"It means tapping into the sensorial vitality of living: the tactile, spatial, vibrational and auditory experiences that being human affords us. The experimental music pioneer Pauline Oliveros foresaw how a sensorial approach to music and listening could cultivate politically dynamic thinking. She spent her life developing a theory of deep listening, a practice that promotes radical attentiveness. In this approach, there is a distinction between hearing versus listening; the former is a surface-level awareness of space and temporality, and the second is an act of immersive focus... I practiced deep listening... especially with the new-age innovator Laraaji’s composition 'Being Here.'... This is music that curls into the ears, mutating into an imagined Elysium, stopping time and space. It’s not just scenery, not a simple balm for immeasurable pain.... It asked me to forget the looping of time, to disengage with any kind of predictive chronology.... Being here, slowing down, was not about inactivity or lack of energy.... It was an insurgent break in time — a call to drench myself in the reality of a catastrophic present and to equip myself to do something about it."
Writes Isabelia Herrera, an arts critic fellow, in "Ambient Music Isn’t a Backdrop. It’s an Invitation to Suspend Time. In the face of crisis, our critic turned to music that demanded that she relinquish control" (NYT).
ADDED: I see that my little excerpt included the idea of politics twice, even though it doesn't at all reveal what's political. I guess it's political to ignore politics. Some people seem to need everything to be political. So ambient music contains "political... knowledge" and might lead to "politically dynamic thinking." Getting a good night's sleep might lead to "politically dynamic thinking." So might eating a nice dinner.
I decided to check out all the other appearances of "politics" (and its variants) in this article. There are only 2 others. We're told that ambient music can be an "escapist salve for... political instability" and that it can "soften barriers and loosen ideas of sound, politics, temporality and space."
I've been listening to "Being Here" as I write this post, and it just sounds like music to get a massage by. Maybe I'm hearing but not listening (to quote a phrase from "The Sounds of Silence"), but I really don't think there's anything political about it other than that you receive it into your brain and you use that same brain to do politics.
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Isn’t this just a different spin on the value of meditation, something humankind has known forever? I find some music helps me meditate but the type of music and type of meditation is situational. Meditation while riding my bike or walking is different from meditation when winding down for sleep, etc.
Nice to see Laraaji mentioned on the Althouse blog. Only recently discovered his music and I love it.
Anyone who has been to a Grateful Dead show is familiar with this concept
I like the idea of this being music for avoiding politics.
One of the fundamental elements in being a wind musician is developing the ability to hear the things you can only hear if you listen for them. I spend my time these days working with young wind players and helping them understand how to determine whether they are sharp or flat to the agreed pitch. I can explain with the use of visual memes, and without illustrations.
If you are in tune, your tone will disappear into the tone of those around you (if they are in tune). You have to learn to listen skillfully to determine what sound is YOU and what sound is THEM. Does YOU disappear into THEM? YES/NO
At this point, you work a logic flowchart - if NO, you have to determine how you feel if you are sharp as opposed to how you feel when you are flat to the pitch. Every kid by now knows the "this is fine" meme with the dog in the little hat in the room on fire. This is how it feels when you are sharp to the pitch. An amazing number know the meaning of Munch's The Scream. This is what it feels like when you are flat to the pitch, once you begin to hear yourself. If you are sharp (as most are) you can pull a slide to lengthen the tube you blow into and fix that. If flat, you can push it in. If you are pushed in all the way and you are still flat, you reenact Munch's scream in real life.
Now, listen to yourself, adjust every note to what you hear, and after awhile you can get people to volunteer to listen to you play. The same holds true for your opinions. It used to be hard to get people to listen to dissonance. I guess it still is.
I sped it up and played it backwards and and it said Vote for Trump.
There's something about Brian Eno's first "Music for Airports" album that really evokes my creativity, but in a negative way -- it's not that the music inspires me, but that it somehow empties my brain of thought and perception, so that it (brain) feels compelled to create something on its own.
Biden is one of those politicians with a penchant for background music. He toddles along with that favorite tune playing in his head so loudly that he's unsure whether his name is Joe or Jon. It's something from the Ring Cycle that Biden knows as "The Ride of the Val Kilmers".
This is just how artists talk. When you have hammer the world is full of nails. When you have a screwdriver the world is full of screws. When you are preoccupied with politics everything is a political topic.
Synesthesia is the mental or neural condition where the senses overlap. One can hear what they see and see what they hear. Plenty of psychedelic pop musicians intentionally seek this. The concept seems really weird when forced into language and logic. But it isn't logic, it's blurry analog biology.
For the neurotic, there is always the sense of living in a crisis. For many a retreat from crisis can be found in religion, and music or simple meditative emptying of the mind can feel profound. For those who disdain religion, the retreat from crisis can be cast as political and can be felt as profound. The personal is political, so even the personal escape from politics is political. Profound, eh? Profoundly neurotic, perhaps.
Politics can also refer to common manners. As per "Use all your well learned politic or I'll lay your soul to waste" Sympathy for the Devil.
Maybe I'm hearing but not listening (to quote a phrase from "The Sounds of Silence").
The article itself says "Pauline Oliveros ... spent her life developing a theory of deep listening, a practice that promotes radical attentiveness. In this approach, there is a distinction between hearing versus listening; the former is a surface-level awareness of space and temporality, and the second is an act of immersive focus."
i hate to sound like i'm agreeing with them, but i TOTALLY Agree with them
Brian Eno's Music For Airports is one of the Most Awesome set of tunes Ever Created.
You spend 30 or 40 minutes waiting for it to start; thinking: it will start Soon
And when it's done you realize that It HAS No start or ending or middle.. It just IS; until it isn't
The article is mental masturbation. I listen to that sort of ambient music all the time. . .oh, wait, I guess I just hear that sort of ambient music all the time, and have for the last 20-30 years. It's background for me while working, cooking, etc. It's got enough structure to keep some portion of my mind occupied so I can concentrate on what I'm doing without being intrusive. It's either that or classical. If I want to listen to something, I slap in a CD of something worth listening to. Lately, that's been a lot of Pink Floyd. . . .
I'm just one of those people who can't work in silence.
Liquid Mind seems way better to me.
To me, 'ambient' equates with 'background.'
My wife hates it when I read a book, have the radio on, and have the TV on all at once.
I get information from all three and it makes sense to me...
Here is an infinitely superior example of that sort of music :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpeRajLFfs4
(instrumental transcription of a 500 year old choral masterpiece by Thomas Tallis)
Here is an infinitely superior example of that sort of music :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpeRajLFfs4
(instrumental transcription of a 500 year old choral masterpiece by Thomas Tallis)
There's a lot of melodrama on the internet about so-called ASMR videos. ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) to me are videos or audio files that are simply droning and boring enough to help you relax and go to sleep quickly. I have a variety of Youtube videos I use for that purpose; oddly enough MST3K episodes work really well, as I have seen all of them many times so they quickly become boring without watching the accompanying video. I simply set the volume level low enough that the dialogue becomes a quiet murmur and usually I am asleep within a few minutes.
Most ambient music to me sounds exactly the same. Brian Eno invented the form in the 70s with his Ambient 1: Music for Airports, which I believe was designed to keep waiting passengers in a calm and relaxed mood.
Youtube is loaded with a wide variety of ambient sleep sounds that often feature no actual music, just a blend of sound effects. I am especially fond of several based on the background sounds in the Blade Runner movies, which feature only a small amount of music but lots of spacial effects like rainfall, very quiet traffic noises, faintly heard echoing advertisements and occasionaly passing aerial vehicles. I'll often play several simultaneously, creating my own mixes. Very effective for sleep when played at a barely audible level.
The idea that there's anything political behind such videos and music can only come from the mind of a person who finds politics under every rock. The whole thesis of the article is bogus; ambient music IS a backdrop. That's ots entire purpose. As you said, music to get a massage by!
Archie H. Waugh
I'm a big fan of ambient music. I can work to it without getting distracted. I should probably get back to a place where I can just work in silence, but I digress. I particularly like a genre called "dark ambient", which is a moniker I don't try to think too much about as it gets kind of silly. I just like it.
Cryo Chamber on YouTube is my gateway to this genre. I really enjoy the music, but I often have to avoid the comments section as people often leave these overwrought descriptions about the brooding atmosphere of the music or whatever. Again, I just like it. People are allowed to enjoy the music anyway they want, but I can't help but feel those commenters are overthinking things. Funny to learn that such overwrought descriptions aren't just limited to YouTube comment sections.
Plus it's cheaper than getting a transorbital lobotomy to eliminate intense emotions, appear childlike and become less prone to worry.
I listened to about half of "Being Here" on YouTube (Spotify doesn't play well with my internet connection). I also listened to parts of other compositions: "Universe", "Essence", and "Circulation". All very similar. "Massage music" is a fair description.
I would call the composition, "Being Somewhere Else", because if I close my eyes, that's where it takes me. It could be appropriate to play in your car in Los Angeles during "rush hour" (so ironically named). It certainly does not put me in the mood for political talk.
Sometimes I see vile commies in clouds. There can be a base layer of stimulus that helps the neurons fire. When they do, it's not about the stimulus - it's about the stimulated.
Like bias in solid state electronics.
rightguy and glam1931,
I'm far from being a musicologist. To my ear the Tallis transcription is more than just a "far superior version" of the Laaraji piece. There seems to be modulation through some minor keys to create an atmosphere that is both pensive and foreboding. Not exactly massage music.
The Laaraji piece seems anchored by a single discordant key that sustains throughout the piece, and any modulation takes place within that key. As glam says, boring and suitable for calming the nerves.
One of the few beneficial "pods" I did in the teaching credential program in California was an Active Listening workshop. There are many similarities to the brief intro to Deep Listening you presented in your post. IMO Active Listening is even more useful because the basic technique, listening closely and then restating the subject back to the speaker in your own words to verify you understand them clearly, is applicable to everyday life and has helped me immensely. From then on when I listen to somebody I really listen. Actually repeating concepts all the time would be tiring so that is only employed when I feel something isn't clear on first pass. But it has honed my listening skills, which were finely tuned to music already (being a musician). I can also recognize actors by their voices at times when their appearances have changed so radically a visual ID is difficult. The gal who played Betsy on the recently concluded miniseries The Thing About Pam is a good example: years ago and half her current weight she was Molly's little sister on Mike and Molly.
There was an album in 50's "Speed the Parting Guest," loud percussion to show off your new hi-fi. That's what I'd use.
If you actually like attentive listening to music as music, Mozart Requiem introduction is excellent, listen to the first five notes, coming in three times with a slight overlap, and the suspensions after that. Theme carried over into the later voices. That's what listening to music is.
Third Mode Melody is the best Tallis.
LA Bob : That's ridiculous- I didn't say it was massage music.
Yoga music. New-age. Rhymes with sewage. Stinks in the ear. I thought so decades ago and think so now.
I keep reading the phrase as 'ancient music.' Academy of Ambient Music?
Mingus Moanin' on loop is perfect number crunching technical drafting music
Mrs. Chauncey Gardener I presume?
Brian Eno is from another solar system completely. Genius through the decades.
Writes Isabelia Herrera, an arts critic fellow, in "Ambient Music Isn’t a Backdrop. It’s an Invitation to Suspend Time. In the face of crisis, our critic turned to music that demanded that she relinquish control"
Sound like another grifter looking to keep her job by trying to appear to have ideas worth writing about.
I listened to Being There most of the way through. It just sounds diffuse and lazy. Just about anybody could cook up something as good or better with a DAW/sequencer. Minimal knowledge of music required.
First became acquainted with Laraaji on Day of Radiance, album 3 of Brian Eno’s foundational Ambient series (of which Music For Airports, mentioned above, was album 1). Perhaps oddly, Radiance was my least favorite of that series because I found it distractingly energetic. Personally, I’m an On Land (album 4) guy.
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