BARENBOIM


Daniel Barenboim (2008). Everything is Connected: 

                                          The Power of Music


Barenboim is a musician and conductor of symphonies in America and Europe and travels globally. I was inspired by interviews with him on YouTube and was enticed by the title of his book...i was disappointed in the book overall as much of the book is technical, meant for individuals with a music background, and a good chunk of the book is about politics in the middle east (he created an orchestra of Israeli and Palestinian people thinking if they could play music together, maybe they could find ways to live together in peace), and history of Nazi Germany and the classical composers Hitler used for propaganda.

Nonetheless, there were a few take-home points:

music has the power to change consciousness in an instant (hence we should take care in the kind of music we create, considering how it will impact others, and in what music we listen to, as it shapes our character)

often there are 2 voices in a musical piece, one talks and one listens, then they change places in an ongoing dialogue, so too should our conversations be...a time to listen, and a time to speak

the silence before and after a musical piece is part of the music, hence there should be silence before and after a musical piece instead of chit chat before and applause immediately after

 

for practice, consider what types of music you listen to on a daily/weekly basis...

does the music and lyrics align with who you want to be (character)

what functions does the music serve, e.g. elevate mood, de-stress...

experiment with moments of silence before and after listening to music--how does the silence influence your experience of the music (e.g., silence before may help clear a space for listening, while silence after can be a time of "integration")

how can you be more intentional about the kinds of music you listen to and create





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS Wayne Dyer (2003). There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem. Dyer earned a Doctorate of Education in Guidance and Counseling, and is a prolific author. His first book that i read in the 1970's, Your Erroneous Zones, profoundly influenced my thinking as a teen.  The theme of this book is that there is a spiritual solution to every problem, that problems are illusions created in the mind by incorrect thinking, and that the solution to these mental problems is to change our thinking in light of the spirit (defined as an energy/intelligence that is the source of all life, i.e., God). Some might call this "spiritual bypassing," ignoring the body in favor of the mind and spirit. The first half of the book is lessons from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Dyer suggests that low frequency is associated with the "negative" and faster frequency with the "positive" [for me, at least musically, lower frequencies don't imply negative emo...
Read more
Image
TURN ON Timothy Leary (1965, 1999). Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out Leary was a University Professor at Harvard who is best know for his experiments with LSD. The book is part lectures, part interviews, and part essays. Given all the media hype about Leary, i was surprised at how much common sense i encountered, and how much he speaks to learning, hope, and love.  He begins with a chapter on how to start your own religion (to invoke the rights of the first amendment in US law) with family and friends, a tribe of people living together in community with their own laws...a place where sacrament is consumed (it need not be LSD, but anything that is spiritually meaningful to the community, something that binds the community together in ceremony)...a place preferably in nature where one feels protected and nurtured.  The BIG ADVICE is to drop out of society's robot world/mind, and turn on to God/Goddess (the Spirit), nature, and the body and mind, and tune in (dropping back into socie...
Read more
Image
BODY WISDOM  Therese Bertherat (1989).  The body has its reasons: Self-awareness                                                           through conscious movement.  Berherat takes us on a personal journey in learning body wisdom /awareness using Ehrenfred's method which is radically different than the medical model/method she learned at University. The story unfolds as "sessions" of practices, and the end of the book reveals several "preliminaries" on how to cultivate body wisdom. Among the many practical lessons are:      pause after exhaling to let the body use oxygen before inhaling again--this allows the              body to rest/relax with every breath.      because all parts of the body are integrated, working with one par...
Read more