Wired has a fascinating interview with Oliver Sacks about music. I particularly enjoyed this question from Steve Silberman about the joys of combining a good melody with drugs:
Wired: You write that there was a time in med school when you took a lot of amphetamines. What's the most vivid experience of music you ever had on drugs?
Sacks: Hume wondered whether one can imagine a color that one has never encountered. One day in 1964, I constructed a sort of pharmacological mountain, and at its peak, I said, "I want to see indigo, now!" As if thrown by a paintbrush, a huge, trembling drop of purest indigo appeared on the wall -- the color of heaven. For months after that, I kept looking for that color. It was like the lost chord.
Then I went to a concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the first half, they played the Monteverdi Vespers, and I was transported. I felt a river of music 400 years long running from Monteverdi's mind into mine. Wandering around during the interval, I saw some lapis lazuli snuffboxes that were that same wonderful indigo, and I thought, "Good, the color exists in the external world." But in the second half I got restless, and when I saw the snuffboxes again, they were no longer indigo -- they were blue, mauve, pink. I've never seen that color since.It took a mountain of amphetamine, mescaline, and cannabis to launch me into that space. But Monteverdi did it too.
Personally, my two favorite albums for intoxication (of the lysergic, THC or alcoholic variety) are Willie Nelson's Stardust and Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. But perhaps I should try Monteverdi.
You can check out Sacks' iPod playlist here. For the best profile of Sacks, check out Steve Silberman's Wired profile from 2002. And check out my own article on Sacks and Musicophilia in the latest issue of Seed.
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Thanks so much, Jonah. I *adored* your Sacks piece in Seed -- which was exqusitely written and tenderly and honestly observed -- and can't wait to spread the link when it goes online.
I especially appreciated your link to Sacks' annotated iPod list, which I think passed relatively unnoticed because of Wired.com's layout alas. But I am working my way through that list, learning about music I've never heard being mostly a jazz guy -- it's marvelous.
And yes, here's to the combination of cannabis and "Astral Weeks."
2 words: Dark Star.
I hear you, Sven. I always thought it was a tribute to Sacks' percipience that even though he knew nothing about the Dead, and doesn't even listen to rock and roll, he was able to communicate the feeling of a show in "The Last Hippie" very accurately. (His only error was in believing that "Tobacco Road" was a Dead song, but that's more than excusable.)
How come (seriously) a piece of music that makes one person ecstactic, leaves another person cold? What makes music beautiful and moving? Is there anything in the music, that is quantifiable and analyzable, or is it all just our mental wiring and previous experience?
I have often wondered about that too. I mean, I can't imagine anyone from any culture hearing Joni Mitchell's song "Blue" and feeling that it's anything but sad and melancholy, even if they didn't speak English and had never heard of Joni. But I wonder a lot about the emotional coloration of chords across various cultures (don't the Germans have a relevant term here, "klangfarben"? Maybe that means something else.)
That's one reason why I occasionally listen to music in alternate tuning systems, such as the gorgeous music in "just intonation" by the great 20th century composer Lou Harrison, who was very influenced by the music of other cultures, such as Balinese gamelan. Harrison's just-intonation melodies are extremely emotional and passionate, but because they unfold in an alternate and unfamiliar chordal universe, they're "de-familiarized" -- like hearing sad or joyous songs from another planet. Not all of his music is in just intonation, but the album "Music for Guitar and Percussion," played by John Schneider, is exquisite.
Anyway, yes, I think about this stuff a lot.
Steve
I absolutely agree about Astral Weeks.
"Beside You" is an unparalleled journey of a song.