Word Culture
HDCS6 who-is-at jetson.uh.edu
Wed, 18 Oct 1995 10:11:39 -0500 (CDT)
Peter's comment on Miles Davis reminded me of a conversation I
had with somebody getting his doctorate in music when CD technology
first came out. He had said that what CD technology offered you
was a chance to here the pauses and the silences in music. Then
he played Beethoven's 5th for me, and after what was supposed to
be an incredibly dramatic pause he jumped from his chair and
shouted, "You see, you see, a whole nother world for listening
to music outside of the concert hall." I remember shrugging my
shoulders and saying I didn't hear nothing. This degenerated
for a while into a "Who's on first" rountine. Finally, exasperated
with me he threw me out of his room, and suggested that I never buy
a CD player because the technology was wasted on me. I think he
also mentioned something about my musical appreciation being somewhere
at the level of the Playskool play back recorder.
By the way, if anybody is interested, one of the major themes of the
novel _The Chose_ by Chaim Potok is the relative power of silence and
words. Whether silence is a purer, more moral form of communication
than words.
Michael Glassman
University of Houston