The value of music in a human being’s life is described in Ralph Ellison’s essay “Living with Music.” He goes through the features it provides, such as providing individuals with knowledge, discipline, and purpose, as well as assisting us in developing our cultural and social characters. After reading it, I realized that everyone has a visual image of themselves that they convey in a variety of ways, such as through music, which may be a piece of our character, or through the collection of habits and beliefs that describe us. It also can generate tremendous physical impacts as well as deep and powerful emotions in us. Millions of people including me can’t live without music because it helps us to relax and strengthen our health. So, the majority of us always listening to music.
The writer Oliver Sacks explores the strange connection between music and the mind in his essay explaining why music may inspire and motivate individuals to extremes of feeling. Cicoria, a person who had experienced after being struck by a powerful thunderstorm unintentionally. He had a strange experience as a result of this. He had fully healed after several months, he immediately felt compelled to perform piano music, something he had never considered before. According to numerous scientific studies, as a result of their inability to focus on other things, individuals who have been in a tragic accident tend to become more attentive in the musical area. I noticed a fascinating connection between his music and his rapidly changing personal character. As a result, I realized that Cicoria was on the lookout for something. As a result, he chose to pursue learning piano in the heat of passion. I am certain that music mostly has positive impacts on a person’s mind. Most of the paragraphs were encouraging, which made me happy to see individuals enjoying music
Category Archives: Blog Post #1
Blog 1
In “Living with Music,” Ralph Ellison reflects on the significance of music in defining his life through shaping their unique cultural and social identity. His experiences with music affect his attitude towards the various social spaces he lives in. Later in life, when he again met up with music, he had different experiences from his childhood music experiences. Ellison had a neighbor living on top of his apartment who practiced music. The neighbor’s notes were always off, and he bought a speaker system to cover and contradict her music. After moving to his new apartment, he realized that he missed the music he heard in his old apartment. Therefore, based on his experiences, music is a reminder of the past and future aspirations, as well as helping one move past their problems. According to Ellison, music is a source of inspiration for the troubled.
Oliver Sacks’s “A Bolt from the Blue” highlights the association between music and psychology. An example is a lighting-struck doctor who then had a passion for music. Dr. Cicoria, who was not a music fan pre-accident, suddenly developed a passion for music in his post-accident life. Another example is Salimah, who had a brain tumor. After the brain tumor was removed, she had a changed personality. Therefore, from these examples, it can be resolved that musical identity formations are related to brain science to a significant degree. In the case of Cicoria, the lightning strike might have open his brain to his passion and hidden music talent. Therefore, musical identity is hidden in the bran, and it may take an incident to experience their positive musical identity formations.
Blog post #1 – Mariah
After reading Living with Music by Ralph Ellison and A Bolt from the Blue by Oliver Sack, I determined that music can actually have a life-changing effect on you. Starting with Living in Music started with music being spoken about negatively and referred to as simply being nothing more than just noise that distracted him from his work. In the essay, later, he discusses his own experience with music about learning to play the horn and the embarrassment associated with it and swearing off using the horn. Showing Ellison’s experience with music was associated with fear/trauma, causing him to stay away from music. The real turning point is when he begins to have this battle with his upstairs neighbor to cancel out her bad singing by bringing out an old radio of his. Eventually, it becomes frequent, and he starts developing a love for music again after hearing Kathleen Ferrier causing him to buy a whole new stereo just for music. He praises the singer for her courage, that she still kept up with her music even though her singing was terrible. He even states that he begins to use music less as a weapon to cancel her out and show more appreciation as a form of art. Looking at A Bolt from the Blue, music could be used as a symbol of being reborn where Tony found himself in a near-death experience and pretty started devoting his whole life to music. You can say he discusses how he would play before work and then play right after work, and even then, with the divorce from his wife continued to play and eventually attempting to make a career out of it. In a way, I feel like Tony’s obsession with music was also a way to show appreciation for having a second chance at life, causing him to spend so much time on it.
Blog Post 1
For many people, listening to music can be a very spiritual experience. In Ellison’s case, it took him some time for him to develop and appreciation towards music. Some people do not feel an initial connection or interest in music, but with time and more exposure to different types of music, they are able to adapt to the new changes and develop some sort of connection to it. It is almost as though their brains can become convinced to like new music.
Troy’s case goes to show that music can be extremely soothing and can be almost therapeutic for some people. After experiencing the extremely traumatic event of getting struck by lightning and nearly dying, Troy has gone through a lot of trauma and pain. It was through this experience that troy was later on able to discover his obsession with piano music. The piano music moves him in ways other things cannot. The music brings him ease and makes him feel good. These feelings that piano music brings about in Troy are feelings that many people feel when they listen to good music or their favorite type of music. It releases the feel-good hormones, and it makes people feel alive.
Blog Post #1
In Ellison’s “Living with Music”, he freely defined all the noises he was surrounded by as music, even the disruptive or meaningless sounds. For example, although he dismisses the sounds of “howling cats and barking dogs”, he still included them as a musical occurrence in his life. From this, music has a tremendous influence on his life. The shouts of the drunkard commanded his writer’s block and he discordantly felt the songs of the singer rattle his psyche. His later passion for music was life changing and consuming. Music was a formative part of his identity and affected the way he experienced the world.
In Sack’s “A Bolt from the Blue”, the discussion was about sudden musicophilia, which generally occurred following involuntary changes to the brain. I found it fascinating that all of the case studies were people who had little to no interest in music prior to the event, but eagerly engaged and created music after. The shifts in their identity makes me wonder what the past them would have thought of the change: would they be appreciative, or dislike who they have become? Although they may not have considered all sound to be music like Ellison, music was also a part of their identity. In the case presented by Rohrer, Smith, and Warren, the woman’s relationship with music before the sudden musicophilia was of avoidance, such as not listening to music or closing the door to block out music. In conclusion, music can effect one’s self-identity regardless of personal appreciation or aversion.
Kevin Herrera
In reading Ralph Ellison’s “Living with Music” and Oliver Sacks’s “A Bolt from the Blue,” I have encountered several extreme examples of people defining themselves through music. In Ralph Ellison’s “Living with Music,” he talks about how, “In those day it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.” This shows how people look at music in all different ways, some just look at it as something to listen to and some people look at is as something more, more than noise. Some people can’t live without music because it helps in several different way, it helps them express their feelings, express their emotions, it helps them relieve stress, and it could also help them bring up their mood, most of the time to create happiness in their thoughts and heart. So,depending on our perception of music, it shows how we listen to it and why we listen to it.
In Oliver Sacks’s “A Bolt from the Blue,” Dr. Tony Cicoria, after being struck by lightning, having a near death experience, and an out of body experience, literally seeing his own body when his consiousness came out of his body, he suddenly had a huge desire to listen to piano music and/or classical music in general. This is what amazed him and has also amazed me but what’s also interesting is that when he was young, he only had a few piano lessons but had no real interest. He says that, “He did not have a piano in his house. What music he did listen to tended to be rock music.” After this incident, he developed a love for piano/classical music, almost like an addiction to it. He states that he, “would get up at four in the morning and play till I went to work, and when I got home from work I was at the piano all evening.” He thinks that he had been saved for a special purpose, that he was allowed to survive because of the music. This could also most likely be due to something happening in the brain.
Blog Post 1 – Joselyne Ponce
In the readings we see different perspectives of how music (stimuli) affects two people and their psyche. In Ellison’s experience we see that he doesn’t have a positive connection with music based on events that happened in his childhood and because of his living situation. As a writer, having noisy neighbors stimulated him in a way that he did not enjoy. Over time, Ellison experiences a different connection voluntarily with his neighbor that changes how he feels about the noise and his perception of music. This is a good example of how one can manipulate and change how we feel about things that are stimulating us and rewire ourselves to enjoy them. In Ellison’s case it was music.
In contrast, Tony’s experience in Sack’s essay was not voluntary, we see how Tony gets struck by lightning and has a near death experience. This causes his brain to over stimulate certain areas and even causes him temporary damage. With this temporary damage, Tony develops an obsession with piano music. So much so that it changes how he feels about music, and it becomes a big part of his life and changes his perception of life. An interesting fact is that music releases dopamine. Dopamine has been proven to calm anxiety and ease pain. There might be a reason why Tony developed an addiction to music, could it have been his own body seeking comfort to soothe something traumatic that happened to him? I think each text proves how music can affect everyone’s psyche differently and there’s so many factors that can come into play to explain why it happens.
Blog Post #1
Both Ellison and Sacks illustrated in their essays how music directly and indirectly affect the characters of a person. Sacks presented extremes cases of people without any particular interest in music developed an intense desire to play or compose music after an accident. The question being made is how those people got that music and artistic affination? It looks like their brain was rewire and they developed new talents and most important the compulsive desire to perform music. There is not scientific explanation for their personality behaviors, we only must understand that maybe some people have “hiding” talents or desires that are release under physiological changes like being struck lighting. Like musicians that are “born’ with skills to perform any instrument, the persons in Sack’s essay were born again and acquired those skills.
In the other hand the experience of Ellison is the results of his external environment in contrast to Sacks’s essay where the people experience an internal stimulus from physiological changes. Ellison had negative experience with music because of the proximity of the music to his apartment. If his living space was a detached house in the suburbs, his musical experience would had been different. The over stimulation of music caused a minor change in his brain too, not at the same level of the people who had suffered brain injuries, but a similar affiliation to music was emerged.
Lyza Cotrich:Blog post #1
In both readings “Living with music” by Ralph Ellison’s and “A Bolt from the Blue” by Oliver Sacks both use examples in their writing on how people define themselves through music. Starting with the story “A Bolt from the blued” by Oliver Sacks one of the main characters is Cicoria. Cicoria had almost had a near death experience and suddenly had a desire to listen to more music. On page 5 Sacks says “there was this insatiable desire to listen to piano music. This was completely out of keep-ing with anything in his past (Sacks 5). He never really had any interest in music. He had dreams about music and he just had this need to wake up and start writing what he was dreaming of. That is how he wrote his songs. As he continued to focus on music he said music has made him more spiritual. Which kind of seems like he’s come to a peaceful state with himself and his environment. So music is starting to shape him and define him as a person, show who he really is. In the story “Living with Music” by Ralph Ellison he talks about all the different types of music he encounters in his life and the music he plays. All the music that he is around shapes him as a person and you can see how interesting and important music is to him. He talks about many different types of music and singers he enjoyed hearing and talks about his life personally, an example would be him talking about the instruments he plays. Even when he just talks about his neighbor and how he did not enjoy her singing. When explaining music he goes very in depth and you can see how music plays a big role in his life and always has. As an artist you can see he defines himself as a very dedicated artist or someone who puts music as his first priority.
Assignment: Blog Post #1
In reading Ralph Ellison’s “Living with Music” and Oliver Sacks’s “A Bolt from the Blue,” you have encountered several extreme examples of people defining themselves through music. Analyze one or two of these examples and try to come up with general ideas about the relationship between music and how one defines themselves. Here are some questions to consider (These are just meant to get your thoughts moving. You don’t need to answer all or any.): How do race and music help Ellison define himself as an artist in his essay? How does Ellison describe how music affects his attitudes toward spaces–such as his apartment, his building, and New York City. According to Oliver Sacks’s examples, to what degree are musical identity formations related to brain science? What do these examples illustrate about the relationship between psychology and music? (around 250 words)
