Monday, January 18, 2010

This Blog would sound much better than it looks. Except that Comfortaa is my fave font. DTC 375

Does "in good faith" mean we can't be sarcastic or have fun with our posts? As dry as orality and literacy is, I would at least like to try and have some fun with it. I don't know exactly how I can make orality and literacy funny, since it’s a very serious book about a relatively boring subject. But the fact that I think Orality and Literacy is boring is proof that the society I live in is radically different than ancient societies with no written word. So I’ll just try and relate it to my experiences and see what happens. No big expectations for my first blog in this class I hope.

I’m going to be honest, I’m honestly not enjoying Orality and Literacy. But this is a very popular book in acadamia so it’s sort of required reading in a college class. I had to read some of it for another class and the material in this book that I enjoy is when he starts to talk about sound and the nature of speech and communication. The reason I care about sound and communication is because music comes from speech and sound. And music is something I care very much about.

I make primarily instrumental electronic dance music, but lately I’ve been feeling more of a pull to include lyrics in my songs. This is ironic because I write a lot of poetry, but I usually refrain from combining spoken or sung words and music together.

The reason I do not currently create music with lyrics is, (if I may self analyze for a minute) because I want to connect more with the sound and the primitive nature of the song rather than allowing people use their analytical and visual minds when listening to my music (all my music is made explicitly with the computer, so calling on a primitive nature hopefully doesn’t make me a hypocrite...). The reason I make music is for people to dance, not to gain wisdom from my wise words or to get distracted by envisioning something specific that I want them to think about. I want them to fill in the details of the music with their own experiences. Giving people details and making them think is what poetry and spoken word is for.

I think the reason I make music the way I do is similar to how the ancient societies told stories. When they told a story, the point was to entertain and to engage the listener. The focus was less on tangible facts and more about living a particular experience that could potentially change with time. When the stories (meaning myths more specifically) were told, they were meant for the audience (meaning the people in a specific geographical area) not for people thousands of years later to analyze the errors. The reason the ancient story tellers were able to get away with telling outlandish stories is because the convincement they used was oral and sound oriented, not strictly visual as it is in today’s society. Which provided a bit of leeway for the listener to fill in some of the bits themselves.

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