“We find an emphasis on the cosmic, on spatial disorientation, on transport, on affect, on the nonhuman. The acoustic spaces of electronic music aren’t limited to the organization of affect and narrative that define much popular music, with its highly personalized structures of love and loss.” (Davis, Acoustic Cyberspace)

This quote seems to separate electronic music and popular (regular) music into two very distinct and different entities, which I do not agree with. Davis seems to say throughout the entire paper that electronic music automatically transports the listener to a world of the eerie, and, as is highly emphasized, the nonhuman. Of course, electronic noise is associated with machines, and thus with robots, and such (which humans are very intent on dissociating from themselves), but that does not necessarily mean that all electronic music is about nonhuman things– there are some very good, electronic songs that are about BEING human (e.g. Mr Roboto), and human emotions, such as “love and loss”. After all, humans created machines, and there thus must be an inherent human component to electronic sounds.

“If the voice over had been on a live scene of the movie’s characters, I feel like the audience would have paid less attention to the sound and more to the visuals.” (Norstrom, 1.2)

In contrast, I fully agree with this quote. Although sound is very important in a movie, and adds a lot to it, one of the highest impact uses of sound is when there is no live action, or, at the very least, when the action is not centered on people (e.g. storms, etc.). People tend to focus on people. If the most human element they can find is a voice, that is what they will focus on. By removing all visual traces of people, the director can make the viewer do less viewing and more listening.

 to relate this to the other quote– maybe that is why there is less electronic music than regular music? of course, it is more expensive to make and all, but most people do associate regular music far more with people than something electronic, and perhaps that is why they are drawn to it.

When I was in high school, we had to do 60 hours of mandatory community service to graduate. For about 20 of those hours, I chose to do freshman mentoring my senior year.. We met with the kids once a month, in their history class, in groups of 6 or 7 (at least– they were supposed to be groups of 6 or 7, but I was one of only about 2 people who consistently showed up, so it turned into us leading the entire class), and talked with them/played really lame games, etc.

It was actually a really interesting experience, way more so than I thought it would be. I didn’t connect very well with the black kids in my group, which I felt really bad about, and I unconsciously favored the kids who were siblings of my friends/people I knew, and talked to them more. I “adopted” a freshman into my group, who subsequently hit on me when we took the same bus one day. I developed less personal relationships than I had hoped, but still managed to have one of my kids (my best guy friend’s little sister) look up to me, which made me feel pretty good. I was really upset with the laxness of the other mentors in my class, and with the lead mentors for not giving us stuff to do that didn’t waste our (and their) time.

However, I think this experience will help me in the service learning for this class. I deliberately chose the Rotary club, not only because I went to Leschi and Washington, as I’m betting a lot of them do, and because I also grew up underprivileged, but to push myself into figuring out how to go against all of my history classes and society and interact properly with black kids. Hopefully I will develop some long term relationships with these kids, and will once again be a mentor.

First off, I assume he/she is Indian, from the prevalence of Indian music in their list. I assume she is a girl, from songs like “Stop” (spice girls), and “Hips don’t lie” (shakira). I assume she’s been around the world a bit, from the inclusion of New York, India, Switzerland, and Florida. I assume that she is somewhat… wholesome? not the right word, but the right idea.

Other sounds that might fit– other indian sounds/songs, something like “live like you were dying”

order: life timeline, maybe?

………….