Friday, August 6, 2010

The World in Six Songs by Daniel J. Levitin

I used to work as a manager at a movie theatre when I first got out of the Air Force. We played our own music while people were filing in to find their seats. At the later shows, I would play some pretty wild stuff! I would go up to the projection booth and peer out into the audience. If anyone was getting into the music, I would know they were "cool" (I was new in town and desperate to meet people)! It worked, too, I met my friend, Lori, that way. She couldn't believe she was hearing Sisters of Mercy at a movie theatre in Iowa!
Music is a huge part of my life. More than likely, it is a huge part of everyone's life. I never really stopped to think why that is, I just accepted and enjoyed it as a fact of life!
The World in Six Songs - How the Musical Brain Created Nature explains a lot of the "why that is". I think I would seriously enjoy taking one of Mr. Levitin's classes, but I have to be honest, it took me over 3 weeks to read this damn book and I found my mind wandering a lot! While there is a great deal of fascinating information on these pages, and my copy is super fat with dog-eared pages, it is really just a paperback text book and I have never been good at studying on my own.
The book is extremely interesting and well-written, but I think I would rather just sit down and have a conversation with the author. Especially since he seems to have conversations with some pretty amazing people (Sting, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon)!!

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