Blog Post #6

• Ralph Ellisons’s ” Living w Music,” describes his experience living in NYC apartments and all the sound tracks that came within the walls of the buildings. At first he found it to be distracting to his writing, but then he noticed that sounds are apart of our daily lives, from hearing your neighbors singing terribly and laughing with them for it, to hearing the things our neighbors deal with. I can definitely relate to this, especially as a kid, I would remember my neighbor would wake me up at 11am on the weekends blasting his music. At times I would wake up so aggravated, but then I got used to it and would actually wake up jamming along with him and his radio.
• Ralph Ellison stated ” In those days it was either live with music, or die with noise, we choose desperately to live.” what I think he meant by this statement is that if you can’t beat them, join them.  Rather then being annoyed with the sound,noise,music etc that goes on around you, embrace it, appreciate the fact that you have a soundtrack to the life you live, because at the end of the day what’s life without music or sound ?
• One comparison I found between ” Living w Music” and Damon Kurkowski’s “ways of hearing” is that they both involve the importance of sound and how sounds are a huge part of our lives.