Week 41 - PANDEM-A-PALOOZA continues with Ellie's unique take on music

Edited BY


G P Kennedy


Ellie - Milan, Italy

 

 Let me just start this story with the acknowledgment that my relationship with music and sound is a little bit different from what is the widely accepted as the most widespread one. 

 

 First off, it's an exclusive relationship for me.


When I listen to music, I do just that. It's not a soundtrack to life as it happens.


Part of the reason is that biking has made me extremely intolerant to people going about their day with earbuds in. 

 





 I am convinced that the necessity to listen to something as background noise is disrespectful.


Disrespectful both to the music and to the things that are happening while it is being listened to. 

 

 It's also dangerous when you share the sidewalk or the crosswalk with others.


Another important reason is that I have been trying to practice deep listening, a full immersion experience of sound in which I try to focus on perception. 

 

 This means for me that I don't listen to music for ambiance or mood.


Happy song - with these caveats, my happy place, sound-wise, is Keith Jarret's Koln Concert. It's considered the most dramatic, unsettling piece of music, but I take it as an enlightened key moment of revelation. And that is happiness through its acceptance of the presence.


 


 

Sad song - Ennio Morricone died in 2020.


While I have always listened to his music as a source of introspection and sought devastation, his death made me reach into the depths of sadness with his soundtracks.


Especially the theme of Once Upon a Time in the West. I challenge you to listen to it with a straight heart.


 


I have to dance when I hear...that has been Claudio Baglioni's, Piccolo Grande Amore.


It's a sentimental classic, but it has been a sincere one just because I sang it at the last karaoke before the pandemic, at the New Year's party of 2020.

 

Most listened to of 2020 - Silence, I am serious. I was completely happy with the lack of pressure to listen to for a while. 

 

 I am convinced that we need more silence in our lives, just like we need more darkness to counteract the light pollution in cities. 

 

 Thank you for the silence, 2020!



 

I couldn't have made it through 2020 without listening to...Va pensiero in Verdi's Nabucco. It's not just me who has found inspiration, encouragement, and faith in the future in this aria. 

 

 Ever since its creation in the 19th-century liberation movement in Italy, it has been a signpost of collective hope.


I admit to listening to it in my darkest moments and by doing that, 

 

 I feel I joined many others who found themselves in a much more desperate situation. I recommend it for the rest of 2021 to everyone.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 44 - Mixed messages lead to protests in Turkey

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Gul- Aegean Coast, Turkey  The weather was icy cold last week, when I said I can’t take another day, suddenly that feeling of spring was in the air.   According to the Turkish folk calendar, the first Cemre - imagine a meteor fireball passing by up in the sky, warming the air - fell on Feb 19 and 20. There are two more yet to fall, one on Feb 26 and 27 and the last two in March – also will lead to the New Year Nevruz (Nowruz, Iranian).    They say the first Cemre always falls to the air, the second to the water, and the third to the earth.  Nowadays, because of warmer weather, we are able to have coffee in our garden with our neighbors and have a chat. Otherwise, we were overwhelmed with loneliness.  POLITICAL CRAZINESS  Our ordinary lives can be boring but daily politics is the opposite, there was a controversial event almost every day this week.   This country will make all of us mentally sick. It is ...
Read more

Week 49 - Simon says, 'Count your blessings my fellow Aussies'

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Simon - Perth, WA   Hi everyone, hope all is well wherever you are.  So here we are at the end of March in Western Australia, which means over 12 months of the Pandemic.   Across all of the country, the vaccines are being slowly rolled out but we are not hitting our intended targets.   This seems to be a combination of lack of supply and the doses being given by GP’s rather than at vaccination centers. I guess the only thing that stops this from being a real concern is the size of our case numbers.   The vast majority of our small number of cases is from returned overseas travelers who are put in quarantine anyway.   This week sees a small outbreak in Queensland with some community transmission. This has led to a snap three-day lockdown to try and contain it and perform contact tracing.  Going forward it looks like this will happen fairly frequently. We have demonstrated that these short and sharp lockdowns seem...
Read more

Week 15 - Wednesday in Milan explores the 'new normal' for Ellie

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Ellie - Milan, Italy    “How are y'all doing?” a friend from Texas asked me recently. I am happy to report that the contagion rate in Italy have been mostly down. Daily rates of new infections have been around 150 for the country.    I have the feeling, though, that this is due not only to scared people who mostly stick to their masks and distancing, but of the possibility to do things outdoors, which is what helps with holding new infections down. There are many unwelcome signs for change, though. For example, hope for getting rid of plastics, and its dispersal in the environment, is definitely given up.    Now that all coffee shops, company cafeterias and restaurants that hope to have clients indoors are required to outfit their spaces with distancing partitions, plastic has drastically increased. But it has also started causing some awkward moments.    I met with a friend for a coffee recently, our first get together after...
Read more