Feeling concerted
May. 19th, 2024 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
landingtreeI went to the orchestra with my flatmates tonight. In the last while, my experience of music has changed in small but expansive ways, so I'm noting it down. (This might be Jack's Psychology Hour part one of two, since this morning I wrote a whole lot of notes about my experience of coming up with stories, and then I went to the concert and had some vivid ideas to put in stories: music has a lot to do with narrative for me, though this post's about the bit that doesn't). My context for classical music is background knowledge and comfort; not what I think of as a lot of front-of-mind knowledge, but I was taken to classical concerts all my childhood, and it was most of the music that played in my houses back then.
The first half of the concert was Leonie Holmes' I watched a shadow, which has been blotted out of my mind by the pieces that followed it except for the image of a giant shivering bronze object stranger than, but similar to, an egg; and then Strauss's Don Quixote, which I loved. By the start of the second half of the concert I was tired, and then it was Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony. At first it seemed to consist of big, simple sections – not exactly shallow, but interested in making surfaces, much less roiling with textures than the pieces in the first half. Like bits of the Sydney Opera House, or the side of an apple. Even the roiling bits were sort of the minimum necessary roil, like a step down into a muddy ditch and a step up again.
I thought I might have used up all my caring-about-music for the evening (these concerts seem long! It's like they serve you a feast, give you fifteen minutes, and then sit you down at a second feast). But taking off my glasses and pressing my hands to my eyes created an area of deeper darkness, which was a stage on which the music could happen. Not visually. I often see images while listening to music, but I wasn't seeing anything at that point. But the darkness and the combination of posture-change and things accompanying it made a place from which I was getting the exhilaration the music seemed to want. I straightened up and the music was distanced again (though still perfectly fine); I pressed my fingers to my eyes and the emotions came back. Then after a while this stopped being relevant and I sat in a different way.
I couldn't have remembered it all, but this kind of thing was going on throughout the evening.
Twice in the past, I've had what I think of as gestalt experiences of movies and music while in not-entirely-legal altered states. What's new to me, as of this year or maybe last year, is that the music can alter my state in the same way. It isn't consistent (today was a weird, high-energy day, and it's not like chocolate and caffeine aren't substances) but it's happened three times now, enough that I know it doesn't take any very specific alignment of circumstances. What I mean by gestalt is that I'll have experiences like taking a sip of sweet/sour wine at a point when that seems appropriate to the music, and that'll be part of how I'm experiencing the music: it worked fine, in this case, but it would've been even more appropriate to have a still sweeter drink like a fruit juice. I get these experiences of analogy between different senses. Since I'm a human listening from a too-small chair rather than a shapeshifter listening from a large couch, it's generally a sort of compromise, with some movements relegated to the mind: I know when I'd have flung my hands directly forward if that wouldn't've whacked someone in the head. But I do the smallest possible dances with the tension in my hands. Position of eyebrows. Posture. Also the passing thought about whether my flatmate's having a good time or if it interests them or worsens their experience that my finger is tapping.
(I didn't wear a mask during this concert. I think of myself as very lax about this, drifting with the majority. I don't know if I'd manage a whole symphony concert with any effective mask I've yet tried; the experience would become 'mask mask mask mask.' I think I could do half of one okay though).
The fundamental difference between concert music now and a few years ago for me – which I think is a result of doing partly meditation-based therapy throughout 2022 – seems to be a practiced acceptance of whatever's going on, a widening of the tolerances of what the experience can include. Right at the start of the concert those tolerances are narrow because I haven't sunk into it yet. In the middle of the concert, I can fold things like coughing or even a phone going off three rows back into the experience, just like I can fold in a sip of wine: maybe not ideal, but a working compromise. This is in contrast with the exclusive kind of focus, i.e. the way, as a child, I used to fall so deeply into reading that someone could say my name right next to me three times and I wouldn't hear. I don't know when I lost that capacity, but I like this new one and I hope it sticks around.
Does this relate to your experiences of music? I really like it, and it gives me an "Oh, this is why the institution of concerts exists!" feeling, but I'm not sure what's going on in the other heads in the audience. Certainly my three flatmates, though we all seemed to have a lovely time in each others' company, seemed to experience the music in a milder way and do not report any shivering bronze objects stranger than eggs.
The first half of the concert was Leonie Holmes' I watched a shadow, which has been blotted out of my mind by the pieces that followed it except for the image of a giant shivering bronze object stranger than, but similar to, an egg; and then Strauss's Don Quixote, which I loved. By the start of the second half of the concert I was tired, and then it was Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony. At first it seemed to consist of big, simple sections – not exactly shallow, but interested in making surfaces, much less roiling with textures than the pieces in the first half. Like bits of the Sydney Opera House, or the side of an apple. Even the roiling bits were sort of the minimum necessary roil, like a step down into a muddy ditch and a step up again.
I thought I might have used up all my caring-about-music for the evening (these concerts seem long! It's like they serve you a feast, give you fifteen minutes, and then sit you down at a second feast). But taking off my glasses and pressing my hands to my eyes created an area of deeper darkness, which was a stage on which the music could happen. Not visually. I often see images while listening to music, but I wasn't seeing anything at that point. But the darkness and the combination of posture-change and things accompanying it made a place from which I was getting the exhilaration the music seemed to want. I straightened up and the music was distanced again (though still perfectly fine); I pressed my fingers to my eyes and the emotions came back. Then after a while this stopped being relevant and I sat in a different way.
I couldn't have remembered it all, but this kind of thing was going on throughout the evening.
Twice in the past, I've had what I think of as gestalt experiences of movies and music while in not-entirely-legal altered states. What's new to me, as of this year or maybe last year, is that the music can alter my state in the same way. It isn't consistent (today was a weird, high-energy day, and it's not like chocolate and caffeine aren't substances) but it's happened three times now, enough that I know it doesn't take any very specific alignment of circumstances. What I mean by gestalt is that I'll have experiences like taking a sip of sweet/sour wine at a point when that seems appropriate to the music, and that'll be part of how I'm experiencing the music: it worked fine, in this case, but it would've been even more appropriate to have a still sweeter drink like a fruit juice. I get these experiences of analogy between different senses. Since I'm a human listening from a too-small chair rather than a shapeshifter listening from a large couch, it's generally a sort of compromise, with some movements relegated to the mind: I know when I'd have flung my hands directly forward if that wouldn't've whacked someone in the head. But I do the smallest possible dances with the tension in my hands. Position of eyebrows. Posture. Also the passing thought about whether my flatmate's having a good time or if it interests them or worsens their experience that my finger is tapping.
(I didn't wear a mask during this concert. I think of myself as very lax about this, drifting with the majority. I don't know if I'd manage a whole symphony concert with any effective mask I've yet tried; the experience would become 'mask mask mask mask.' I think I could do half of one okay though).
The fundamental difference between concert music now and a few years ago for me – which I think is a result of doing partly meditation-based therapy throughout 2022 – seems to be a practiced acceptance of whatever's going on, a widening of the tolerances of what the experience can include. Right at the start of the concert those tolerances are narrow because I haven't sunk into it yet. In the middle of the concert, I can fold things like coughing or even a phone going off three rows back into the experience, just like I can fold in a sip of wine: maybe not ideal, but a working compromise. This is in contrast with the exclusive kind of focus, i.e. the way, as a child, I used to fall so deeply into reading that someone could say my name right next to me three times and I wouldn't hear. I don't know when I lost that capacity, but I like this new one and I hope it sticks around.
Does this relate to your experiences of music? I really like it, and it gives me an "Oh, this is why the institution of concerts exists!" feeling, but I'm not sure what's going on in the other heads in the audience. Certainly my three flatmates, though we all seemed to have a lovely time in each others' company, seemed to experience the music in a milder way and do not report any shivering bronze objects stranger than eggs.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-18 08:58 pm (UTC)I usually think of music as a soundtrack to the story level of mind, but it's actually more kinetic than that. Hadn't consciously connected the two until I read this post, Huh.
Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2024-05-19 04:39 am (UTC)In my case this experience is pointing the other way and making me think I'd really enjoy dance, if I ever hauled my ass to a class consistently.