- The Song You Didn’t Notice — You hear fifty songs. Forty-nine go by. One suddenly catches you and changes your internal state. What happened? Why that song, at that moment?
- Who Is Listening? — A companion to “Who Is Walking?” Music is playing. The body hears it, emotions react, memories appear—but is anybody actually listening?
- The Three-Second Experiment — In the middle of any ordinary activity, become completely present for three seconds. No meditation, no preparation. Then ask: What was different?
- Background Music for the Human Machine — We constantly provide a soundtrack for ourselves. Does the music merely accompany the machine—or can it interrupt it?
- You Don’t Have to Like the Music — This one could be especially useful for KGOD/Norton Street. Transformational use of music may have almost nothing to do with musical taste. A song you dislike might actually be more useful because it won’t let you comfortably disappear into it.
- What Exactly Are You Doing on Zoom? — Everybody thinks they’re attending a Zoom meeting. But you’ve actually got fifty little laboratories sitting in fifty different rooms. Put on one piece of music and something different happens in every laboratory.
- The DJ as Experimental Scientist — This one fits today. The DJ isn’t merely entertaining the room. He’s introducing one stimulus after another and watching what happens. Change rhythm, language, voice, emotional temperature, familiarity—and the room itself becomes the instrument.
I particularly like The DJ as Experimental Scientist for this morning. It connects directly to what we’re doing, but underneath it is the whole teaching: we aren’t necessarily playing these songs because they’re good songs. We’re playing them to find out what they do. Continue reading
