What Are You Listening To?

[Artyczar]

I don't know if you can actually "grow out if it," but I actually had synesthesia when I was a kid. All letters and numbers not only had different distinct colors, but they also had personalities and genders. Some had more than one gender, or more than one gender than another, or no gender at all, which I find interesting nowadays that these things are more accepted than when I was a child. But as a child, gender wasn't associated with sex (because it isn't). Anyway, that's about all I'll say about that, but the color thing was definitely a thing. I still associate the colors but don't "see" the colors anymore so much.

 

[brianvds]

Alexander Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist. Scriabin was influenced early in his life by the works of Frédéric Chopin, composing works that were highly tonal and using musical forms common to Chopin. Later in his career, independently of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed a substantially atonal and dissonant musical system, which was inspired, in part, by his personal mystical beliefs.
Scriabin was influenced by synesthesia, and associated colors with the various tones of his atonal scale.

His son Julian was also a composer. The lad drowned aged eleven, but his few surviving compositions are amazingly mature.

He is a composer, like Charles-Valentin Alkan, who has become something of a cult figure within the of classical music listeners. Richard Wagner might also be deemed a cult figure, but there is little doubt that he deserves the adulation as one of the towering figures of music... or the arts as a whole. (I added that just for you, Brian )

Yeah well, the Nazis were part of the Wagner cult, so there (reductio art Hitlerum).

ps... This collection is a 5 disc set some 6 1/2 hours long... so I don't think I'll be listening to all of it in a single sitting.

And after that, the complete symphonies of Mahler.

 

[stlukesguild]

Arty... one of the elements that fascinated me about the poet Baudelaire was his emphasis on multiple senses... and often the blurring of the senses. I'll try to post an example soon. With regard to certain things being more accepted or recognized today... that's true of many things in Education (and elsewhere). I was born a "leftie" but our schooling force me to adapt to the dominant use of the right hand. It gave me certain advantages for a while. As a teen I could bat in baseball right or left almost equally well. It was the same in fights. In the only real fight I got in during high-school, I completely cleaned the other guy's clock with an unexpected left punch.

 

[stlukesguild]

And after that, the complete symphonies of Mahler.

I was thinking Bach's complete cantatas.

 

[Artyczar]

Arty... one of the elements that fascinated me about the poet Baudelaire was his emphasis on multiple senses... and often the blurring of the senses. I'll try to post an example soon. With regard to certain things being more accepted or recognized today... that's true of many things in Education (and elsewhere). I was born a "leftie" but our schooling force me to adapt to the dominant use of the right hand. It gave me certain advantages for a while. As a teen I could bat in baseball right or left almost equally well. It was the same in fights. In the only real fight I got in during high-school, I completely cleaned the other guy's clock with an unexpected left punch.

My father, born before the Depression was beat for being a leftie, but remained one anyway. I've heard a lot of stories. My brother, also a leftie, seemed to make him a better guitar player playing as a right-handed player. I was born a leftie, but an accident in that hand trained me to start using my right and that became my dominant hand (by far), but I hold my pen/pencil like a leftie--smudging my handwriting into a complete smeary mess as I go along the page.

 

[stlukesguild]

My father, born before the Depression was beat for being a leftie, but remained one anyway.

My school didn't go that far.

We had chairs like these that made it incredibly awkward to write left-handed. The scissors didn't work well for lefties. Sports equipment... like baseball gloves... for lefties were non-existent. And there was pressure placed on us to use the "right" (aka "proper") hand. Our parents would also be pressured to keep on us concerning the use of the right hand. American schools were designed according to the so-called "factory model". The real purpose when public schools were instituted at a national level was to churn out good factory workers. We were expected to follow the cues from bells, line up in straight lines, and use the proper hand. Factory machines are designed for the right-handed employee who makes up the majority of the population, and if you couldn't fit the mold, you wouldn't make a good factory worker.

I was born a leftie, but an accident in that hand trained me to start using my right and that became my dominant hand...

One of my professors in art school was a talented cellist prior to WWII. When the Germans and Russians invaded Poland he was placed in a Soviet Gulag. While there, he was discovered making satirical drawings of Stalin and so they smashed his arm. He was 16 at the time. He had to teach himself to use his other arm. When the Germans invaded Russia, the Western allies refused to offer any aid until the Polish prisoners held by the Soviets were released. Poland was then wholly occupied by the Germans and so the former prisoners were on their own. My teacher moved south through Turkey and onto Egypt and North Africa where he eventually found transport to England and then the US. Obviously, he became a visual artist... a painter. He painted the most detailed geometric abstractions using his one good hand:

I hold my pen/pencil like a leftie--smudging my handwriting into a complete smeary mess as I go along the page.

You need to learn from Leonardo and just write everything backwards.

 

[Artyczar]

I remember seeing something about Leonardo drawing everything mirror-image-wise from the inside to the outside with both hands (if that makes sense), hard to describe that one.

 

[stlukesguild]

 

[stlukesguild]

 

[stlukesguild]

Big Brother:

Your name is big brother
You say that you're watching me on the tele,
Seeing me go nowhere,
Your name is big brother,
You say that you're tired of me protesting,
Children dying everyday,
My name is nobody
But I can't wait to see your face inside my door ooh

Your name is big brother
You say that you got me all in your notebook,
Writing it down everyday,
Your name is I'll see ya,
I'll change if you vote me in as a pres,
The President of your soul
I live in the ghetto,
You just come to visit me 'round election time

I live in the ghetto,
Someday I will move on my feet to the other side,

My name is secluded, we live in a house the size of a matchbox,
Roaches live with us, wall to wall

You've killed all our leaders,
I don't even have to do nothin' to you,
You'll cause your own country to fall

Stevie Wonder- Big Brother

As with Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? it is depressing that certain songs from this album is still so relevant 50 years later.

 

[stlukesguild]

 

[brianvds]

And after that, the complete symphonies of Mahler.

I was thinking Bach's complete cantatas.

I can think of worse ways to spend a few hours, er, days, er, weeks...

 

[brianvds]

We had chairs like these that made it incredibly awkward to write left-handed. The scissors didn't work well for lefties. Sports equipment... like baseball gloves... for lefties were non-existent. And there was pressure placed on us to use the "right" (aka "proper") hand. Our parents would also be pressured to keep on us concerning the use of the right hand. American schools were designed according to the so-called "factory model". The real purpose when public schools were instituted at a national level was to churn out good factory workers. We were expected to follow the cues from bells, line up in straight lines, and use the proper hand. Factory machines are designed for the right-handed employee who makes up the majority of the population, and if you couldn't fit the mold, you wouldn't make a good factory worker.

I grew up in apartheid South Africa. No pressure on lefties to conform to a right-handed world, but definitely very much a factory model, except the point was not so much to turn out factory workers as white nationalists.

As you allude to, I wonder whether pressure to write right-handed might have been because in the days before ballpoint pens, writing left-handed might be more awkward, and cause ink smears. On the other hand, Arabic script goes from right to left, and they never seemed to have that problem.

 

[Claude J Greengrass]

 

[Artyczar]

Talking Book is one of my favorite albums. ❤

 

[stlukesguild]

My wife was into all the Motown and other Black R&B artists of the 60's & 70s well before me. When she worked as a nurse, all the African-American nurses and aids used to comment on how she knew the music better than they did. She could name the songs after just a few notes. I had Talking Book and a slew of other Stevie Wonder LPs well before I met her although most of my record collection was made up of white Rock/Pop and Country. Well... there was Michael and Prince... and Charlie Pride! My musical tastes became more multi-cultural after I was into my 20s and I started to explore Jazz, Blues, R&B, Persian, Indian, and Japanese music. Although one of my best friends (and long-time studio mates) is Chinese, I never got into Chinese music. But then again, to be fair, neither did he.

 

[stlukesguild]

 

[stlukesguild]

This disc features the cello playing of Ophélie Gaillard... along with several brilliant vocalists, including Sandrine Piau and the counter-tenor, Christophe Dumaux and the Ensemble Pulcinella.

 

[musket]

My father, born before the Depression was beat for being a leftie, but remained one anyway. I've heard a lot of stories. My brother, also a leftie, seemed to make him a better guitar player playing as a right-handed player. I was born a leftie, but an accident in that hand trained me to start using my right and that became my dominant hand (by far), but I hold my pen/pencil like a leftie--smudging my handwriting into a complete smeary mess as I go along the page.

One of the best guitarists around here is a lefty, but his dad, who was a jazz saxophone player, made him learn to play righty so he wouldn't end up paying more for lefty guitars and losing his shirt on resale (turning a righty guitar around, as Hendrix did, has its limitations... Jimi got away with it because he was Jimi).

 

[brianvds]

View attachment 1320

Perhaps not my kind of music, but I love the cover design.