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| From | "Sager, Greg" <greg.sager@bankofamerica.com> |
| Subject | Re: Favorite All-Time Videos |
| Date | Fri, 16 May 2003 13:58:20 -0500 |
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> Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 23:03:42 -0500
> From: "Michael Bennett" <mrhonorama@hotmail.com>
> To: audities@smoe.org
> Subject: Re: Favorite All-Time Videos
> Message-ID: <Law14-F88F705NbiJZe00024991@hotmail.com>
>
> Hornby then states that the book would not be an endless recitation of
> songs
> and how they relate to specific memories. He posits that merely
> associating
> with songs with personal experiences in some way diminishes the impact of
> the songs, which should stand on their own. To put it another way, the
> song
> should create its own personal experience for the listener, the resonance
> coming from the words, tune and performance -- these are what make a song
> truly special, not the fact it was playing at some specific time.
>
I don't agree with Hornby, for two reasons. One is that his argument
is too sharply categorical; it reduces musical appreciation to an either/or
proposition, and I think that the human reaction to music is too complex and
multi-faceted to bear the idea that aesthetic or technical appreciation and
a personalized associative reaction are mutually exclusive and antagonistic
(with the former reaction being the superior one). I realize that Hornby
isn't exactly saying that music should be listened to with the head and not
with the heart, but he comes close enough to it that it sets off some
warning bells for me.
The second reason why I don't buy into his thesis that "merely
associating songs with personal experiences in some way diminishes the
impact of the song" is because it negates the fullness of human identity and
experience. I don't think that there's anything "mere" about that at all. We
aren't automatons; the fact that music is tied to, and triggers, memory and
creativity in the listener isn't something that should be dismissed as
harming in some way our capacity to appreciate music. Songs stand on their
own as independent objects by dint of the fact that they exist in a public
medium, and in order to discuss them in a forum like this we naturally have
to be able to detach the song from our own experiences on an intellectual
level. But I don't accept the proposition that subjective memories tied to
the song somehow block us from doing so. Hornby isn't giving the listener
enough credit. I can dispassionately address the song "Walk Away Renee" on
many levels; the melody, the harmony, the arrangement, the instrumentation,
the background detail on why Michael Brown wrote the song, etc. But on
another level, which is mine and mine alone, the song will always be tied to
a certain coed named Renee who had me stewing in my own testosterone while I
was in college. That memory, no less than the considerably accomplished
aesthetic values of the song, makes "Walk Away Renee" truly special to me
... and I trust that others bring similar but distinct personal baggage of
their own to that song in ways that make it truly special for them as well.
> In saying that, I don't think he means that it is inappropriate to
> associate
> songs with experiences (which I don't think is the same as associating
> music
> with era -- not entirely so).
>
Agreed. A lot of songs -- "Walk Away Renee" being only one example
-- have a time-specific memory for me that isn't tied to the actual era in
which the song was released.
> What he means is that great music is truly
> appreciated for what it is.
>
And my contention is that great music can only be truly appreciated
for what it is when one considers the *full* capacity with which music can
affect and move people.
> This is why I find complaints that videos take
> away from imgination to be fairly unavailing -- if the song resonates with
>
> me, it will hit me as a purely aural experience that punches whatever
> emotions or feelings that make me want to hear again and keep it in my
> head.
>
But what I'm saying is, again, that the human reaction to music is
too complex and multi-faceted to be reduced to formulae. People react to
music differently, and individuals react differently to different songs.
Some songs strike me on one level as aesthetically well-conceived, but
produce no emotional reaction in me. Then there's songs to which I react in
the visceral manner that you describe above. Still other songs, for whatever
reason (serotonin uptake levels in the prefrontal lobe? phase of the moon?
the whims of Euterpe, the Muse of music?), create an associative memory in
me. And, as is patently obvious, not everyone reacts on the same level to
the same song.
Likewise, some people feel the tidal pull of a common image (i.e., a
music video) more strongly than others. And I strenuously object to making
judgments upon anyone's capacity for imagination based upon how strong that
tidal pull is for them. If Drew or Josh or anybody else finds their mental
image of a song being swamped by a video (especially one playing in heavy
rotation on a music video channel), it's hardly an indictment of their own
capacity for imagination. The most you can say about it is that such a
person has thin walls when it comes to blocking out the outside world. But a
lot of creative types have those thin walls -- I've known songwriters who've
fled the room with their hands over their ears when someone turns on a
radio, because they're worried that it'll wipe out whatever new song is
germinating in their heads. And plenty of novelists and poets have developed
what looks to others like agoraphobia, because they consider popular culture
to be a contaminant to their creativity rather than an inspiration.
>
> Again, I can't completely divorce a powerful video image from a song --
> for example, it's hard for me not see David Bowie and the cardboard
> bulldozer when I hear "Ashes to Ashes" -- but I think that's because that
> particular visual representation capture something about the song and the
> artist (other examples -- Devo or Madness, artists whose videos were
> effective because they so thoroughly reflected their respective artistic
> sensibilities).
>
I'm not sure that the accuracy with which a video captures something
about the song or the artist is all that clear a denominator of the video's
power and/or effectiveness. Any number of videos by eighties hair-metal
bands featured glowering guys with teased hair who lip-synced and waved
guitars around while chicks in spandex or lingerie cavorted on a
smoke-filled set. It's safe to say that each of these bands thus "thoroughly
reflected their respective artistic sensibilities." It's also safe to say
that those videos were dreck.
I think that the ubiquity and frequency with which the video appears
has as much to do with its impact upon the viewer as anything else. There's
no substitute for repetition when it comes to visual images.
Gregory Sager
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