Listening to music performed in person by other humans is the natural way of things, like actually having sex with another human.
Recorded music is much more like pornography.
‘Reading words etched into a stone or inscribed on papyrus by other human hands is the natural way of things, like actually having sex with another human.
Reading words created via machines is much more like pornography.’
A quick search shows... of course there was!
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/06/the-record-eff...
> For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.
> - Socrates
The analog to actually having sex would be playing with the band on the stage.
The reason I don’t think only playing with the band counts is: in a hunter gather tribe 70,000 years ago, did everyone sing all of the songs all of the time? Or did some people just listen, at least some of the time?
Practically speaking I think it must have been the latter.
Of course there are lots of unnatural aspects in live music still, like too many people, too loud, etc. But recorded music is wholly unnatural, like pornography is.
I'm glad we have books, even as it's not as natural as oral transmission. I love photography, I'm so glad we have chemical food that requires such a brewing process to come to fruition, and I have no desire to go back to a hunter gatherer society, I like civilization in general. And pornography is sure part of it.
This assumes music was made as a performance. Music can be (and i argue probably mostly was) people jamming together. Musician and audience are blurred in this scenario.
By your logic, writing things down is also unnatural and we should've kept with the oral tradition only.
Natural is stepping on a piece of metal, contracting tetanus, and dying without appropriate medical treatment.
Took social, and perhaps making-a-living value almost totally away from anything but tip-top talent in those areas. Nobody in your family needs you to play music at get-togethers and parties—you’re worse and less-convenient than thousands of artists on Spotify. They don’t wonder with excitement what sort of sketches Uncle Robert will bring to the next holiday, to give to his extended family. At best, that kind of thing’s indulged and tolerated now. The demand is all but entirely gone.
I reckon it was a real belief of his, given he wrote of it more than once, and whose voice it was put in, the one specific case I can call. There’s a chapter in Bluebeard about it for sure (that novel’s kind of a whirlwind tour of most of the major themes and points of Vonnegut’s work—dunno if it was intended that way, but that’s how it turned out) and I know I saw it other places, can’t recall which books.
I found an abbreviated quote from the bit I’m thinking of in Bluebeard. Loses some of it, but gets his point across:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/277466-simply-moderate-gift...
But I am quite sure I saw similar sentiments at least one other place in his work, and I think a couple places—years and years ago I read most of his novels, plus most of the collected short fiction and short stories, but it’s all pretty fuzzy now.
According to the author, having separate words for singing and dancing is a relatively new phenomenon in linguistics, and the concept of a performer and an audience as a distinct separation is also relatively recent. He likens it to conversation - sure in any given instance there may be people more or less involved in the dialog of a conversation, but we would all think it very strange if someone said "I only listen to conversations, I don't talk in them" in the way someone today might say "I only listen to music, I don't sing/play/dance".
If I talked about putting all of the telephone sanitizers on a spaceship that might be a reference those of a certain age might be able to grok. :)
It's about machines replacing human work, but it's not at all about the machines. It's about the people. It's about human dignity. Or, as Vonnegut says, it's about "a problem whose queasy horrors will eventually be made world-wide by the sophistication of machines. The problem is this: How to love people who have no use."
Die quickly at 30, with 10 children and some grandchildren even. Sounds like mission accomplished to me.