Tag Archive: Stars of the Lid


Der Watzmann by David Casper Friedrich

“Old men must be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity”
– T.S. Eliot – ‘East Coker’ from The Four Quartets.

Had a hard day on the planet?

Need some soothing music that quietens the soul but doesn’t deaden the brain?

Throw away those New Age tapes of dolphin sounds or bland electro-acoustic loops and check out my top ten albums for restoring a sense of balance and awakening consciousness. Continue reading

MUSICAL BRAIN

‘This is Your Brain on Music’ is a fascinating book about connections – exploring how emotional links are made through memories and interactions while listening to or performing music.

Daniel Levitin starts from the basics, asking the question ‘What is music?’ –  examining what it is about music that makes us obsess about it.  He writes: “the emotions we experience in response to music involve structures deep in the primitive reptilian regions of the cerebelar vermis, and the amygdala – the heart of emotional processing in the cortex”. A phrase like this, taken out of context, sounds a bit dry but he manages to weave such information into a text rich in anecdotal asides and down to earth examples. Continue reading