Dear Non-human Intelligence:
I'm not sure you're really out there, but if you are, and by some chance you read this blog, I'd just like to say hello by offering up with a sampling of some of my favourite music. I think that if you've watched us for any period of time, you'll have learned that music is our greatest redeeming virtue, and the highest form of communication we have (although we usually don't think of it that way). It allows us to express our individualism within the context of a shared experience. As for composers and musicians, well... the best of them are the best of us.
Dave Brubeck Quartet - Take Five
Reynaldo Hahn - A Chloris (as sung by Kristina Bitenc)
Mark Hollis - The Colour of Spring
Because my best work in film and television has been about music, I hope you'll enjoy listening to the music played in this documentary I wrote and directed in 2002, about cellist Denise Djokic, and pianist David Jalbert. All of the pieces they play are wonderful, but I especially love the Bach at 26 minutes into the film, and some of their commentary at the end about music, and classical music in particular.
Speaking of Johann Sebastian Bach, the following segment segment from The Classical Now, a television series I produced and directed in 2003 and 2004, features Canadian pianist Derek Yaple-Schobert playing Bach's Tocatta in E Minor.
Just a thought.
I hope you enjoyed those. There are so many others that I could have chosen (you might want to add me as a Facebook friend, so you can follow along with my "song du jour" choices), but this evening these five, plus the documentary, struck me as music you might enjoy.
Who knows? If you are "out there" (or "in here", as the case may be), perhaps you've heard them already. Indeed, perhaps you have something to do with the creation of music, at least in some cases, by way of communicating with us, through the composer.
Just a thought.
All the best,
Paul Kimball
P.S. I've always thought that there is just as much being said in the spaces between the notes as there is in the notes themselves, but that's a discussion for another time.
2 comments:
Good call, Paul... in that, just maybe, the best way to communicate with "non-human intelligence" is through some faculty of thought... intelligence itself... which may not be, ultimately, species-based... but the one "force" that crosses all boundaries. Music might be the single best representation of communicable intelligence in that, regardless of the fact that we can physically, corporeally create and listen to it, it also finds its source and replication in the mind as a code. Evidence of this are all those "tunes going through our heads" which can be often annoying, but, in a sense prove that we can "think" (and rethink) music!
Best,
Dia
Hi Dia,
I definitely think that there might be something about music that is universal, and that might hold certain keys (no pun intended) in terms of communication with non-human intelligences. It's something Greg, Mac and I have discussed over the years - the idea of how to transcend the limits imposed on our thoughts by the need to communicate verbally. At its apex, I think music provides that outlet.
Paul
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