Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreams, and Other Imaginary Refrains

Thought in the Act

by Eldritch Priest

In Earworm and Event Eldritch Priest questions the nature of the imagination in contemporary culture through the phenomenon of the those reveries that hijack our attention, the shivers that run down our spines, and the songs that stick in our heads. Through a series of meditations on music, animal mentality, abstraction, and metaphor, Priest uses the earworm and the states of daydreaming, mind-wandering, and delusion it can produce to outline how music is something that is felt as thought rather than listened to. Priest presents Earworm and Event as a tête-bêche—two books bound together with each end meeting in the middle. Where Earworm theorizes the entanglement of thought and feeling, Event performs it. Throughout, Priest conceptualizes the earworm as an event that offers insight into not only the way human brains process musical experiences, but how abstractions and the imagination play key roles in the composition and expression of our contemporary social environments and more-than-human milieus. Unconventional and ambitious, Earworm and Event offers new ways to interrogate the convergence of thought, sound, and affect.

Genres: Music

200 pages, Hardcover

Published March 4, 2022

Reviews

[宗儒 李 · Rating 3 out of 5]

雖然說這本書號稱是由兩個取向截然不同的部分組成，但其實做的事情都蠻類似的：從earworm出發的excursion。當然一部份比較隨筆一點，另一部份則是廢話明顯少很多。
他出發的方向還蠻多的，從似曾相聽的歌（我想不到他文中的earworm要怎麼用中文講）出發，講到做白日夢，講到這些歌與原曲的相似卻又完全不同，講到記憶、感受以及重複性。每個方向都有其有趣之處，不過如果他可以花多一點篇幅來討論他所使用的、來自別人的概念（或多解釋一點 - 有的時候會覺得看得有點煩，在講semblence的時候我就蠻希望他可以多講一些，而不是好像理所當然的就直接端去用，畢竟我是完全不懂），我覺得better