November 05, 2009
Response to Kurt
I found the Kurt audio clip to be somewhat boring and mostly uninteresting. Yes, I applaud him for using only his voice, but the finished piece couldn't hold my interest.
When I listen to music or sound in general, I look for several things. They're listed in order of what I prioritize as being the most essential for a song.
1. Arrangement - how interesting the combination of sounds is.
2. Production Quality - the literal quality of the different sound samples themselves.
3. Response - whether or not the song can generate an emotional response to give it more power or not.
4. Meaning - whether or not the song has literal meaning in the lyrics, contextual meaning when placed in certain environments or time periods, and whether these meanings can be found or felt.
I found nothing particularly interesting about the arrangement. It was the same set of uninterpretable words repeated with either a sound added or subtracted, or with a change in crecendo. There are examples of looped sounds that sound good, but this wasn't one of them sadly.
Sound quality was low, obviously, given that it was unedited and recorded without professional equipment.
I had no emotional response to it whatsoever, therefore
I looked for meaning in the song, and found none.
That being said, that's why I found the song to be uninteresting.
Posted by duo at 11:48 AM | Comments (2)
October 28, 2009
Earl Nightingale ~After Thoughts~
Despite how much of a philosophical prick I was in my last entry, I still ended up doing what was assigned to me. There's a difference between a philosophical standpoint and philosophical bastardy stubbornness. I'm going to give this 30 day optimism a shot and see whether or not I need to change my views and my approach.
To be completely honest, nothing's changed so far. I already wake up in the morning with a goal in mind. I already know what I want to do, and I let life do what it needs to do for itself -most of the time-. When there are times that I need to take control, then I take control. Like I said, the only part of the recording that I agree with is "we become what we think." I don't agree with the methods or the carefree view that we're asked to approach this assignment. I'll take advice, but whether I decide to act on it or not is my choice.
The biggest change I've experienced is that I've started to think about my goal more often than not. And rather than let things happen, I'm starting to think more about how I can guide myself better.
In the end, a general rule I apply to things like this still applies. Inspirational speeches like these apply strongest to the time and situation that they were presented in. The message aside, the validity of the message in the NOW time frame must be seriously considered. For example, if I ran around screaming 'THE WORLD IS FLAT!" then that obviously wouldn't roll around well. The fact is invalid because the time period is inapplicable.
Everything needs to be considered. Nothing can be left to "let it do it for itself." At least, that's how my world functions.
Posted by duo at 06:39 PM | Comments (2)
Earl Nightingale ~During Thoughts~
I ended up approaching the Earl Nightingale cassette with a philosophical mind set. But before I delve into that, I have a couple other things I want to mention.
Given that this is a relatively old recording, society's statistics definitely do not match up to the statistics that are stated in the tape. That being said, there is no guarantee that "those who follow" will end up failing at the 19/20 survey standard. Although his main point is valid, the counterarguments he applies are no longer necessarily applicable.
The main thing I want to address is the message itself: "We become what we think." He then says something like "don't concern yourself over how, just let it happen." Now, it's time to combine a few things together. Last night I had a philosophical discussion with a friend about optimism and pessimism, and it applies quite smoothly with this. I believe that this is too optimistic of a view. It's far too carefree and doesn't deliver to our more modern society. A view that is completely optimistic can only result in consequences that are less than the ideal optimism, and therefore you end up pessimistic about the fact that the ideal was not in fact an ideal, and all the optimism that was held up to this point is gone in an instant.
That being said, there is nothing wrong with "we become what we think." In fact, that's simply just an obvious statement. If I never thought about become an Art and Design student, I would never be here in the first place - that's obvious. There are no instructions that should accompany this fact. Whether acting on a thought is the best thing to do, or not, can only be determined by situation.
Posted by duo at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)
Earl Nightingale ~Prior Thoughts-
To be completely honest, I don't exactly remember what I was thinking about before I listened to the tape. I'm pretty sure I listened to it last Saturday evening. North Campus decided to be evil and have a power outage, so I decided to just go home for the weekend. I believe I had just finished working on my two other logos, and it was something around 9:30 PM at the time. I shoveled myself a rather large bowl filled with half peach ice cream and half coffee ice cream and started to dig around for the sound files. So let me try to emulate what I was thinking back then:
"I wonder how long these sound files are...probably 15 minutes each?"
"I wonder if this will engage me or put me to sleep...I'm generally open minded enough to consider anything, so let's see if it applies here too."
"We are what we think about...genre 'inspirational.' I guess I should expect something kind of deep."
I can't really remember anything else, so I think that's all I can say in terms of actual thoughts.
This is perhaps the first time I was about to listen to a recording of this type, by that I mean a recording of someone trying to conceive something about life in general. I kind of expected a professional sounding "I GRADUATED FROM HARVARD" voice to accompany this clip but...that isn't what I got.
I guess to summarize my overall perspective, I was expecting something that wouldn't move me that much, but at the same time I was prepared to be moved.
Posted by duo at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
