In Rhy Southan’s, “Is Art a Waste of Time,” Southan is going on a trip with some people from the Effective Altruism. These people believe in helping the less fortunate at all costs and believe that the money being put into music, art, theatre, and film, is a waste as it does not help the less fortunate. This is unfortunate for Southan as he is going away on a little trip to finish writing a film script, so these people do not agree with what he is doing. Southan goes on to to explain what the EA does and believes in. He goes further to point out examples of this and explains them in his terms. From my understanding, he is starting to agree with them a lot and then slowly comes down off of this high. He ultimately says that while some art forms may actually be a waste of money, that society could not function without them. That there is some art that is necessary in order for humans to be humans. More specifically, however, that only art that involves the humanities and teaches us something about being better is right. Because then we might be able to actually start to make more of a difference then we were able to do. He then ends by ultimately leaving the overall decision of whether art is a waste of time or not up to us.

In Benjamin Zander’s TED Talk on “The transformative power of classical music,” is very inspiring. He begins by explaining that there are three groups, those who are die hard fans, those who go back and fourth, and then there’s those who just do not like it at all. But he goes on to say that he can get everyone to love it AND understand it. While getting on the piano, Zander proceeds to give us a mini piano lesson and gets us to understand the sad notes and how it can relate to Hamlet. That all the notes are, are just a way to delay the inevitable, the E note at the end. I know that may not make sense, but if you go down the keys, then you will except the note E. Anyways, Zander tells us that if we really listen to classical music, then we can find the meaning and relate with someone or a topic that we haven’t been able to. He uses the example of a man finally grieving his brother after listening to a piece by Chopin, a classical music composer. He goes further to say that when this realization finally hits us, we will have shining eyes, and that is when classical music has done the thing it was meant to do. That while only 3% of people may truly enjoy classical music, we need to understand it and that will help guide us; and that in the process we probably will like it.

 

Art is a very complex form, as is classical music. That was actually the only connection I could make off the bat. Also, the connection between musical notes impacting the outcome and helping stuck out at me the most. This gave me the opinion that nothing is ever as it seems, which I like as a topic for my paper. This also gave me some ideas regarding being able to grieve/remember a loved one and replaceability. I started thinking that while when someone you love is no longer with you, they’ll be physical replaced with someone else, and probably emotionally, but that there will always be that memory of the original person somewhere within you. Overall, this brainstorming session proved quite a success although I started out completely confused on how any ideas between the two would ever relate. But like I said, there’s always more than meets the eye.