Alabama


As Ronnie Van Zandt said, “turn it up.”

Mister Young has been bringing the weight for a very long time.
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After Owlmirror’s comment [stderr] characterizing humans as “… featherless bipeds. With broad nails.” I’m visualizing music a bit oddly right now.

That’s another question: when you listen to music, what do you “see”? If it’s a piece I am familiar with a performance of, I’ll see visuals related to that (e.g.: if I listen to Beethoven’s 9th I cascade on Leni Reifenstahl’s footage of the Berlin 1944 performance) if it’s not… um. I don’t know. I think I find something to occupy my eyes with, so that I’m not distracted? Like a freeway.

Comments

  1. jonmoles says

    I find I have a number of mnemonic references to individual songs. For example, if I hear the song Shimmer by Fuel I think about driving around the West Ashley part of Charleston, SC with the window down during summer in the Hyundai Elantra I owned at the time. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea, that’s just the reference attached to that song. A number of classical pieces put an old Warner Brothers cartoon in my head, for the Barber of Seville or Ride of the Valkyries I can only see Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

  2. Ogvorbis: Swimming without a parachute. says

    I really don’t get visuals when I hear music. Instead, I get smells. Queen, for example, brings to me the smell of Testor’s Model Airplane Glue (I listened to the radio while building airplanes (and tanks, and ships, and cars, and little green men, and . . . .)). Gordon Lightfoot, for some reason, makes me remember the smell of a sweet blended Scotch (like Pinch or Chivas). No idea why.

  3. fusilier says

    Ogvorbis: Swimming without a parachute.@2

    My image of Gordon Lightfoot is him being so drunk that he kept falling off the stool he was (trying) to sit on.

    Fall of 1970

    fusilier

    James 2:24

  4. says

    jonmoles@#1:
    Ride of the Valkyries I can only see Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

    So interesting! I immediately got the reference you’re making. But for me, the valkyries always bring back the sound of choppers inbound. Always.

    This is like one of those “once you see it you can’t unsee it” visual memory tricks.

  5. says

    Reginald Selkirk@#3:
    Thank you for that. I’d somehow managed to miss a lot of Warren Zevon, and your reminding me got me into reading a couple articles about his life, on Rolling Stone’s site. Wow. Rock ‘n’ roll!