From: john williams (ducati900@bigpond.com)
Date: Sat Jan 25 2003 - 10:04:37 GMT
Hi Rasheed
Sorry about the time delay, I've been working.
Rasheed: Relating to your experience with the Sting song (which one was it, by the way?)
The song is "Fragile" which is on "Nothing like the sun".
Rasheed: And, despite what Pirsig says, I am not always overcome by a song by hearing it for the first time. Many times, it takes careful listening to and a critical ear towards a song before it can become truly great in the mind of an individual
Yes, agreed and I find the best music is the stuff that takes work to get into.
I'm beginning to think that this favouring of DQ over SQ, (I noticed your following Pirsigs lead of giving DQ upper case and sQ lower case) maybe a mistake, as with Willy's thread on love, there is a great deal to be valued in SQ. I believe Pirsig left a lot out because he is trying to make a case for DQ and not so much SQ which I find funny since they are both his explanations of his understanding of the world.
Rasheed: So, the point to all this, if there is one, is the universal theme that DQ works in mysterious ways, which often depend on our own internal conditions and, to a degree, the external surroundings contributing to those conditions.
Maybe it doesn't work so much on the external, conditioned you and speaks more directly to the real true you.
John from The rock
----- Original Message -----
From: HisSheedness@aol.com
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 5:05 PM
Subject: Re: MD music
John, All
I really liked this section because I thought it was one of the best illustrations of the interplay between DQ and sQ. In this case, or so it seems to me, sQ is given precedence over DQ because it doesn't take creativity or musical innovation to produce something with DQ, but it does take those things to produce a timeless work which continually inspires over the years: across generations, within generations, and within the lifetime of the individual. However, DQ is the initial starting point for any great musical work, and I suppose sQ only works as a consequence of it. This made me ask myself whether there were any musical works possessed of sQ but NOT DQ that were considered great works. The only thing I can think of is the national anthem of a given country. I don't think people go nuts when they first hear their country's national anthem (I will be honest and say I don't even know all the words to America's), but it does have the ability to! inspire people when played at certain moments, despite being over 200 years old and listened to hundreds of times in the lifetime of an individual. But is this appreciation of one's national anthem simply a sort of ideological assumption; namely, that we are supposed to appreciate and receive inspiration from this music because of its assocations with the values our respective countries, and so we do? I have no idea if it is even possible to prove to what extent these ideological assumptions play a role in determining its Quality, or if they even do play a role in the first place. Has anyone ever been inspired by a foreign country's national anthem, one to which they have no ethnic or emotional ties?
I am also acted upon by the various music I listen to, which forms what I can only describe as a catalogue of experiences in my mind. . I am hit with the DQ of a song usually at some random moment, not a particularly unique one, but usually after I have heard the song a few times. To give an example, right now I am listening to Smetana's "Die Moldau," which immediately conjures up the image of myself sitting in a classroom two years ago while it was playing through the wall from the room next door. I could describe that moment in great depth (which I won't do now to avoid boring everyone more than I already have and already will).&nb! sp; Regardless of how many times I hear a song and in how many different settings I hear it in, there is one particular experience or setting that will always come to my mind upon hearing any piece of music which holds any sentimental or qualitative value in my mind. So, if I hear Dvorak's Romance in F Minor, I think of standing in a subway car in Japan with the book 'Gangs of New York' in my hand; when I hear Miles Davis' 'Flamenco Sketches,' I immediately remember driving home by myself at night after a prayer meeting. It is a forever growing and evolving canon, because I know that a new experience might concretize itself and replace the old if the conditions are right for it.
Rasheed
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