Late night listening

[Serial_Apologist]

Thank you.

This is a very interesting area which I go back to examine periodically. I think I would begin by asking you what the feeling of radio togetherness entails. Do you ever connect it with, say, the people in the same road as you? Does it have a visual dimension? Or is it the opposite? I would say that it is easier to find a stronger conceptual sense of togetherness when people are only heard rather than heard and seen when what they look like can often emphasise the differences between people rather than the similarities.

So it isn't just in opposition to a notion of enforced togetherness although I know what you mean, especially in regard to the scenarios you mention. Of course, two way verbal communication comes into this too. If you are listening to someone on the radio, you have no idea whether on being alongside them at a concert they would be monosyllable towards you or worse. And so does editing in broadcasts which is to say that the best of them cut out all the things about the presenter you don't want to know like what they think of Mr Corbyn or the fact that they have just been to the doctors about a bunion or that they would never have been so successful financially if it hadn't been for their family.

Then we can travel to a range of other areas. In my younger days, I would say that voices on the radio either as they are or via musicianship did not immediately link up with people in my mind. Yes, I knew they were people or that people were involved but what overrode it was a receptiveness to that sound that was no different to a receptiveness to the sounds of the birds or the waves of the sea. There was on occasion some excitement at the prospect of seeing someone "in the flesh" but it was all about the idea that they could be a full rounded person. When I got there, I was generally disappointed that they weren't all just sound, not that it stopped me going through that daft process time and again.

But there is another angle. I sometimes listen to a station which is very blokey. OK - it is Talksport. There are times when I find what is being discussed funny and it is almost as if I am involved. There is a sense of presence and I can only assume it must be drawing on my experiences as a student and beyond. It's odd because I go out and it's not there in real life. It isn't even there in the interactions of other people that I hear. It is almost as if what became natural is now only found in a somewhat rare broadcasting device.

The beauty of sound occurs in the moment, specific, but paradoxically it is also timeless.

If it's music I feel I am one of a mass of people listening at the same time as me, I guess it's what I feel to be the essence of the music communicated by the composer or jazz band or whatever that we are sharing that provides the feeling of togetherness, even though that togetherness is disparate over a large part of the globe and each and every one of us is taking something different from the music. Often I associate a particular work with a location, which, obviously, cannot be another listener's specific association unless by dint of some extraordinary coincidence, so I am identifying (with) a shared idea of place, even though where that place is will be different for each of us. If it is a piece which blew me away the first time I heard it, I will be trying to imagine the impact it is having on other listeners, and anticipating that particular passage that blew my mind: will it now be affecting them in the same way? With discussion programmes or panel shows like Any Questions the feeling of being part of it comes from a sense that everyone is thinking about the subjects being brought up, and that whatever our differences may be, at least this is happening. I'm not thinking about or wishing I could be having a conversation with my anonymous listening companions, though it is a pleasant surprise if I subsequently come across commentary on forums such as this: a recent example being the audience and co-panellists' treatment of Diane Abbott on Any Questions under its new host.

[Lat-Literal]

If it's music I feel I am one of a mass of people listening at the same time as me, I guess it's what I feel to be the essence of the music communicated by the composer or jazz band or whatever that we are sharing that provides the feeling of togetherness, even though that togetherness is disparate over a large part of the globe and each and every one of us is taking something different from the music. Often I associate a particular work with a location, which, obviously, cannot be another listener's specific association unless by dint of some extraordinary coincidence, so I am identifying (with) a shared idea of place, even though where that place is will be different for each of us. If it is a piece which blew me away the first time I heard it, I will be trying to imagine the impact it is having on other listeners, and anticipating that particular passage that blew my mind: will it now be affecting them in the same way? With discussion programmes or panel shows like Any Questions the feeling of being part of it comes from a sense that everyone is thinking about the subjects being brought up, and that whatever our differences may be, at least this is happening. I'm not thinking about or wishing I could be having a conversation with my anonymous listening companions, though it is a pleasant surprise if I subsequently come across commentary on forums such as this: a recent example being the audience and co-panellists' treatment of Diane Abbott on Any Questions under its new host.

Yes, I understand. But are you seeing pictures of these people or are they concepts of people in your own head similar to the featureless concept of, say, congregation? Mine are largely concepts. I would have had an inability for many decades even to think about putting pictures into these contexts of either people or external environments. I would have been all ears - and mind. Even today, I think of Newcastle or Ipswich as ideas rather than their buildings or their roads or their people. It came as a surprise to me when I realised I could think of them more as they are if I decided to but it didn't/doesn't occur naturally. You close your eyes in live music. I did too but not so much these days, I think, not that I attend many things.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, I understand. But are you seeing pictures of these people or are they concepts of people in your own head similar to the featureless concept of, say, congregation? Mine are largely concepts. I would have had an inability for many decades even to think about putting pictures into these contexts of either people or external environments. I would have been all ears - and mind. Even today, I think of Newcastle or Ipswich as ideas rather than their buildings or their roads or their people. It came as a surprise to me when I realised I could think of them more as they are if I decided to but it didn't/doesn't occur naturally. You close your eyes in live music. I did too but not so much these days, I think, not that I attend many things.

Two different issues there, I would think. Firstly, I'm not picturing those I imagine to be sharing my lstening experience: it's more a feeling that something that is collectively gained through the conjoint experience, albeit ineluctably, rather than just a solitary being (me) going through my Miles Davis recordings for the umpteenth time, is a comfort. It's enough to feel "Cor! Just think what the effect that programme would have had on making the world a better place were enough people listening to it! And thank goodness such a programme is still being made!" Secondly there are intrinsic limits, it seems to me, on how deeply the "reality" (for want of a better word) of a place, say, can be apperceived conceptually, as opposed to directly experienced by being there. It may seem unfortunate that reality is restricted by the limitations of our perceptual apparatus - were we to go on that, the sun would move around earth, not the other way around - and that we have to depend on the conceptual route science has provided for understandings of this kind. We can't see subatomic particles or micro-organisms without the aid of microsopy; but if language can be thought of as one expression of nature among many, rather than artificially separated from it, as our Judaeo-Christian heritage has taught us to believe, it may well be that evolution has provided us not only with just enough access to phenomena that matter for survival through our sensory responses, but also - with curiosity an intrinsic part of our mix - the mental and physical wherewithal to devise means to look closer. The conceptual - which operates in relation to "what is" in a manner analogous to a menu in relation to a meal - can then interweave its specialism of expertise in calibration with "the wisdom of the senses".

[greenilex]

Does the experience in any way depend on your ability to react publicly?

I think a great many people like the”contact” option with magazine phone-in programmes.

[Serial_Apologist]

Does the experience in any way depend on your ability to react publicly?

I think a great many people like the”contact” option with magazine phone-in programmes.

Really good question! I think the issue of "visibility" has moved on through history, from times when all eyes and ears were on kings, queens, emperors, lords and priests to give the lead, and with the coming of "democracy" varies in importance from era to constantly changing era. The 1960s promulgated loud, extrovert personalities - people of many walks of life who sought to crash through the common ethos of passivity in the social, artistic, musical and political realms. Then for a long time the new ideas about feminism and personal freedom sort of seeped into lifestyles, mediating via consumerism into an ethos mistakenly taken for individualism, which really amounted to new forms of conformism, so that what had been seen as pathbreaking and charismatic became driven by commercial profitability, resulting in the marginalisation of those who felt themselves at odds with the new vision of self-promotion as the primary goal of human life. Today more than ever, as "ordinary" people worldwide are made surplus to requirements by resource depletion and labour displacement by IT and automation, the notion that we are just not good enough if we can't keep up is maintained by flinging unattainable images at us, whether it is of sports personalities, business tycoons, celebrities, and even lottery winners - softening us up for tomorrow, when it will be dictators - again. The appeal of phone-ins, Twitter etc is to boulster the illusion of personal empowerment.

[Bella Kemp]

So many fascinating observations. I am especially grateful to those who recommended The Goldberg Variations played by Beatrice Rana: what a wonderful interpretation - a new cd is on its way to the Kemp household! - and I am now also exploring Taneyev. Wasn't Sofia Tolstoy enamoured of him at one time? I believe he used to pop round to the Tolstoys and play their piano. I like to think that one of the pieces he played might have been this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XOX...t_radio=1&t=81.
I don't think I've ever heard anything quite like it!

[Edgy 2]

So many fascinating observations. I am especially grateful to those who recommended The Goldberg Variations played by Beatrice Rana: what a wonderful interpretation - a new cd is on its way to the Kemp household! - and I am now also exploring Taneyev. Wasn't Sofia Tolstoy enamoured of him at one time? I believe he used to pop round to the Tolstoys and play their piano. I like to think that one of the pieces he played might have been this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XOX...t_radio=1&t=81.
I don't think I've ever heard anything quite like it!

I love Taneyev's music,I recommend the Symphonies and String Quartets on Naxos and the wonderful Piano Quintet with a stellar cast on DG.
Yes he was a frequent visitor at the Tolstoy house,here he is beating Leo at chess.

[Bella Kemp]

Thank you Edgy. And what a glorious photograph!

[cloughie]

I love Taneyev's music,I recommend the Symphonies and String Quartets on Naxos and the wonderful Piano Quintet with a stellar cast on DG.
Yes he was a frequent visitor at the Tolstoy house,here he is beating Leo at chess.

Giving him a bit of a Tan eyev ing. Leo doesn't look too happy!

[Serial_Apologist]

Giving him a bit of a Tan eyev ing. Leo doesn't look too happy!

Nah - just ckecking, mate!

[cloughie]

Nah - just ckecking, mate!

I still think it wasn't a good knight for him!

[Edgy 2]

Groan !