Monday, June 21, 2010

Touch at a Distance

On a RadioLab podcast on music, a psychology professor defines sound as “touch at a distance.” It strikes me that this could be a good way to define Willie Nelson’s music. Willie has an album titled “The Sound in Your Mind,” and it turns out that all sound is created by electric signals transmitted from your ear to your brain, so sound literally exists only in your mind. Sounds also literally touch bones in your ear that vibrate, and thus you can touch people through music in a physical, biochemical, electrical way. Jonah Lehrer discusses much of this in his book “Proust was a Neuroscientist.” He is also interviewed extensively on the RadioLab podcast. Willie’s music is dovetailing nicely with many of my other interests, such as William James (quoted in the epigraph of Lehrer’s book and the subject of an entire book by Jacques Barzun, which I just purchased). Willie sings about the intersection of time, mind, and sound. This trinity seems to be the source of all our woes when it comes to love. I also plan to consult Robert Sternberg’s “The Psychology of Love” as I delve deeper into Willie’s own psychology of love as expressed in his 50-year career and 100+ albums.

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