AW: loop religion

[Michael Peters <mpeters@csi.com>]

jmw wrote,

> Actually, I'm not kidding. I've done a fair amount of meditation and I've
> noticed very similar states of conscienceness after intense listening to
> looped material, which is why I made the connection.

ok, this might be debatable but there is certainly a 
spiritual/religious/zen potential in a practice of listening, to loops or 
just to whatever is there. To get the complete idea, I'd recommend the 
books of looper Pauline Oliveros who spent years and years researching 
this. The basic idea is of course that sound is always in the here and 
now. 
Listening *completely* to whatever is there in this very moment - 
breathing, cars, birds - without judging, naming, wanting or rejecting can 
open up something new. My experience is that in this position, listening 
to 
music rather than to natural sounds is more difficult - music tends to 
transport emotions which are often complex to deal with, and our noisy 
brains are complex enough and difficult to handle already. Of course, ba  
sically in a way there is no difference between music and environmental 
sounds, as John Cage pointed out.


*       Michael Peters:         mpeters@csi.com
*       escape veloopity:               electronic guitar loop music
*       hop - fractals in motion:       strange attractors
*       http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Mpeters