Saturdays–and some Sundays–have usually have been set aside for music as an interlude from all things data, information technology, and my work in general. Admittedly, blogging has suffered because of the demands of work and, you know, having a life, especially with family. But flying back from a series of important meetings that will, no doubt, make up for the lack of blogging in the near future, I settled in finally to listen to Ms. Welch’s latest.
As a fan from the beginning, I have not been impressed with the early singles that were released from her album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. My reaction to the title song, using a single syllable sound, was “meh.” Same for the song “What Kind of Man,” which apparently grasping for some kind of significance, I viewed as inarticulate at best and largely muddled. The message in this case, at least for me, didn’t save the medium.
So I kicked back on the plane after another 12 hour (or so) day and was intent on not giving up on her artistry. So I listened to the album mostly with eyes closed, but with occasional forays into checking out the beautiful moonlit dome of the sky while traveling over the eastern seaboard with the glittering lights of the houses and towns 35,000 feet below. (A series of “Supermoon” events are happening). About four songs in I found myself taken in by what can only be described as another strong song cycle that possesses more subtlety and maturity than the bang-on pyrotechnics of Ceremonials.
The red-headed Celtic Goddess can still drive a tune and a theme that, having experienced one of her concerts in the desert of New Mexico under a cloudless night sky with the expanse of the Milky Way overhead, can become both transcendent and almost spooky, especially as her acolytes dance and sway in the trance state induced by her music. Thus, I have come to realize that releasing any of her songs on their own from this album is largely a mistake because they cannot hold up as “singles” in the American tradition of Tin Pan Alley–nor even as prog rock. Listening to the entire album from start to finish gives you the perspective from which you need to assess its artistic merit.
For me, her lyrics and themes hark back and forth across the dimension of human experience, tying them together and, thus, fusing time in the process, opening up pathways in the mind to an almost elemental suggestion of the essence of existence which is communicated through the beat and expanse of the music.
Therefore, rather than a sample from Youtube, which I usually post at this point, I instead strongly recommend that you give the album a listen. It’ll keep the band in business making more beautiful music as well.
Before I be accused by some readers of going off the deep end in exhaustion or overstatement in describing the effect of Ms. Welch’s music on me, I would caution that there is a scientific basis for it. Many other writers and artists have noted the power of music without the need for other stimuli to have this same effect on them, as documented by the recently passed neuroscientist Oliver Sacks.
Proust used music to delve into his inner consciousness to inform his writings. Tolstoy was so taken by music that he was careful about when and what it was to which he listened since when he immersed himself in it he felt himself to be taken to an altered mental state. Clinical experience document that many Parkinson’s and Tourette’s patients are affected–and sometimes coerced–by the power of music into involuntary states. On the darker side of human experience, it is no coincidence that music is used by oppressive regimes and militaries to coerce, and sometimes manipulate, prisoners and captives. On the positive side in my own experience, I was able to come to a mathematical solution to a problem in one afternoon by immersing myself fully in John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.”
Aside from being an aural experience that stimulates neurobiological systems, underlying music is mathematics, and underlying the mathematics are digital packets of information. We live in a digital world. (And–and yes–Madonna is a digital girl). No doubt the larger implications of this view are somewhat controversial (though compelling) in the scientific community with the questions surrounding it under the discipline of digital physics.
But if we view music as information (which at many levels it is) and our minds as the decoders, then the images and states of consciousness that we enter are implicit in the message, with bias introduced by our conscious minds in attempting to provide both structure and coherence. It is the same with any data. We can listen to a single song, but find ourselves placing undue emphasis on just one small aspect of the whole, missing out on what is significant.
Our own digital systems approaches are often similar. When we concentrate on a sliver of information we bias our perspectives. We see this all the time in business systems and project management. Sometimes you just have to listen to the whole album, or step up to bigger data.
Note: The post has been edited from the original to correct grammatical errors and for clarity.
Life, Project Management, and Everything 