Tickling the Ivories

Lately my musical preferences have shifted towards solo piano. The wi-fi in my campground is too slow for internet radio, so I am limited to CDs fom the local library and occasional downloads from Napster. George Winston and Craig Armstrong are my interests right now.

It is too early to tell for sure, but this could turn into one of those lasting transitions that a person has a few times in their life. For the lack of a better term let's call it a musical conversion. I wonder what is true in general about these musical conversions. Does everybody have them? How often? What causes them? I don't even know where to go to learn about this.

Society as a whole went through several musical conversions during my lifetime. I was just old enough to remember watching the Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan show. I sort of liked them, but wondered what all the fuss was about. I never cared much for rock-pop music, even when I was a kid. Actually nothing is better at convincing me to renounce membership in the human race as the popularity of some kinds of music, particularly urban-rap music. Libertarian though I may be, I'd love to see draconian laws against boom cars playing that filthy crap.

When floundering on a new topic it is natural to fall back on comfortable prejudices: physiological determinism, in my case. Music has more value as a sleeping pill to old men who don't sleep as well as they used to. Earlier in life, the piano music of George Winston might have seemed too somnambulant.

Another example of physiological determinism is the fondness for the female singing voice which dominated my musical preferences in the middle of life. Perhaps that was connected with walking away from the female race in early middle age.

Wikipedia had an article on music and the brain, which referenced a recent Scientific American article. But it didn't help. For the moment it is probably best to enjoy George Winston's piano without ruining it by thinking too hard. The experience is best after a bicycle ride. I lie down in the early afternoon, with the mp3 player and a dog at my left and right sides. The muscles in the face, scalp, and neck turn into pyroclastic silly-putty. I fall semi-unconscious to those magical twinkling ivory keys, while scratching the dogs' ears with my fingers.