Shortly after graduating from high school, just before a summer of working as a cemetery groundskeeper, I did a stint in the local chicken slaughterhouse (it paid more than double minimum wage...and that was about the only redeeming feature of the job). My first day was ten hours long on a Sunday, working alone in the packing warehouse, filling and stacking boxes of crushed ice and fresh chicken. By the end of the day, I was thoroughly exhausted. I dragged myself home, lay semi-comatose on the couch, and watched whatever happened to be on TV - in this case, Purple Rain.
I thought is was one of the most brilliant movies I had ever seen.
Fast forward a year, and I watched the movie again.
I was completely aghast. How could I have liked this movie? Morris Day was entertaining and the music had its moments, but otherwise, I found it to be quite a tooth-gritter.
Any musician will tell you that there is an ideal state of mind for musical performance - as there is for simply listening to music. There are also a few simple things that one can do to grow closer to that ideal state of mind. There's good reason, for example, that no musician would prefer to perform under house lighting (usually flourescents). Anything in such light usually appears banal, flat and uninteresting...but a few coloured spotlights on a performer against a dark background? The imagination of performer and listener come to life - and both are instantly in a more suggestible state. This is why a band like Pink Floyd routinely paid millions of dollars for state-of-the-art stage lighting, and why Hitler prefered to have his big nazi rallies at night, under spotlights: a suggestible state is very condusive to musical appreciation, ghost stories at a campfire, or political indoctrination. Perhaps they're not such different mental processes. I'm guessing a black expanse of background beckons the imagination to 'fill it in' with whatever one can conjure - but that's pure conjecture on my part. Curiously, being at the height of one's mental acuity doesn't seem to be the ideal state in which to interpret music, almost as though the conscious, analytical part of the mind must be powered down in order for the imaginative, freely interpretive part to hold sway.
I'm guessing that this is why I enjoyed Purple Rain so much when I was almost exhausted to unconsciousness, and hated it when I had my brain back. Of course, expectations may have played some role as well, but I doubt the most decisive one. The best musicians can ease past all that conscious interference naturally (and a few, not so naturally - Charlie Parker, for example, had quite a monkey on his back) and perhaps even consistently. The rest of us have our good nights and bad nights. Perhaps this gives music a similar allure to gambling - you just never know when the big artistic pay-out will happen, but it's fun enough to keep trying...provided it doesn't entail watching Purple Rain repeatedly....
I thought is was one of the most brilliant movies I had ever seen.
Fast forward a year, and I watched the movie again.
I was completely aghast. How could I have liked this movie? Morris Day was entertaining and the music had its moments, but otherwise, I found it to be quite a tooth-gritter.
Any musician will tell you that there is an ideal state of mind for musical performance - as there is for simply listening to music. There are also a few simple things that one can do to grow closer to that ideal state of mind. There's good reason, for example, that no musician would prefer to perform under house lighting (usually flourescents). Anything in such light usually appears banal, flat and uninteresting...but a few coloured spotlights on a performer against a dark background? The imagination of performer and listener come to life - and both are instantly in a more suggestible state. This is why a band like Pink Floyd routinely paid millions of dollars for state-of-the-art stage lighting, and why Hitler prefered to have his big nazi rallies at night, under spotlights: a suggestible state is very condusive to musical appreciation, ghost stories at a campfire, or political indoctrination. Perhaps they're not such different mental processes. I'm guessing a black expanse of background beckons the imagination to 'fill it in' with whatever one can conjure - but that's pure conjecture on my part. Curiously, being at the height of one's mental acuity doesn't seem to be the ideal state in which to interpret music, almost as though the conscious, analytical part of the mind must be powered down in order for the imaginative, freely interpretive part to hold sway.
I'm guessing that this is why I enjoyed Purple Rain so much when I was almost exhausted to unconsciousness, and hated it when I had my brain back. Of course, expectations may have played some role as well, but I doubt the most decisive one. The best musicians can ease past all that conscious interference naturally (and a few, not so naturally - Charlie Parker, for example, had quite a monkey on his back) and perhaps even consistently. The rest of us have our good nights and bad nights. Perhaps this gives music a similar allure to gambling - you just never know when the big artistic pay-out will happen, but it's fun enough to keep trying...provided it doesn't entail watching Purple Rain repeatedly....