Update 24

Progress Report

There have been times in my life when I was busy and found it frustrating, and others when I've had time on my hands and found that frustrating too. I'm happy to say that, at the moment, I'm pretty happy with how busy I am. But, it still means I'm busy, and finding time for more my personal writing projects can be tough.

That's a pretty eye catching picture, yeah? It has to do with
the article I wrote for Pixel Dynamo. I didn't want another picture
of Nirvana this week...

I'm still in the process of writing the chapter on Smells Like Teen Spirit, and I'd say it's going well so far. There's another excerpt below. Also, here's a link to one of the articles I wrote for Pixel Dynamo today. I'm pretty pleased with it, and I encourage you to make comments on it over there. It's a conversation starter in need of a conversation!

Another Teaser

"When we listen to Beethoven, we don’t think about Beethoven. Although his mind conceived the 9th Symphony, he could not (nor could any single human being) produce the reality of the 9th Symphony. Such a piece of music has the life of its own I was talking about, but not only that, the life it has is not a human one. It is, in fact, a lesser life than a human being, but it can certainly seem grander and more powerful, specifically because it is smaller and therefore more easily grasped by us.

The same is actually true in the case of music written and performed by a modern band or musical artist (the Beatles, Elvis, Jon Bon Jovi, or Nirvana). The life and world of the music is smaller than real life and the real world. But, in the case of the band, the performance involves a speaker; a person. That person plays a role in the miniature world of the music that both produces and is affected by the nature of the music. The singer, and the rest of the members of the band, are acting in character and taking on personas.

The music of a modern band draws us into its miniature world, as all music does, but when we get there we find someone else (or what seems like someone else) already there. The singer is speaking to us. There is at least one character in this little world, and he is just as intense and absorbed in the dynamic force of the song as the rest of what makes up the song."

 © 2015 John Hiner III