What I Don't Know
I imagine since birth, I've always taken a very methodical approach to just about everything. In learning new operas, I always searched out the "best" recording, pulled out the libretto and/or score and studied it faithfully. As my repertoire spread I always looked for some authoritative source to give me the full scoop and the work and what I should find in it.
Perhaps it is advancing time, but I now find that approach limiting. Especially as my interest in new genres increases, I find the whole studious way of going about it detracts from and discourages, rather than enhances my enjoyment.
Case in point: I have had a middling interest in jazz for many years, but it's one that I have never able to fully indulge. I think I was intimidated by the breadth of the available literature and my total ignorance of the seminal figures in it. As a result I was never able to fully get my head around it.
More recently I've availed myself of some online resources. These lacks liner notes or other sign posts that I would normally use to immerse myself in the music. Instead, I've loaded it onto my iPod and have taken to listening to it, initiated, in my car or when jogging.
And instead of inhibiting my enjoyment I'm finding two things. First is that I'm listening in a much more active way. I'm searching out the signposts that mean something to me and not the preconceptions of a critic. Secondly is that I'm enjoying the music in a much less studied way and therefore new way. It's a different, not necessarily better path to finding how the music moves me. To be moved be it, is really my ultimate goal.
Perhaps it is advancing time, but I now find that approach limiting. Especially as my interest in new genres increases, I find the whole studious way of going about it detracts from and discourages, rather than enhances my enjoyment.
Case in point: I have had a middling interest in jazz for many years, but it's one that I have never able to fully indulge. I think I was intimidated by the breadth of the available literature and my total ignorance of the seminal figures in it. As a result I was never able to fully get my head around it.
More recently I've availed myself of some online resources. These lacks liner notes or other sign posts that I would normally use to immerse myself in the music. Instead, I've loaded it onto my iPod and have taken to listening to it, initiated, in my car or when jogging.
And instead of inhibiting my enjoyment I'm finding two things. First is that I'm listening in a much more active way. I'm searching out the signposts that mean something to me and not the preconceptions of a critic. Secondly is that I'm enjoying the music in a much less studied way and therefore new way. It's a different, not necessarily better path to finding how the music moves me. To be moved be it, is really my ultimate goal.
posted by Rich Russell at
12:17 PM
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