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Homo Musicus
Oct. 18th, 2008 03:46 pmI was, indeed, a total zombie all day yesterday. I was relieved then a three hour meeting was rescheduled, as I know I would not have been able to keep awake during it. However, it was probably not the best day for the first set of draft budget decision documents to come in. We get just hours to review these and it's a very detail oriented task. There were 10 of them, with the shortest being 17 pages and the longest being 84. I figure I slogged through over 600 pages of this stuff on 4 hours of sleep.
I did take a break at lunch time and walk over to this crafts market which they are running on Fridays (and weekends) in Crystal City, with vendors from Eastern Market. None of the jewelry vendors had pins or brooches, which are my main jewelry obsession, so it was easy to resist temptation. I did buy a couple of small items for gifts. There were some photographs I liked but, given how few of the pictures I already own I have hung, I figured that it was not a good idea to buy more stuff. Overall, it was a nice diversion, especially as the weather is getting into perfect fall mode (clear and cool and crisp) and they had a pleasant jazz band playing.
After work, I headed over to the Library of Congress for the first lecture in their two year series on "Music and the Brain." The lecturer was anthropologist Ellen Dissanayake and her title was "Home Musicus: How Music Began." I can't say that she really answered the question of how music began. Instead, she basically claimed that humans are hard wired to be musical. She talked a lot about how adults talk to babies using what she called "proto-aesthetic" elements and how this enforces bonding. So, essentially, her theory is that music is a bonding mechanism within a community. I was not entirely convinced of the relationship between baby talk and music, but it was worth hearing the talk. I plan to go to as many of the lectures in the series as I can.
I did take a break at lunch time and walk over to this crafts market which they are running on Fridays (and weekends) in Crystal City, with vendors from Eastern Market. None of the jewelry vendors had pins or brooches, which are my main jewelry obsession, so it was easy to resist temptation. I did buy a couple of small items for gifts. There were some photographs I liked but, given how few of the pictures I already own I have hung, I figured that it was not a good idea to buy more stuff. Overall, it was a nice diversion, especially as the weather is getting into perfect fall mode (clear and cool and crisp) and they had a pleasant jazz band playing.
After work, I headed over to the Library of Congress for the first lecture in their two year series on "Music and the Brain." The lecturer was anthropologist Ellen Dissanayake and her title was "Home Musicus: How Music Began." I can't say that she really answered the question of how music began. Instead, she basically claimed that humans are hard wired to be musical. She talked a lot about how adults talk to babies using what she called "proto-aesthetic" elements and how this enforces bonding. So, essentially, her theory is that music is a bonding mechanism within a community. I was not entirely convinced of the relationship between baby talk and music, but it was worth hearing the talk. I plan to go to as many of the lectures in the series as I can.
