voice on skin
Recorded music has its charms; okay. But there is nothing like live music. There is something transcendent about the experience of a living, breathing musician manipulating even (especially?) the crudest instrument. There is life between the notes - an intake of breath, a smile, a dragging finger, softly tightened lips, a brow that lightly glistens in harsh light reflecting off weathered brick... locks of hair resisting an errant, trapped lick of breeze that stirs only soft lashes on eyes closed against the distraction of vision. When one of these reaches the listener, it carries a suggestion of personal presence that fortifies the music, gives it depth and breadth and its own soul.
I can find the magic even with my eyes closed. Musicians produce not only notes but also audible artifacts that betray the presence of the human body calling them forth. Scrapes, squeaks, swooshes, catches, inhalations and sighs join the music, wrap around it, and elevate it to create a rich tapestry of sound anthropomorphized that flows not only from the voice or the string or the reed but from the hands or lips that turn it into living art - hands that once grasped the finger of an awestruck new mother, lips that have brushed a lover's face, a body that has experienced and facilitated years of living.
Woven in with the rhythm and the melody are signatures of humanity. These telltale sounds bypass my ears and go straight to the center of my chest, where they fuse with the vibrations and my own pulse, creating a separate tone that resonates and hangs in the air after I expect it to fade, lifting me up by the collarbone and melding into a cocktail of endorphins upon which my heart surfs lazily... and occasionally drifts over the dam, daring me to follow it.
I can find the magic even with my eyes closed. Musicians produce not only notes but also audible artifacts that betray the presence of the human body calling them forth. Scrapes, squeaks, swooshes, catches, inhalations and sighs join the music, wrap around it, and elevate it to create a rich tapestry of sound anthropomorphized that flows not only from the voice or the string or the reed but from the hands or lips that turn it into living art - hands that once grasped the finger of an awestruck new mother, lips that have brushed a lover's face, a body that has experienced and facilitated years of living.
Woven in with the rhythm and the melody are signatures of humanity. These telltale sounds bypass my ears and go straight to the center of my chest, where they fuse with the vibrations and my own pulse, creating a separate tone that resonates and hangs in the air after I expect it to fade, lifting me up by the collarbone and melding into a cocktail of endorphins upon which my heart surfs lazily... and occasionally drifts over the dam, daring me to follow it.