{"id":148,"date":"2009-06-04T09:49:33","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T09:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp\/?p=148"},"modified":"2009-06-04T09:49:33","modified_gmt":"2009-06-04T09:49:33","slug":"musical_homonyms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/2009\/06\/musical_homonyms\/","title":{"rendered":"Musical Homonyms"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Driverx.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/Driverx.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 20px 20px; float: right;\" height=\"216\" width=\"216\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve all heard the one about the judge who forced a rap fan to listen to hours of classical music as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corrupt.org\/news\/judge_orders_loud_rap_fan_to_embrace_classical_music\">penance for crimes committed<\/a>, and if you&#8217;ve waited out a delayed train in NYC&#8217;s Penn Station, you&#8217;ve absorbed the Handel that&#8217;s supposed to bring down your blood pressure while keeping the homeless population at bay. (I have no idea how that last part is <a href=\"http:\/\/strangeobservations.tribe.net\/thread\/0c1f5a8f-90e9-4229-857a-1090d59296cb\">supposed to work<\/a>&#8211;poverty breeds intolerance for chamber music? Someone missed <i>The Soloist<\/i>?) If you want teens out of your food court, however, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/lifestyle\/2009\/03\/03\/2009-03-03_new_zealand_malls_weapon_against_unruly_.html\">Barry Manilow works best<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I was thinking about this over coffee this morning after a press release came through for <i>Drive Time RX with Subliminal Affirmations<\/i> by Steve Halpern. The purported purposed of the CD is to keep you destressed and alert  in traffic and &#8220;transmute any feeling of road rage into feelings of calm and centeredness.&#8221; You can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.innerpeacemusic.com\/albumdetail.asp?pid=94\">sample the music here<\/a>. Now, how are you feeling?<\/p>\n<p>Music may be a universal language in Disneyland, but it seems to me its vocabulary words are actually all homonyms&#8211;depending on myriad factors, my chill out music may motivate you to put your fist through the stereo&#8211;so using it to make certain statements with the goal of emotional manipulation is a pretty dangerous game. In most cases, it seems to me that what you&#8217;re really playing with is a whole bag of cultural stereotypes of what sounds will trigger what response. Whether the listener will play along is up for grabs, and in some cases, it may only be an act. What 14-year old with pink mohawk could cop to a love for Manilow, even if she wanted to? Alone in my car, will the sounds of yoga zen really keep me from rear-ending that Hummer? How powerful is music, anyway, and how well do we understand that power?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve all heard the one about the judge who forced a rap fan to listen to hours of classical music as penance for crimes committed, and if you&#8217;ve waited out a delayed train in NYC&#8217;s Penn Station, you&#8217;ve absorbed the Handel that&#8217;s supposed to bring down your blood pressure while keeping the homeless population at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}