005. Under the influence
“The real beginning of influence comes as others sense you are being influenced by them - when they feel understood by you.”
All week I have been racking my brain about how to approach this post. You see, the idea I have is a kind of philosophical observation and these ideas are difficult to explain, especially by me! So this weeks blog comes with a disclaimer; I am attempting a big idea. I will probably fall short and it will take a big leap to get on the wavelength with this one, but I definitely think there is something in it.
(You can always just listen to the song at the bottom)
Ok here goes;………
From when we are born we start to understand ourselves through the influence of others. We see someone walking and we try to copy them until we can walk ourselves then we keep doing it until it becomes our own natural movement we internalise it, it is now ours.
As musicians, we follow the same process. We learn our instrument, how to write and how to understand by copying the influence of others who inspire us; Until one day we internalise it and make it our own.
Ok, here's where it is going to get far out. Where do our influences come from? The first music started somewhere in the prehistoric period and subsequently each generation influenced the next, who in turn internalised it and changed it to represent themselves. This process grew and grew exponentially all over the world until we have all the variations of music that influences us today. So you could say that when you listen to music you are listening to the result of influences on the whole human race since the beginning of time.
Did you ever get a song stuck in your head but couldn't figure out why? Me too; Most of the time it is a random song that doesn’t seem to have any relevance on my life, but every once in a while a song gets into my head in a way that seems a bit deeper.
This happened to me recently when I saw an ad for The Blue Planet 2 and the soundtrack was a Radiohead song called Bloom. It was a reworked version with the film composer Hans Zimmer. They were influenced by the concept of pointillism in art, which is a series of tiny dots which when looked at as a whole makes a picture. A perfect analogy for influences?
So, whether it was the history of the world conspiring or just finding meaning in random coincidence; I had to do a version of the song, a reworking of a reworking, an influence of an influence.
