Are you a foodie?

Tyler Cowen notices that once we listened to the Beatles, but now we eat beatles!

Music made us get up and dance, or occasionally throw a rock. Food, especially if combined with wine, encourages a state of satiety and repose. Most conversation about food is studiously nonpolitical and removed from controversial social issues. There is a layer of left-wing critique of food corporations, genetic modification and food-associated pollution, but its impact on broader American culture has been marginal. These days, it could be said that food is the opiate of the educated classes. Anecdotally, I observe that the contemporary preoccupation with a particular kind of food fanciness and diversity has penetrated black communities less, and those are also the groups where music might in some cases remain politically important.

I don't know about that last sentence; rap music is every bit as big among young whites as it is among young blacks!

I like to think music might win back its social and intellectual resonance, but in the meantime please pass me the green mango chili fish sauce.

Give me my cell phone. I want to listen to Peter, Paul and Mary.

Stress and music

Ann Voskamp is thinking about stress...and music.

Music is made in stress. A string has to be stressed, it has to be pulled tight, to make music.
Music is made in stress. A string has to be stressed, it has to be pulled tight, to make music.
The string has to be moved from it’s comfortable, resting position if it’s ever going to be make music.

The bending of the string, this induces stress. And as the string bends, as the string arches in stress, and then releases, it vibrates — and there is the practiced offering.

This one clear note, high and long.
When you’re like a guitar — empty and stretched taut and strings stressed tight — you’re the perfect space to be made a song.

In stress, there can be song.

The days we feel stressed, the days we feel empty — these are our Guitar Days. These are the days that could make music.

The resonance of sound is always in the surrender.

Read more here.

Four entertainers having fun

Thanks to Ann Voskamp

Tchaikovsky on glass

Thanks to Ann Voskamp for finding and sharing this gem.