Ep 10: How Music Transforms Our Hearts and Minds w/Avi Abrams
This is a reflection on Playticity Podcast Episode 10: How Music Transforms Our Hearts and Minds w/Avi Abrams. Find the episode wherever you get your podcasts. It is also available on www.playticity.com/podcast
This past weekend I went on adventure with my niece to the library. While she was busy finding super hero and tarantula books for her brothers and begging my sister to let her sign-out Harry Potter, I was on the prowl for my own form of entertainment.
Scrolling through the catalogue I found that there was one copy left of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My niece saw that there were exactly zero pictures in this book and wondered how I could be so boring, but this was a book I had my eye on for a long time, so I decided to ignore this 10 year olds harsh review.
4 hours later, while doing my best to act like an intellectual, I discovered a parallel between a message in the book and the article I wrote last week.
Last week, I argued that our current world is losing touch with the right hemisphere’s big picture and artistic outlook — paralleled with the books ‘romantic understanding’ of the world.
I also argued that we are too enmeshed in the left hemisphere’s spotlight mind— paralleled with the books ‘classical understanding’ of the world.
In chapter 6, the narrator takes us through the classical understanding of a motorcycle. He breaks down the the fuel-air system, the ignition system, mentions the feedback system, as well as the lubrication system, he even touches on the power-delivery system, although he didn’t end up including the let’s-move-onto-the-next-chapter-already system.
He admits this is boring, but also admits that he gets off on this kind of thing.
Avi Abrams on the other hand opened the podcast with this:
“Music notes are like drops of rain which fall on your hardened heart.
Your heart is like stones, cracked stones.
Overtime, the music drips into the cracks of the stones, and creates a carved sculpture.”
No need to judge, but these are the kind of words I get off to.
Everyday I’m inundated by screens, computers, and phone robots telling me the latest news and what time it is. Avi on the other hand told me stories about musical revolutions in Russia, and an anecdote about stealing a Flamingo from the zoo. He even played an improvised piano piece inspired by the death and rebirth of an automobile.
This is the kind of stuff that is priceless, and something only a human being can tell you. This is the real stuff, and why I love doing this podcast.
I’ll catch you players in a couple weeks.
