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Fewer Senses, More Sensation

Curiously, I enjoy the same music more at a live show than on a home stereo. Why should this be? Objectively, the concert music is no better, only louder. My enjoyment is more intense because my attention is more intense. At home, I am a skimmer of sensory experience, the music playing in the background as I read the mail. At a concert, the world recedes, and I am simplified into a consciousness of sound. I hear riffs and instruments never heard in the deafness of my distraction. Inner simplification lets in the music's complexity.

The blind hear best because their ears lack competition; the deaf see best. Lovers close their eyes to concentrate on touch. Like wind through a narrow pass, the world enters us more forcefully when it must squeeze through a single sense.

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