Presentness

A couple of my previous entries here have made mention of a slight desensitization towards music that I've experienced over the past few years. One of my hypotheses for this was that turning to composition has put me in a competitive dynamic, and that that lessons sensuality. A newer, and probably more obvious, hypothesis I want to propose for a cause of this desensitization is the ease with which I and most everyone else can access and listen to music now. We shouldn't forget that, for the majority of human history, music was a special event -- one that depended upon performers and listeners being physically proximate; and that, say, just two centuries years ago in Europe, it wouldn't have been out of the question to only hear a given piece once or twice in a lifetime. Put simply, if you wanted to hear music, you had to play an instrument/sing yourself, or be in the right place at the right time.

I've refused to use an MP3-playing device while on the go since moving to Boston in 2010. This is not an encouragement to do the same, or a sneering, ludditical sentiment, but an example of one way that I've attempted to control my intake of music; yet, despite this choice and having limited concert exposure, my intake feels surplussed. So I wonder if I'm not properly respecting my habit of focusing on a small range of subjects before moving on. That is: if I enjoy a song by an artist who's new to me, my traditional response is to narrow in on that piece and/or another by the same artist for days, rather than to go ahead and, say, listen to a whole album by said artist. Or if I like an album I'll narrow in on that album. And this tendency seems to have served me well. Making these aesthetic connections on a bit-by-bit level of progress is enjoyable. It gives me time. The idea of mass-accumulating so-and-so's oeuvre after having a good, novel listening experience could not be less appealing. In fact, a big reason why I dropped the website turntable.fm is because it's defined by a constant intake of various musical material.

If I've cited ease of access as a hypothetical, then the means of access should be cited, too. In fact, the sparks for this article were born when I attended a playing of Handel's Messiah late last November. What was surprising about this event was that it excited emotions in me that I've never felt in relation to the work, as familiar with it as I am. As I walked into the upper seating area of Boston's Symphony Hall, I felt that distinct heaviness in the chest and throat that precedes tears; something about the space's beauty, the audience's presence/density, and the real-time actualization of the music (with all of those acoustic particulars arising from composition, ensemble, skill-level, and interior building materials) disarmed me, making what was familiar impressive. On a smallish level, this occasion embodied what I mean when I espouse music's power to dissolve the listener, to make us both profoundly removed and involved. And I believe this effect can more ably arise with live music.

My hypothesis-within-a-hypothesis is that there're a connection between emotional profundity and the lack of control we have over live music. In the cases of MP3 players, phones, laptops, and so on, the control that's granted is close to, if not fully, absolute, and this may color participative experience on an unacknowledged (i.e., we are, or I am, not consciously having these thoughts) level. Live music denies us the option to rewind, or fast-forward, or to pause, or whatever, even as unused possibilities. Furthermore, the song is not, when visually consulted, a bar of literal duration accompanied by a title within a box; rather, the song is an unseen thing that arises out of the living efforts, the breathing intent, of living subjects, and is subject to an immovably constant self-destruction as each fresh moment buries the tones of the last. Today, I was near a classroom in my campus' music building, and heard a person practicing on what sounded like a tonbak; it was such a pleasure to observe that what might have simply distracted me in recorded form was endowed with an alluring vitality as a present fact.

What is this wonderful mystery of presentness?