Listening to Music Without Understanding It

Having started writing these posts, I thought it was time to introduce them and to introduce myself as a contributor here on Sourcerer. My name is David, and my handle is CompGeekDavid – named for my main blog, Comparative Geeks. There, I write geeky things, and am one of two main contributors – the other being my wife, Holly.

I have a personal blog, as well, that some of you may know me from – DBCII. I am not nearly as consistent in writing there, but when I do, I write about Social Media experiments – similar, say, to some of the posts here on Sourcerer – and about writing and blogging – similar to what you see at The Writing Catalog. I had blogging on my radar because I want to write, and because, after college, working writing back into my life was not the easiest thing. 

One of my favorite things, my white noise and background, often my muse and inspiration, is music. I love music. I have zero training in music. I mean, I guess there was music class in elementary school, but all that taught me was I can’t play the recorder. When people ask if I play an instrument, my answer is “the radio.”

So my thoughts on music are, in the end, entirely as audience. As untrained audience. As untrained audience that might be slightly tone-deaf. As untrained audience that has trouble, often, understanding lyrics in songs. In fact, my first love on the Internet was sites that have song lyrics (now it’s IMDb…).

It was in the early days of Facebook that I hit on the phrase “listening to music without understanding it.” It is how I would describe my love affair with music. I don’t get it, I couldn’t possibly make it, but it’s one of the best things ever. It’s a reminder I am alive, that the world is real, that there are wonderful and talented people out there making amazing things, that I am not one of them — and that I live in a world where that’s okay, where I can still experience and enjoy all that they do and make.

Penny Dreadful “What Death Can Join Together” Review

Everyone’s back this week! Dorian and Vanessa finally have their moment; Murray, Chandler, and Sembene (who finally gets more than one line at a time) go after the vampire (a word the characters finally use), Frankenstein has another run-in with Caliban, and Brona is looking more like Caliban’s bride each time we see her. We’ve reached the sixth of our eight episodes, and “What Death Has Joined Together” clearly marks the upturn of the season toward a climax and finale.

Everyone–including this guy

This episode marks the first time that there hasn’t been a prologue before the credits—instead there is a “previously on” section. That’s a small thing, but it’s important indicator that yes, the plot threads are moving towards one another, to the aforementioned climax and finale. It’s also, of course, to put us back on track after last week’s foray into the past in “Closer Than Sisters.”

First, we see Murray and Vanessa looking into her room. In “Demimonde,” we saw the vampire break into her room. Murray and Vanessa exchange some terse conversation about the room’s (lack of) safety, summoning evil, and Mina. Meanwhile, Ethan tries to comfort Brona, who managed somehow to make her way off of the streets and into the inn, and it’s clear that she’s only getting worse. I’d hoped that, even if we weren’t going to see more sexy-times between Dorian and Ethan that we would at least see some kind of aftermath. Evidently not.

And then we’re back with Vanessa, who is trying to sift through the demimonde and find Mina. As she pulls cards from her tarot deck, she hears Mina’s voice ask for help. She also hears screams and growls amid what sounds like bells and sea sounds. After conferring with Murray, the two decide that Mina must be in the Port of London. But who should show up, just then, but Dorian? Apparently, Dorian realized he’d been rude when he ditched Vanessa at the theater to
go with Ethan, and he stopped by to apologize. He asks Vanessa to go out with him, and the two leave after Murray pressures Vanessa to go and enjoy herself. (Of course we know that it’s so he can go and find the creatures without Vanessa in tow. Despite their alliance, he knows what we discovered last week–that Vanessa loves Mina enough to kill her if she is one of the vampires.)