I really have trouble listening to music while I write now. And that’s because, even though I have always love music love, the intensity of the pleasure I get from is stronger now than it has ever been.<\/p>\n
Something similar seems to be true for all my senses. They are all duller in some ways than they were twenty years ago. I’m starting to have trouble hearing things and not only am I as nearsighted as ever but I’ve totally lost my near point and have to take my glasses off to see close up. My touch is still pretty good but I’ve started to notice that I can’t pick up quite the level of details on a surface as I once did.<\/p>\n
But the intensity of my sensual experience is much greater than before. <\/p>\n
The pleasure I get from music is more intense\u00a0and I think I hear more of it, in\u00a0 that I can grasp all the various parts in a piece of music and their interaction in a way I couldn’t have done before. The pleasure of seeing beautiful things with my eyes now can be so intense I find it overpowering. Sometimes I just stop and look at, say streetscapes and enjoy\u00a0them in way that I don’t recall feeling years ago. Indeed, sometimes it feels as if sight gives me an almost tactile pleasure in my eyes.<\/p>\n
I’m not going to say much about the sense of touch since I’ll be writing about that in the book I’m writing. But the pleasures of touch are greater now than ever as well. A jacuzzi feels better than I think it’s ever been before. When my back is scratched or rubbed, I enjoy more than I did years sgo.<\/p>\n
I don’t know what accounts for these changes. I suppose they could be fanciful. How, after all, can you compare how much you enjoy music now as opposed to how much you enjoyed it twenty years ago? But some of the things I’ve mentioned really are not a matter of subjective experience. I used to write\u00a0while listening to music. I can’t now because I find it distracting. I’ve always liked going for a drive through pretty country just to look and see. But I don’t recall wanting to stop as often as I do now because I’m distracted from driving by the pleasure of a beautiful–or even\u00a0not so beatiful view. The streets of Mt. Airy are quite lovely, but I don’t\u00a0going down, say, Upsal Street twenty years ago and feeling pleasure like I do today.<\/p>\n
So if this change in my sensual experience is real, what accounts for it.\u00a0Perhaps it is just that I have the patience to pay more attention to sensory experience than I once did. Perhaps it is my sense that, after being sick last year, I have started to think that time is running out for me and I can’t waste it so I try to take everything in. (But some of these changes I noticed a few years ago before I was sick. Perhaps it is something I’ve written about in another piece I’m going to post in a few days: I actually can perceive more than I did before because I have more contextual knowledge.<\/p>\n
Whatever it is, I’m really grateful for expansion of my sensual horizons. If it is actually the result of getting older, then this is the best possible compensation for how much longer it takes for injuries to heal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I really have trouble listening to music while I write now. And that’s because, even though I have always love music love, the intensity of the pleasure I get from is stronger now than it has ever been. Something similar seems to be true for all my senses. They are all duller in some ways than they were twenty years ago. I’m starting to have trouble hearing things and not only am I as nearsighted as ever but I’ve totally lost my near point and have to take my glasses off to see close up. My touch is still pretty good but I’ve started to notice that I can’t pick up quite the level of details on a surface as I once did. But the intensity of my sensual experience is much greater than before. Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-9A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5810,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions\/5810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}