.. to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new emotional experiences and new states of mind. To boldly go where no music has taken us before.

Teeter-tottering on the line between Heart Sound and Mind Sound [see sidebar] …. there is a place. It is easy to feel helpless in this place.

The heart has what it wants, fully occupied and defenseless against emotional content that plucks the heartstrings and exercises our hormonal responses to sonic stimuli.

The mind has what it wants, fully occupied with sufficient resolution and veracity and verisimilitude as it exerts itself examining the fractal landscape of finer and finer audiophile attributes… seeking out flaws and entertainment [does the mind really do anything else?], so much so that our ‘CPU is maxed out’.

In this place – to an observer we appear catatonic. We look not that much different from just someone really, really focused on listening to the music. But there will be tell-tale differences.

Like not moving for extended periods of time. Not even a little bit. [I see people come out of this by irritably scratching and rearranging their position as they come back from this kind of out-of-body experience. Yep, sometimes this just means the sound sucks. But this is not what we are talking about here].

This is not ‘listening to the music’ like a musician or lay-person. This is not ‘listening to the sound’ like an audiophile. This is using music as a kind of propellant [or drug 🙂 see sidebar] to go ‘places’.

End of part I.