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What the customer purchased was the memory of music. Somewhere in the past this individual may have had an experience of the excitement of a live performance, where players enjoy the fast-paced musical interaction that is more than mere sound. Music is a form of expression of relationship and relatedness that goes far beyond notes & words. This art-form communicates simultaneously to many levels of our body, our psyche and our spirit.
First the music intrigues our logical intellect, which always seems to be preoccupied with trying to figure out what will happen next - where the melody is going, what progressions are used and so on. Secondly, music bears witness of the state of the players, how they attack each note or phrase. Then we notice the relationship between the members of the orchestra - are they in sync? do they listen to, and support each other? As one rises to a solo, is the presentation appreciated and mirrored by the community? Tempo also accelerates and slows down - at a quick rate for a small group, and slower rate with the inertia of a large ensemble.
We get the total picture.
As listeners we receive the sum total of all messages and communications taking place in a performance. We are mostly unaware of details, they are simply too numerous to be registered consciously - but we are kept abreast via our subconscious by a sense of well-being, excitement, or even the blues - if that is what prevails.
Walking Backwards.
When record-companies and even some artists in the mid nineteen-sixties discovered they could gain more control over the recording process by recording section by section, and single instruments one at a time - a sort of stacking-process was developed in which each musician listened to those that had recorded their parts earlier. This method - also known as multi-tracking had many advantages, such as better isolation of sounds for improved clarity - less "risk", since a missed note could be fixed on the spot - but there was one major trade-off: The sense of community suffered, as there was no immediate musical and psychological feed-back for the musicians coming in to play. Even though it sounded like there was a whole band behind them, no one was listening (outside the producer and the engineer), and for the first time in history the musicians started to "pretend" to play - they learned how to become actors.
Buying the Memory.
Music has probably been around for millions of years - whereas the music industry has been with us for 50 to 80 years. If music could be compared to nature, the recordings (through multi-tracking) now became paintings of nature. Consumers were buying the memory of music, but that was good enough for the recording companies. In some ways it was perhaps better for business to leave the customer un-satisfied - much like it was good for the tobacco companies to put filters on cigarettes - people simply had to smoke more to get the same effect. When synthesizers and samplers started to appear, they expressed the logical consequence of our quest for control and mastery of all sounds, and for a while every snare-drum sounded like an atomic detonation. Trumpets - seemingly - could play in registers previously reserved for bats only, and musicians were no longer required to play. The final chapter in this overall development arrived with the advent of digital technology. Not only do we today listen to simulated performances by non-existent musicians, we now listen to approximated descriptions of simulated performances by non-existent musicians.
The strange thing is that it still "works", in the sense that the resulting sounds still communicate something. If sound communicates the sum total of what went into it's creation, it may well be, that a certain "synthetic emptiness" is called for at this stage of our civilization's development - much like the blues was popular in the 1920's.
Video now follows the path.
The area of visual technology is apparently going through the same process as sound and music - slightly later in history due to the higher data-rate required for it's digital processing. First "multi-tracking" occurred when images were optically brought together to create a picture that looked like it actually took place at one time. Then digital editing reduced each element to a set of numbers which could be modeled to create worlds and entities engineered to our specifications. Now we create stunt-men that only live in computers, and pop-stars that sing and perform on TV - reflecting to minute details what we estimate the public wants, either partly or totally non-existent.
Virtual life.
In cyberspace men and women meet, who choose to be someone they are not. They have relationships they could never have, and they live lives linked to others by their minds, imagination and memory.
Actual Reality.
The recent developments - the computers, electronic links, etc. - all have a contribution to make to humanity by our noticing the very element that is missing. Technology is contributing by making it clear what it does not provide. Without giving this something a name, it is that which makes us human, it is that which makes us know we are alive, and it is that - which we must pass between us in order to live. It is the human currency of life.
Life is energy.
I am at this point convinced that when our eyes fall upon each other they register the entire energetic spectrum. Our eyes see the electric, electro-magnetic, auric, spheric, and who-knows- what field in it's entirety, but the impulse is siphoned off before it reaches our conscious, logic-based brain center. The prime directive for this center where our attention is also held, has from time primordial been survival - and maintaining of our physical bodies. All information that has to do with motion take precedence over stationary objects. Color is communicated slower than shape, (although red, the color of blood, has a direct connection to the adrenal glands), and our brains constantly catalog and evaluate data for the purpose of survival. Even one's opinions of others is based on the brain's past experience with similar circumstances and are passed as fact, for the purpose of self preservation.
Know that you know.
To notice another person's energy fields is not essential for survival. It is probably also is as complex a task a listening to music, and can not be sorted out from a single vantage. Hence - it is processed by the sub-conscious system. If you would like to know what your eyes are truly seeing try to monitor your own state when meeting someone. Are you filled with a sense of energy and alertness, or are you feeling uneasy and fearful? Chances are your subconscious passed you a note.
When people get together their energies blend. This is where life occurs. When we eat plants and vegetables we consume life-energy as well as vitamins, minerals, proteins etc.. Try chomping down a few handfuls of sprouted peanuts from Farmer's Market and compare the way your body feels as compared with the same amount of the same, salted & canned. It has been known for a while that newborn babies thrive in all areas - including improved immune systems - by just being touched. Now it seems that it may be more than the psychological aspects that are at work. Perhaps there is an energetic matrix, an electro-magnetic complex waveform that sets off a resonance within the child, which it needs to function fully. You think this is a nutty idea?
Enter Uri Geller
When I was growing up in Denmark, an Israeli fellow named Uri Geller paid a visit to the Danish Television for a performance. As there was only one television station permitted in Denmark at the time, the entire nation sat spellbound that night to watch what nobody could understand. From the screen Mr Geller asked the viewers to fetch spoons, keys, old clocks that no longer worked and follow the experiment along with him. In my house we had several friends over, and my father passed out spoons to everyone until he ran out of spoons and gave a heavy soup-lathel to a visitor from America who stayed with us at the time. Uri Geller bent spoons & keys - seemingly by simply touching the items - and started clocks by holding them between his hands. At the end of the show we all sat with our spoons we had been rubbing on without success, except for our American visitor. Her spoon was drooping like a wet noodle, which she did not see until we pointed it out to her. She thought we had played a trick on her, but we could not bend it back, it was too heavy. Next day the papers and radio were full of accounts of similar phenomena. Spoons, metal objects bending, clocks starting, etc. etc. It was overwhelming, and scientists and sceptics were all in a whirl to make sense of it all. It was an interesting event, but the most interesting part came 3 weeks later, when the Danish Television ran the program again, this time on tape, while Mr. Geller was reported to be in another country, and had promised not to "send any energy" or think about the event.
Something in the Tape.
Well, the same thing happened. Spoons, keys, clocks. Perhaps not in such great numbers, but this could be explained by the novelty wearing off - lots of strange effects everywhere. To me, this was far more interesting, because it meant that whatever kind of "energy" Mr. Geller was capable of emitting could be captured somewhere within the sound and picture that was recorded. Obviously we at home could pick up this strange "metal-bending" energy, and harmonize with it on our own like tuning-forks at the same pitch, but Uri Geller was no longer there.
Forms of Energy.
To me, there are many kinds of "energy" and some of them we are already aware of. I think fear is an energy that can hover over an entire neighborhood. Sex is an energy many women particularly have a handle on. As it seems to me, women can turn on this low, sultry vibration, that trip men up across floors as well as oceans. (Some women are unaware of this phenomenon - or at least pretend to be, and can get in lots of hot water this way). Insincerity probably has it's own key-signature, which warns us of being taken for a ride, and there are probably many, many other "signature" energies we don't even have names for, but our bodies still recognize and act upon with or without our conscious consent.
Building Ourselves.
What I find fascinating is that it appears that there is enough "information" contained within the sound and the picture - of a person, event, place or phenomenon to pass on certain essential "Life energies". What this means is that the electronic network system, that is now being installed on our planet Earth truly has the potential of becoming a nervous system of a greater conscious entity. The first signals we are receiving are those of pain, needs and distress, but what if we use the same pathways to beam back not only information, but also compassion, healing and hope.
I believe the function of a melody is to confuse the brain long enough for the soul to get the message, and the opportunity of communication is to truly touch our miraculous humanity.
Thanks for listening.
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