Category Archives: miscellaneous

2009, miscellaneous, philosophy, thoughts, writing

Object Permanence

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This past week I was in Chicago, a giant cultural leap forward from the small town that I currently occupy. This trip not only afforded me the opportunity to spend time with my brother and sister in law, but also to wander through the brand new Modern building of the Chicago Institute of Art.
I could go on for pages about how wonderful this new space is and what a beautiful building Chicago now has, and how great it is to see that art is flourishing, which stands in direct opposition to my myopic views on art as directly influenced by living in a one-horse town. Perhaps sometimes I am a bit too negative. This is not the point that I want to be exploring right now. When I have the chance to look at great art it makes me think. I have a few thoughts that are constants, and usually a new idea or two will crop up.
It is taking me far too long to get to the point here, I apologize. The point is this: should I, or anyone for that matter, take pictures of what they see at art galleries, to take with them? Should the experience of seeing a great work of art be something that is brought with a person wherever they go (via storage on a laptop or online gallery)?
There are so many connotations here that I can hardly stop to gather my thoughts. Let’s begin with the idea that art is to be taken with you when you go.

One takes a picture of a painting, or a sculpture or anything. First of all what is one expecting from this work of art? Is this sort of like portable “inspiration”? Does art have the ability to stir up thoughts when it is taken out of its “natural habitat” (being an art gallery)? What is an artworks “natural habitat”? If the painting is currently on display in Chicago, in that new building in that city in the summer and then travels the next week or better yet the next season to a museum in Seattle in the winter in a building that is of a completely different style of architecture…..will they both garner similar thoughts in the same person if they travel with the painting? How much does the location (which takes into account everything inherent in that word i.e. geographical location, climate, even the history of that area with regards to their general feelings of how arts and artists should be treated) affect how the viewer sees that work of art?

My point being how permanent is the experience of viewing art? Or better yet, how permanent should it be? This is, of course, ultimately up to the individual. This puts the “plastic” arts in quite a contrasting light than music. Or does it?

Perhaps bringing up more questions than answers is a really annoying way of going about things. The reason I am doing so is because I don’t even really know how I feel. I do believe that the object of art is to express what can not be expressed in words. That is the goal of the artist, no matter what medium they are working in I believe that this is the goal. We as artists are attempting to get to the root of the human experience. We are trying to create a universal language that can be perceived through any of the senses. As a musician should I expect my audience to be swept up in the moment while listening to one of my works and suddenly be driven to do great things, or feel one way or another? I suppose this would be the ultimate compliment, but am I thinking about it as I write? Absolutely not.

How much, as artists, can we expect our audience to take our works with them wherever they go? I know that I will never forget how I feel looking at the works of Pollack or Picasso. I can constantly turn over in my mind what those works conjure inside of me, and perhaps time and again I need to be reminded by looking at the painting again. Looking at it on my computer would certainly be a good way to spark those thoughts once again, but I can easily admit that the experience of viewing that work in that way will not even come close to the experience of viewing it for the first time in that clean, bright white room. The silence, the austere atmosphere of the gallery; all of these things add to the experience of the art.

2009, miscellaneous, music, personal, philosophy, thoughts

Taking action from far away

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Facebook can be just about the most annoying website/application in existence, or so it seems. Every time I log in I am inundated with a myriad of stories of the time wasted by my friends and acquaintances, which magically turns into time wasted for me as I sit for 20 or 30 minutes reading about all the stupid, pointless quizzes, tests and pokes and other mindless garbage that goes on.

Every single day I consider abandoning facebook, just like I did with Myspace. The über-connectivity of the internet gets to be a bit much sometimes, especially for someone like me that finds great enjoyment during weekends spent alone, completely alone, cut off from the world and locked in my room listening to music, reading a book or watching Alton Brown and learning about the history of pasteurization, replete with an actor playing Louis Pasteur.

Then, once in a very great while the hyper-connectivity of it all actually finds a use, and I realize that there is a point to being able to reach out to people for some cause, other than begging you to join their cause (“We want to be teh larg3st groop on teh fac3b00k!!”).

I was looking through my facebook newsfeed and saw that a friend of mine had “attended” an event “An email to help save Gates-Chili’s music” or something to that effect. Seeing as how I grew up in the Gates, NY school district (Gates and Chili are right next to each other, so they share schools), I clicked on the event and read.

The story was nothing new. School district is facing hard times (and aren’t we all these days) and looking for places to cut some money out of the budget. Of course the first thing they look to cut is music. Without going into a crude value-based judgement on what should stay and what should go in this situation I decided that I would immediately write an email, as the group requested, to the address at the top of the page. My letter, that I wrote without much thought, but simply a passionate plea from one music lover/student/active American citizen (a rare breed, indeed) appears below for you:

My name is Adam Shanley. I grew up in Gates. I attended Kindergarten through 4th grade at Neil Armstrong and I still hold fond memories of that institution as shaping me to the person that I am today.

Currently I am finishing up two Masters degrees in Music at SUNY Fredonia, one in Classical Guitar Performance, and one in Music Theory/Composition. I completed my bachelors degree in Music Composition in 2006.

After being in college, and coming into contact with so many people with an astounding array of different backgrounds I have only become stronger in my opinion that music education from an early age has benefits to all involved. I feel so incredibly strongly about this that I have made it my life goal to insist that music education be held in equally high regard with the  sciences and math. Music education and art appreciation go hand in hand, not only forming a more well-rounded person, but it also helps a student to think abstractly.

Mathematics and music have incredible amounts in common. This is so much the case that several universities offer a “Math in Music” course that studies the ratios that are so important to music, tuning systems, the imperfections that arise with each of these tuning systems and all the details that come with it. If mathematics is important for solidifying a skill for abstract thinking because math occurs in everyday life I would have to argue that the same is true for music. Music is not simply “all around us”, but the fact that math exists naturally in the world and humans have been striving to discover all of its intricacies, and music and math share so much in common, wouldn’t it be completely unwise to cutoff this avenue of exploration?

Denying a young adult access to proper music education, especially music theory, would be the equivalent of not teaching algebra in math, or not teaching the periodic table of elements in science. There are so many more reasons to continue teaching music than there are to cease and desist.

Music Technology would be just as big a mistake to get rid of altogether. Allowing students to have access to the programs and tools that are used today in the creation of music, after they have studied the science behind how music is structurally put together (through music theory, history and a general music education) it is of the utmost importance that students are able to create something from that knowledge that they have learned.

Music education should never be thought of as something like a “niche market” that is only valuable to a student that is going to grow up to be a musician. Music education will ultimately strengthen our culture, which is already failing drastically in the world as far as cultural significance goes. Music education would benefit anyone not just as a musician, but as one who appreciates music. A person that learns to appreciate music, and the arts in general will most certainly foster a love for mathematics, the English language, the sciences, art and just being a creative person. Wouldn’t it be absolutely wonderful to have an entire generation of people that are curious about the world?

Imagine a country where people didn’t simply sit down on the couch every day and watch 6 hours of television a night but instead became interested in music or math or science or anything and went out to research anything that they were curious about. Imagine a world where people were driven to life long education because of an instilled interest in the arts and music. Imagine a world where everyone got involved and stood up to make a difference and cared about something deeply and made their voices heard.

It is a fact that music education has all of these benefits and more. Cutting music theory and music technology classes, or any music classes for that matter would ultimately hurt the society that your school should be striving to help flourish.

Adam Shanley

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I was informed the next day that this very email, which was not alone – in fact there are emails written by current Eastman School of music faculty and other concerned Gates-Chili alumnus- will be read at a school board meeting in which the fate of the music program will be discussed.

Through the din of useless chatter in the ultra-connected world there is hope that a difference could possibly be made.

miscellaneous, music, personal, thoughts

Classic albums

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Today I was flipping through the channels, for the first time in a long time. When I am at school I don’t ever have a chance to watch television, and my apartment doesn’t have cable, so often times I’m out of the loop when it comes to current events. I just keep my nose to the grindstone and plow forward with my head down, ignoring pretty much all that is around me. This makes the passage of time seem to me very quick.

While I was flipping through the channels I came across one of the extended cable channels, MTV Hits. I don’t know what their normal programming is, but as long as it is nothing like Fuse (R.I.P. MuchMusic USA) or like any of the other MTV channels…..(remember when they promised MTV2 would ONLY show videos?) I’ll give it a shot. Today they were playing Nirvana unplugged. There was a scroll across the bottom of the screen stating that “Finally, nearly 14 years to the day after this session of unplugged, Nirvana Unplugged will be available on DVD“.

I thought to myself, 14 years? That can’t be right, it’s 2007, and this is from 1993, that’s only…..14 years! When did this happen? Where has the time gone.

I remember waiting to see Nirvana Unplugged, it was in this house actually, just over there. I remember afterwards, I think the next day, my brother hooked up our stereo to the VCR and we stripped the audio from our video tape and listened to it in our walkmans (cassette walkmans). We were so ahead of our time, but I digress.

So much has happened since then. I was in 7th grade, now I’m halfway through 2 master’s degrees. My brother was a Sophomore in high school and now he lives in Chicago with his wife and has a real actual career. Where has the time gone? I remember lots of things happening, but I can’t believe it has been 14 years. I guess it is just getting to the point in my life, and the lives of everyone I know where we are starting to realize that somewhere along the way our lives have begun without us knowing. I think we are all still trying to resist.

I get notifications on facebook or myspace about people getting engaged, or having kids and I usually just scoff like people that I graduated with shouldn’t be worrying about that stuff yet. But in all honesty, their timing is just about right. I’m the one that is in denial.

Somewhere along the way Nirvana’s entire career became legendary. This was already happening to some extent while they were still around and touring. It was solidified when Kurt died. Nirvana would be legendary, the gold standard for quality in music for years and years to come. They became our generations band, not only being our voice but our representative for our feelings, our politics and our middle finger to the establishment. Finally we had a band that our parents would never understand. While they cling to the Beatles we have Nirvana.

Nevermind was an important album, and stands up to the test of time, as does In Utero. The Unplugged performance is a wholly other thing, raw, emotional, honest, great. I guess part of my disbelief in that it occurred so long ago was that I can’t believe that I was lucky enough to have lived in the right time to have witnessed it all. Things going on in music now just aren’t as exciting.

We had Pearl Jam. Yes, they are still around today, but haven’t done anything worthwhile since No Code in my opinion. We had Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, and on and on.

Pearl Jam’s “Ten” I remember listening to until my tape wore out and I had to buy another. I couldn’t believe how awesome the guitar solo on “Alive” was. I still listen to that album on occasion and remember how I felt back in 199—-whatever staying over at friends houses and listening to it over and over again.

Soundgarden’s “Superunknown” is another one that got fairly constant rotation on my walkman. Also “Down on the Upside”, their brilliant swan song. These albums defined me as a teenager, wandering around the town I lived in wondering what the hell I was doing, what I was going to do and hating everyone and everything just like any good 14 year old should. Growing up and not wanting to, being too smart for my own good and having dreams that I could never achieve.

No album exemplified these feelings better than the Smashing Pumpkins “Siamese Dream”. I remember stealing that tape from my brother and going on a camping trip with my friend Dave. We listened to that album probably 50 times in those 2 days. Sure the singles were great, “Today”, “Cherub Rock”, but we were always more interested in “Soma”, “Hummer”, and “Mayonnaise”. We formed a band. We were terrible, we tried to play those songs, it rarely, if ever worked, but it was fun.

These albums, with Sonic Youth’s “Dirty” and “Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star” were all so important to me, and still are. There is no way that they ever won’t be. My life is forever defined by these albums, it is undeniable. The noise on “Dirty” was so unbelievable when I first heard it, and the sound, the rhythms, it was everything I ever wanted in an album. I remember thinking to myself when confused about something going on in “Dirty”, “Well it’s Sonic Youth, they can do whatever they want”. This seems just about right, yeah, but I had no frame of reference, that was the first SY album that I had heard. I just knew, you can just tell with some bands that they are worthy.

I spend countless hours downloading, or trying to download new music, fueling this need to hear what is going to be my next soundtrack. Very rarely does anything fill such an important spot. The most important and influential holes have already been plugged. Radiohead was in existence with my Smashing Pumpkins obsession, there was an overlap, but they never really reached the same status. Although Radiohead apparently has much more in terms of staying power with their phenomenal “In Rainbows” up against the forgettable “Zeitgeist” by the Pumpkins, my poor, poor fallen Smashing Pumpkins. They should have just stopped after Adore, that was their peak. I could slap Billy Corgan if I was given the chance.

There is nothing wrong with embracing these albums as generation defining. I will never listen to adult contemporary factory produced garbage. These albums are my life, Nirvana is my Beatles, and that is something to be proud of. Music evolves, defines us, takes a snapshot of society, and culture. We can hold on to our memories and our childhood while time forces us to become all the things we never wanted to become but are inevitable, and the music will help with that. Our music is honest to a fault and will never lie to us.