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Listening without interpretation...is it impossible?

I came across an interesting quotation about texts which applies, it seems, to music listening and audio:

"We never really confront audio immediately, in all its freshness as a thing-in-itself. Rather, audio comes before us as the always-already-heard; we apprehend it through sedimented layers of previous interpretations or --if the audio is brand new -- through the sedimented listening habits and categories developed by those interpretive traditions." [Paraphrased from Frederic Jameson in The Political Unconscious (1981)]

If this application to audio is accurate, it indicates that what we hear and how we listen are profoundly influenced by how we talk about it, argue about it, interpret it. The ways we talk about it and who we talk about it with change the very ways we “confront” or encounter it the next time.

This would apply not only to the macro impressions about entire songs or even passages of songs, but even the minute ways we describe the details. (Using “etched” to describe the “highs” or “boomy” to describe the “lows,” and so on.) It also would set aside, as obtuse, the repeated suggestion that one can ignore what people say and “just get back to listening for oneself.” There is no such way of listening. Yes, one can move away from the computer, for days or weeks or more, but the notion that one can move one’s “own” mind away from the “sedimented layer of previous interpretations” is, well impossible.

I’m not sure, personally, where I fall on this interesting question. Just wanted to share it.

128x128hilde45
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,190 posts
 

Gestalt psychology is only a fragment of the Goethean method who anticipate it completely...

I doubt reading your sarcastic posts about me for the last 7 years, without ever any arguments, i doubt that your amount of good will is enough to understand anything... Certainly you miss Geoffkait who you mocked in the same TROLLiNG way for all the years i was here with you childesque "tin foil hat" insult reflex....I must be your new scapegoat obsession...Old age create habit... And your sarcastic habit reflect the beginning of a health problem perhaps : how old are you?

Acting like a children or a troll make it difficult for me to guess it...

The only excuse i can give you is that this last post is only an inoffensive sarcasm, and my strong reaction come from the annoying habit you have to troll my posts...

 I apologize but forget me and look for an another windmill...

 

Anyway if you want to understand the relation of part and whole in a living perceptive experience try this:

http://www.adonispress.org/threefoldness.php

But the book is too big for alzheimer sufferer who use sarcasm against other all the time or for very old man ensconced in their own "opinion"....

 

More on the Gestalt principles of perception, please.

thecarpathian's avatar
thecarpathian
4,644 posts
 

Check out the term "transderivational search"

Oh, great.

Which restroom will they be using?

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,190 posts
 

I would  wish i was not so late to wish you the best for this year...

I was, and i apologize with my deepest respect and thoughts...

 

«I dont use my urinary tract when i spoke about philosophy»- Groucho Marx🤓

Oh, great.

Which restroom will they be using?

hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
4,997 posts
 

It is unlikely that your mind will let you see this

What is unlikely is that you have any idea what my mind will let me see. So let me invite you to speak just for yourself. But really, @berner99 I apologize for an  answer that was over your head.

Still, let 1000 flowers bloom.

Maybe my answer will help others and maybe yours will help some, too.

Take care.

thecarpathian's avatar
thecarpathian
4,644 posts
 

@mahgister ,

Bonne Annee, Mon Ami!

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