Attention To Beauty in Our Midget-Minded One Headline Culture

Attention To Beauty in Our Midget-Minded One Headline Culture

Matthew Bellisario O.P. 2020

Our Shallow Age

Never had there been in a time in the history of the world where men's attention span for beauty has been so short. Instead, we read news headlines for today's latest controversy, watch brief videos to get our education, listen to our music as a mere lifeless background soundtrack to our lives. With our shallow education, however, we are sure to protest valiantly when someone's opinions differ from our own. Gone is the age of the paper book, the in-depth news investigation, and the home stereo from which we used to appreciate music. 

It is no small claim to call this age "the shallow age of technology" in which our lives are formed by half-witted, half-sentence headlines. There is little depth today in appreciating the beauty in life. God created this world and despite the damage done from original sin, there is an inherent beauty in it. For example, when art is done well it raises the soul to God. It gives joy to us and allows us to feel empathy knowing that others share our many trials and joys of life. Rather than seek to deal with life's many trials today by taking the time to appreciate beauty we instead act more like violent, mindless locusts destroying everything and everyone around us. In this article, I want to focus on one particular art to demonstrate today's sub-defective culture and its lack of appreciation for beauty compared to other eras. It is a topic dear to my heart, which is the gift of music.

The Gift of Music 

Since I was young I have always had a special connection to music. Growing up in the seventies and eighties I was exposed to pop, rock, and country music on the radio. My parents' record collection however was small and only consisted of a few Elvis and Beatles records along with several 45s of the popular songs of the day. As I grew up I began collecting my own recorded library mostly consisting of cassette tapes. Over the course of a few years, I had accumulated quite an extensive collection of mostly rock music. After joining the Coast Guard I bought my first guitar and began learning from my buddies in my unit. Since my youth, my music taste has deepened and I now have quite a large collection of music on CD and vinyl. It ranges from Rock to Blues, to Jazz, to Classical, to Country and beyond. Due to repeated listening and playing music, there is seldom a time when there is not a song in my head. Historically, however, this has not always been possible. 

Over the course of the history of humanity only in the past 170 years or so have we had the gift of recorded music. Audio was only first captured in Paris in recorded form by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in the late 1850s. Until then, music was a social experience shared in appreciation by those playing the music and those gathered around to listen. It was contained in the moment and in the memory of those who carried the song with them in their minds which was related to an event, a social gathering if you will. With the dawn of the One-Headline Culture caused over the course of time by an over-reliance on technology and a lack of attention for beauty and God, there are few who now actually sit down to appreciate music in either a live setting or a recorded session. 

While technology has certainly had its benefits, such as the gift of recorded music, it has also had its disadvantages. First the positive. With recorded music, the audiophile was able to take a recorded concert to their home and listen again to this musical social event. As technology developed we were able to obtain higher audio quality to where we can no longer tell if we are at the event or not, and with today's studio environment we can hear a recorded performance without any distraction. This has created for us an amazing listening experience in our homes never available to most of humanity. Now with the negative. As the technology was able to give us more mobile options to listen to music we began to detach ourselves completely from the recorded event and music began to lose its appeal as an art form. It became so mobile that its essence as an art requiring our attention has drastically diminished, and along with it the quality of music!

Lossing Our Attention Span

Gone are the days when we took the time to actually sit down and put a piece of vinyl on the turntable listening attentively as we sipped a cup of coffee, tea, fine wine, or cocktail. Gone are the speakers offering a full-fidelity listening experience. The headphones we now listen to music through emphasizing the bass so much that all the nuances of the recording are often lost or distorted. Joggers and transients often listen to their low-quality MP3s through earbuds on the move. Listening while being distracted by millions of other passing images all fighting for the mind's attention. Social media also contributes to our loss of appreciation for beauty. We are drawn to the worst of humanity through headlines and a couple of images to which we attach our emotions to without any reflection whatsoever. This loss of reflecting on music extends to all forms of art including painting, poetry, or literature, all of which have been degraded in our time. 

Pay Attention!

I believe that man in order not to succumb to the mass insanity which will indeed destroy our culture entirely if we are not careful, can in some fashion restore our humanity by stopping to pay attention to beauty. Taking the time to read a good book, or to listen to a piece of music without any distraction is food for the soul. If the art is itself well done it indeed takes us beyond the artist or composer to the one God who has given us the ability to create such beauty. 

While I greatly appreciate the music of most genres, it is Classical music and Jazz to which I am most drawn to of late. There is nothing like putting a nice flawless piece of vinyl on a turntable and sitting back to listen to it through an old fashioned stereo system. Recently I enjoyed listening to Bill Evan's 'The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings'. It takes you back in time to a live setting in 1961 where you can hear the people sitting around the stage drinking their cocktails while the band performed some of the most engaging live jazz ever recorded. This simply cannot be appreciated listening to it through earbuds while you are working out. The same is true with a classic recording of Vivaldi, Bach, Corelli, Monteverdi, or Chopin. Today's recorded CDs offer us some of the most beautiful music ever available to humanity, yet we are immersed in sub-defective low-quality MP3s which suck all of the life and beauty out of it! 

Music is meant to be appreciated by actually listening to the music. It requires attention and I would argue that any music that does not require your undivided attention is no musical art at all. Any audio recording that merely draws one into an electronic bass trance with no artistic talent to arrange the rhythm, melody, texture, tonality, and color is not art. I equate it to the sacrilegious "paintings" of Jackson Pollock to which for lack of talent chose to splatter paint on canvas laying on the floor rather than actually learning how to paint. It would be like picking up a guitar to which one knows not what end is up and then using a rock to scrape across the strings and fretboard without making any structured sound whatsoever, and then arrogantly telling everyone it is art. It is absurd indeed, yet how many bought into this false art, which again requires no real attentiveness. Let us call it for it is; monstrous. 

A Chopin Performance Masterpiece on Vinyl

The same so it goes for the lifeless, electronic, soulless, talentless "music" being made today for the midget-minded One Headline Culture in which we live. If Chopin lived today I believe he would abhor much of our popular music. I think he would also abhor the means through which we almost exclusively listen to music; earbuds and a low-quality file MP3 player. For those who have not taken the time to sit down and listen to a favorite piece of music on a home stereo, I implore you to do so. Invite some friends over, take the time to sit down, and actually give your attention span to something worth paying attention to. Grab a CD or piece of vinyl and play it from beginning to end. After you are done, contemplate God and set aside some time for prayer so you can then pay attention to Our Lady and God, who want to speak to you! Our Lord cannot be obtained from a news headline, a Facebook post, or tweet. Yes, He also requires our attention, yet, in the highest manner possible!

“My public career is over. You have a little church in the village; give me a modest wage allowance to live out my remaining days and I’ll play you hymns on the organ in honor of our Lady of the Polish Crown.” (Fryderyk Chopin)