Description
Book SynopsisSimilar to how songs become familiar and welcoming earworms, these essays will imprint themselves on readers' minds.A Mind Full of Music contemplates and celebrates the mysterious, powerful, dynamic relationship between ourselves and the songs we love: the way in which songs work upon our minds and in which our minds, because of the inevitable creative force of our imaginations and memories, work upon them. The book does not propose or develop a unified argument, nor does it tell, chronologically, the story of the author’s life of listening. Instead, in recognition of the varied, fluid, and ultimately mysterious ways in which our minds respond to songs, it is structured associatively, with one topic inspiring thoughts of another; the book begins with a song drifting into the author’s mind, and it ends with that mind still in the midst of listening, waiting for a beat that will never come.
Table of ContentsA Mind Full of Music Song and the Shadow Self You Cannot Listen to the Same Song Twice It’s Personal The Why and How of This Book Imagining Imagining Loving a Song in Solitude Child’s Play Songs in Time The Pop-Rotted Mind Listening with Eyes Open Expectation and Surprise Adolescent Listening—The Songs of Ourselves Adolescent Listening—Choosing Sides Songs in Time II Iconic Classic Boy Band for Old People Songs in Time III Permanent Comforts The Song As Riddle, The Self As Riddle Time in Songs Time in Songs II Tone and Trust When the Words Work Fade Away What’d He Say? Meddling with Perception A Dream We Can Return To The Space Where Singer and Listener Meet Songs Made of Songs The Unnameable Bigger Thing—Songs as Metonyms A World Full of Music Listening in a Crowd Secular Hymns—Music and the Metaphysical To the Edge of Ecstasy A Mind Full of Music, Reprise
