Are we losing our edge? I’m sitting here working and struggling with something that has never been a problem before: I want to listen to music, but it is definitely distracting me. <\/p>\n
Once upon a time, I could listen to music and write with no problem. In fact, it was better that way. Now I find that I write much better in silence. This makes me feel lame. Is my brain losing its power? Or am I gaining focus? <\/p>\n
I feel like this is a question that will primarily concern writers, but maybe not? I’d be interested to hear what other artists say about music and other distractions. How do you feel about them when you are trying to work? Helpful? Harmful? Neutral?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Are we losing our edge? I’m sitting here working and struggling with something that has never been a problem before: I want to listen to music, but it is definitely distracting me. Once upon a time, I could listen to music and write with no problem. In fact, it was better that way. Now I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,10,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brady-dale","category-music","category-stimulus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9blZT-fc","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":866,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/27\/whammy-bar\/","url_meta":{"origin":942,"position":0},"title":"Whammy Bar","author":"AJ","date":"27 October 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Music is quite possibly the most culturally universal thing on the planet. Every known culture has music. A lot of people have this idea that western music is \"modern\" and other cultures' music is \"primitive\", this is of course horse-figs. Music made in China or Tobega today is as contemporary\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AJ Venter"","block_context":{"text":"AJ Venter","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/old-categories\/aj-venter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":442,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2004\/09\/13\/neverland\/","url_meta":{"origin":942,"position":1},"title":"neverland","author":"nathaniel","date":"13 September 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Jo\u02c6\u00a3o Orrechia, an old buddy of mine who currently lives in Berlin, will be moving to Joburg in November of this year! You must take a listen to some of his beautiful music. You can hear his solo stuff here and some collaborative work here.","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1670,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/12\/saturday-night-knight\/","url_meta":{"origin":942,"position":2},"title":"Saturday Night Knight","author":"nathaniel","date":"12 August 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In the 50s and 60s, my dad used to write songs for Jimmy Radcliffe (who also sang at my folks' wedding). Anyhow, a few covers of his hits have made it up to youtube, posted by various peops. This is one by none other than Phil Stern. My dad is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "inbox"","block_context":{"text":"inbox","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/old-categories\/inbox\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/hXnR9CEZrt0\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":747,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2005\/09\/03\/halim-and-pauline\/","url_meta":{"origin":942,"position":3},"title":"Halim and Pauline","author":"nathaniel","date":"03 September 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, I started my festival day by attending a workshop called The Expanded Instrument System, with electronic music pioneer Pauline Oliveros. For a frame of reference? She's worked with the likes of David Tudor, Philip Glass, and John Cage in her time, and one of her favorite compositions involved 10\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":72,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2003\/04\/04\/various-nyc-stories\/","url_meta":{"origin":942,"position":4},"title":"various NYC stories","author":"nathaniel","date":"04 April 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been emailing with my sister, Samantha, a little bit lately. She's such a honey, and b\/c we live very different lives, I often forget how similar we are. We both live in the future, I think - a whole lot of what-if's, but asked about the present, instead of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "uncategorical"","block_context":{"text":"uncategorical","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/old-categories\/uncategorical\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":867,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/27\/whammy-bar-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":942,"position":5},"title":"Whammy Bar – Part 2","author":"AJ","date":"27 October 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Now if notation cannot even handle one of the most popular present day western instruments, imagine how bad it gets with other cultures. Bach tried to emulate tribal music - he was even further off than he thought since their entire scale system was different, he could get a near\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AJ Venter"","block_context":{"text":"AJ Venter","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/old-categories\/aj-venter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}