Found myself with quite a bit to think about today concerning the minutiae of work. That's the problem with a welcome break, like this one for CNY: you get a bit too much time to think. Anyway, by the early afternoon I was finding it difficult to focus with one too many little thoughts whirling around my brainpan. So I decided to calm things down by bunging on Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians for a bit of guaranteed hypnotic calming.
The odd thing was that it took me a good few minutes into the piece to find the calm I was looking for. The opening segment in which Reich runs through the various keys he'll return to in more extended form later felt like an odd kind of imposition at first. It was as if I didn't want the stillness demanded by the music and sat feeling like I should be doing something. Only gradually did I make myself accept that I was doing something and that something was listening.
Mind you, once I'd been sucked in I couldn't have got out even if I wanted to. And I definitely didn't want to.
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