Quote on Song and Silence

We are living in a culture that doesn’t value melody; one that seems to have lost touch with this primal means of expression. We are surrounded by sounds so insistent, so varied in intent and clangor, that we’ve forgotten how to listen to a single line. In fact, we don’t really listen to each other speak anymore because there are too many distractions luring us away from the unadorned human voice. We’ve lost the basic, easy connection between speech and song that makes speech musical and song communicative. We’re perilously close to losing silence: in the electronic world, silence means disconnection…

Through the media’s constant barrage, we are subjected to endless chatter, listening to tune written in an unceasing quest for momentary fame and ingesting surface information that rarely delves below the surface. We are being deprived, through overload, or our principal senses.

—Alice Parker, The Anatomy of Melody