he said that the way we think and view the world changed as a result. In an acoustic universe one senses essence, whereas in a visual universe one sees categories and hierarchies. He claims that in a visual universe one begins to think in a linear fashion, one thing following another along a timeline, rather than everything existing right now,

Though I was still up front as the singer, there wasn’t the visible hierarchy of players that one often sees in large bands. Everyone was both musically and visually part of the whole. The band became a more abstract entity, a community. And while individual band members might shine and take virtuosic turns, their identities became submerged within

Noémie began with an exercise I’ve never forgotten. It consisted of four simple rules: 1. Improvise moving to the music and come up with an eight-count phrase. (In dance, a phrase is a short series of moves that can be repeated.) 2. When you find a phrase you like, loop (repeat) it. 3. When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it. 4.

musical partnerships have often led me to places I might not otherwise

I’d done was move the songs to a new context. Because I performed them more energetically than the standard folk artist might present his own material, people listened, or maybe they were just stunned at the audacity of a precocious teenager.

I also realized then that it was possible to mix ironic humor with sincerity in performance.

History and culture can’t really be preserved by technology alone.

And, unlike religion, no one has ever gone to war over music.

In my forays outside of bohemia and away from the winos and addicts that littered the Bowery at that time, I realized that most New York men wore suits, and that this was a kind of uniform that intentionally eliminated (or was at least intended to eliminate) the possibility of clothing as a statement. As with a school uniform, it was assumed that