
One way to listen to music–and by to I mean up and over and through and around music–is to imagine it as proposing a set of ideas for our consideration. From this perspective we can think about any music as sonically embodying, modeling, and organizing itself through these ideas. As we listen the ideas become Continue reading
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On The Tour De France And Time
“Time passed indifferently, barely leaving a trace.” – Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage “For these riders, time is running out.” – Phil Leggett Though the event ended a few days ago, the last few weeks had me watching a lot of Le Tour de France. (I also wrote about Le Continue reading
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On Peter Mendelsund’s “What We See When We Read”
Peter Mendelsund’s What We See When We Read: A Phenomenology With Illustrations is a remarkable study of perception in the experience of reading. Just his book’s title suggests, Mendelsund explores what exactly it is that we “see” in our minds eye when we read. It’s an interesting question or set of questions really–What do we Continue reading
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On Music For Thought: Dub (Re)Mixing As A Metaphor For Mindfulness
After reading Paul Sullivan’s excellent Remixology (Reaktion Books, 2014), a history of dub music and dub aesthetics from Jamaica to their infection of electronic musics in cities and scenes around the world, it struck me that remixing is an interesting metaphor for cultivating mindfulness. Dub pioneers such as Lee “Scratch” Perry, King Tubby, The Scientist, and Continue reading
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David Hockney On Perspective
I’ve been reading more Lawrence Weschler lately, this time his engaging study of the painter David Hockney, True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney (University of California Press, 2009). I first encountered Hockney’s work in the mid-1990s at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibit was a show of Hockney’s English Continue reading
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