I didn’t know what I was in for this evening. Each part of the performance could have gone on for a couple minutes or a couple hours it seemed. Sense of time seemed removed from the equation.
I’m unsure how to describe the music of Man Forever and William Basinski. I’m not even sure it was music, I told my mom that it was “soundscapes” but I’m not sure if the artists would want me describing their work that way.
After a little while, I realized I was watching the artists too much, I wasn’t fully hearing the music. When I closed my eyes, I could hear the music for real. I started to feel my heart beat inside me, something that I often do not have such a true sense of. It seemed as if I was listening to myself through the music. The sounds I was hearing allowed me to hear myself.
I wondered do we each hear things differently? I was there with a friend, one who plays piano and knows what she’s talking about when it comes to music. What was she hearing that my untrained ears were not? What was I hearing that her trained ears were not?
Throughout the last couple decades, music has always been a part of my life, but recently that seems to have slipped away. I feel relieved to be learning to listen again.
Photo by Alyssa Demirjian. You can listen to the recording of what we hear here.
Artist and designer. Re-shaping the way we learn. Loves blueberry pancakes and swing dancing. More at http://ethanbodnar.com
Filed Under
Other moments in New York
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Espressoing
in New York, United States -
A few more days
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Goodbye
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in New York, United States -
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Travel
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in New York, United States