It's been a while, I know (so much for a weekly thing), but I have found a small corner of my now busy university life, in between reading all 154 Shakespearean sonnets in one week (that's 22 every day- kill me now) and deeply discussing, nay sounding incredibly pretentious about ekphrasis and the very nature of art, to write my own little bit of silly waffle.
Hearing's one of those things. Without it, we struggle to hear others and be heard ourselves. With it, we sometimes hear things we don't understand, or things we don't want to hear. And that includes music.
Whether it's music we like, music we hate or even music we don't understand ( it's not English, it's not Spanish, it's Sean Paulish. That man has his own language), we react to music almost the instant we hear it.
Now, as the Sasspatch it is my duty, nay my requirement to admit that yes, anything by Aretha Franklin will crank up the sass levels, I will start to dance and sing about how much you should R.E.S.P.E.C.T/ you gotta think/ you make me feel like a natural woman etc etc. It is a natural impulse, that as soon as I hear that, it makes me feel instantly upbeat. Equally, if screamo is heard coming out of some speakers, I back away. Slowly.
Yes, I have, shall we say, er retro taste for a 20 year old. But when I hear something I like, it doesn't matter how old it is, it just makes me feel good. So, I guess the context of the time it came out or how old I am or where I heard it first doesn't really matter. Does it?
I think so. Without it, it's why when you walk past people in the street and overhear ' ...and he was trying to get out of his Miss Piggy outfit when he fell over the coffee table...' it sounds really weird (although tbh even if you had context there that would be a weird scenario). It's why when you're hanging out with people who suddenly hear 'their song' and they start crooning along to it, making faces at each other, saying 'remember that time when we... (giggles)...' and they never finish the sentence, leaving you puzzled and quite possibly left out. It's also why when you hear ' order 255, please go to section B' that all you experience is sweet, sweet relief after waiting and waiting in the Argos order queue. The context for that is all that is required for you to wait impatiently to hear that bored-as-hell female monotone.
So yes, hearing is one of the senses we prize above others. But it doesn't mean much without context. When we don't know what is going on, how can we process what we hear? On its own, we can't always figure it out. In experiencing the world, as in talking pretentiously in my seminars, it all requires a bit of listening and a bit of context.
