đź“–
I read this book when I was 18 and it fully changed my life. I had never read such an eloquent take on the auditory feast that surrounds us. It certainly validated my obsession with environmental sounds and industrial horror shows like military jets ripping through the fabric of the sky… Schafer is a Canadian composer who talks at length about how Sound is so esoteric, it alludes to institutionalization, but never has been like the visual arts. The inherent subjectivity of sound makes it so difficult to formally discuss…yet we aren’t willing to admit that we’ve designed our industrialized society to mostly sound like shit. Sound is a bit of an afterthought. But we sit within the vibrations of the jarring sounds we create all the time. Maybe if we cared about what things sounded like, our environment would reflect a rich buffet of natural auditory phenomena and intentionally curated spaces, and then maybe we’d all feel physically more in tune?
Oct 4, 2023
Related Recs
đź“š
i find myself thinking about this book constantly. kind of about human waste and how it defines our interaction with and destruction of our natural environment. it’s definitely a blackpill but it’s kind of beautiful as well.
Sep 20, 2022
🌎
this book has galvanized me to change something about my lifestyle/outlook in a way no book has in a loooong time. if you’ve ever wondered what a solution to the climate crisis could look like that doesn’t rely on the state enforcing top-down solutions at the cost of individual liberties, doesn’t rely on capitalist corporations selling you technology to profit from crisis and that causes exploitation in the foreign countries where its raw materials are extracted from, doesn’t divert responsibility onto individuals by insisting it’s your fault for not using metal straws, and doesn’t bank on wishful thinking that AI will provide a lifestyle of luxury for all, but that instead emphasizes reprioritizing connection to community and communal self governance, meaningful labor and a sustainable work life balance, the human right to their environment, and an economic shift towards prioritizing practical use over scarcity-based profiteering, then this book is for you. we will have to stop growing our global economy though, but it’s actually going to be better that way.
May 30, 2024
a treatise on the attention economy - checked it out on libby and got through it over the course of a work day, a lot of really interesting social and cultural explorations about how time itself is the final frontier of hypercapitalism and what decommodification of our attention and time should look like
the book starts with a story about the oldest redwood tree in oakland and how the only reason it’s still standing is bc it’s unmillable, and how being uncommercializable is essential to our survival. it ends with an exploration of alt social media platforms (mostly p2p ones) and what keeping the good parts of the social internet and rejecting the bad ones should look like
all in all a super valuable read; my only nitpick with the book is that odell isn’t just charting the attention economy but also attempting to “solve” it and relate it back to broader concepts about labor and social organizing, but her background is in the arts which leads to some really wonderful references to drive the points home while also missing some critical racial + socioeconomic analyses that one would expect (or at least really appreciate) from the book she promises to deliver in the introduction. but this does also make the book easier to read which is good because everyone should definitely engage with what she has to say
will definitely be revisiting
Mar 25, 2024
Top Recs from @weyes-blood
🦪
This fits into a wider category of things I enjoy starting with the ocean, seaside towns and piers, swimming… but oysters weirdly are like a bite sized version of how intoxicating the ocean can be. Not all oysters are created equally. Some are a little sketchy, underwhelming, or just a nice snack you pretend to like more than you do because you probably paid a pretty penny to have them. But, when an oyster is just right, extremely fresh, full of depth and brine, it sends the ocean straight to your dome, behind your eyes. You can taste the whole sea in it, you can almost even taste the swimming - dunking your head and getting a little seawater up your nose. It’s a full body thing. After four or five oysters like that you can take over the world, or just have really good sex.
Oct 4, 2023
đź—Ł
I feel like my dog and I are always straining to communicate. I think at this point we effectively do. I use a higher voice for him so he knows I’m talking to him specifically. Usually I repeat the same phrases and words in weird ways to convey the emotional meaning of what I’m getting at. I ask questions. He twirls, makes little sighs, sneezes, yawns, and occasionally makes a vocalization that’s so demanding and full of canine yearning to speak that I become very impressed. We’re trying to break through to each other and we occasionally do. I am blown away by the interconnectivity of all living beings. He just wants another treat. And the cycle continues.
Oct 4, 2023
🎞
I sometimes just put movies on to listen to their sound design, and then go do something else while it blares on in the background. Mostly old movies from the 1940’s. The designs are so consistent, the score is so sweeping and trill, the dialogue so crunchy.  Modern movies have a bit more textural randomness and slam effects but occasionally they sound amazing too as a background, it’s just more juiced (and they also sync modern songs…hmm)  If commercials weren’t so heinously obnoxious these days I’d say a blaring TV in the background would be the most nostalgic… Forensic Files has an amazing sound profile and usually plays for many hours at a time on network TV. But old movies always have romance. They have the strings that have become synonymous with human drama, and its nice to have that slowly unfolding somewhere in your living space while you distract yourself with other things.
Oct 4, 2023