In Defense of Listening
[I hesitate to expose the listener to the following opinionated snippets from Brinkerhoff's ravings, but I suppose the reader always has the luxury of turning off the light and going to bed. --The Producer]
A Night at the Stereo: TV on, a phone at the ear, the radio blasting, book poised for action, free hand randomly dancing, aphasias, attention deficits, dyslexias at full blast, wits halved in ten directions, and all we really focus on is the passing face of a girl in a coke ad. As the poet Yeats said,
How can I, that girl standing there, my attention fixNever mind fixing attention. Faced with such girls, how can you even concentrate on what they are saying, all blowing blond shag cut and glistening lips, silent movies. No wonder we close our eyes when we kiss. The senses bow down in homage to the greater sensation. Even to absorb beautiful music, we close our eyes, to funnel unconsciously more neurons to the ears.
On Russian or on Spanish politics?
The senses rob each other. It's like trying to run the dishwasher, the dryer, and the blowdryer at the same time. Breakers trip. Sight distracts from sound. Only the blind can smell. Police use blind people to track criminals. Tiresias, the great prophet, was blind. And mystics of course, famed for their sense of smell, attuned by years of asceticism, of not looking at the world.
The eyes are great beacons, billboards for the soul, that promote us, saucer-eyed kittens that we are. But they are also sponges, which soak up constant data, impressions which, as we know about video on computer drives, use up infinite amounts of brain power and computer memory for the most simple of images.
Almost no classical music videos provide any sense of catharsis, perhaps because it is in the nature of the camera to linger on surfaces. The eyes deafen the ears; sight overrides sound. Images provide senses without sensibilities, pictures without philosophies, words without thoughts. As Claudius said in Hamlet:
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.Watching pianists strain at the keys or violinists sway around the bow does nothing for the ears, although it titillates the eyes. Who was the saint who, when someone admired her eyes, plucked one out and sent it to him? Only one, selfishly. Lear and Oedipus can only see properly when blinded. However, closing the eyes should suffice for non-martyrdom-related purposes such as listening to records.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
[And this is why, I suppose, Brinkerhoff refused to let us videotape him. He felt no one would listen to him if they could see him, whereas I, as a producer, feel the opposite, that no one will listen to you if they can't see you. Brinkerhoff was not a man who would cater to a word like "marketing." --The Producer]