Posts tagged live performance
Five Things #36

Every Wednesday I share five things I liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

  1. We all have those days when we struggle to get out of bed in the morning. The Roman emperor and Stoic philsopher Marcus Aurelius has some words of motivation for you.
     
  2. Katy Ann Gilmore might just be my new favourite artist — Where Math and Nature Meet Art
     
  3. A fun, animated video by The School of Life on Ludwig Wittgenstein and how to avoid some of the muddles we get into with words.
     
  4. Musician Ólafur Arnalds on five things he learnt in his twenties. I particularly relate to his thoughts on live performance, which I embellished on in a blog post titled "The Beauty of Live Performance".
     
  5. You might have heard of the acronym "FOMO" (the Fear Of Missing Out). It's a problem for many people that's exacerbated by our constant exposure to everyone else's "perfect lives" via social media. There might be a solution, JOMO, the Joy Of Missing Out. The excellent Note to Self podcast did an episode on this that they rebroadcast last week.

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, sign up to receive future posts or check out my previous Five Things posts.

The Beauty Of Live Performance
Photo by Marino Thorlacius

Photo by Marino Thorlacius

I totally agree with Ólafur Arnalds on this: 

The beauty of live performance lies in its imperfections. Otherwise you can just be listening to a CD. The live situation is not the same as a studio situation so you shouldn't play like you're in a studio. . . . It needs to be human. That's why people come to concerts. That's why mistakes are okay, that's why surprises are okay and imperfection is super important live.

The energy and intimacy of a live performance is so far removed from that of listening to a CD or Spotify. It's strange that bands and artists choose to just replicate their studio recordings live on stage without making changes to reflect the new environment and undistracted attention of an audience. It's probably why I haven't been to a pop or rock gig in so long!

Ólafur is a fascinating guy, you can check out the full interview below.

Read: Ólafur Arnalds: Five Things I Learnt in my Twenties