Music, for me, has always been a series of memories and/or emotions; certain songs make me think of certain moments, like how “Love Like Woe” by The Ready Set makes me think of walking around my neighborhood with my friends on a summer evening as the wind blows against our faces, and the sun sets behind the bridge. Some associations I have with songs aren’t as pleasant, there are songs I can no longer listen to without being transported back to the worst of a past situation. These moments develop naturally, and most of the time, I do not realize them until I heard the song at a later date. Recently, however, I discovered that there are people who want to create or invoke these moods and memories, even if they aren’t their own. I observed this when one of my recommended songs on Youtube was “instagram” by Dean, but the title was “How Dean ‘Instagram’ would sound like with next door neighbors arguing + rain.” The uploader contorted the audio, muffling Dean’s voice, and added a track of rain and a track of an argument. The additional tracks gives the song a fuzzy feeling, one that I would compare to the static-like noise on a phone call, and it makes the song feel like it’s a tangible presence in the room. The rain and arguing give the song a more listlessness feeling. “instagram” always made me feel like it should be raining outside, but actually hearing it along with the song was a strange experience. By the time the song ended, the room felt quieter, more crisp, but also a little more empty.
The first few times Alvin Lucier’s “I Am Sitting in a Room” plays, I paid attention to what he was saying. But shortly after, the repetition made it easy to ignore the words and just hear white noise. This intensified as the audio started to become muffled. As a classmate stated, the long pauses, in a way, wipes the memory of the listener and clears the mind so that what the listener is hearing is new, which to a certain extent is true.
Around eleven minutes, the the audio sounded like a song. The beginning was similar to someone playing random notes, but about half way through the speech Lucier is giving, it sounds more intentional, like I can hear the music behind the muffled sounds. Around nineteen minutes, the audio just becomes sound, the voice unidentifiable. At this point, there is no way to hear the audio other than a strange music/just as rhythmic noise. Once I couldn’t understand the words anymore, the video actually became more enjoyable to listen to, which I think in part had to do with the fact that I was no longer trying to process the sounds as speech; my brain accepted them as noises, and I was free to focus on other things. When the video ended, it gave me a similar feeling to when Dean’s “instagram” remixed audio ended, a quietness.
