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The History of The Lovers of Sight and Sound
My top three answers to the question "what do you want to be when you grow up," starting with the thing I most want to be, are:
I've wanted to start a band since the day my mother told me she'd buy me an electric guitar if I cut my long hair. Unfortunately, bands have not been so easy to pull off. First of all, there was an extreme lack of talented musicians in Arizona, at least in my social circles. And what talented musicians there were were interested in making music that did not appeal to me at all. About the closet musical match I've ever had, in terms of song writing and ambition, was Santi. We tried to form a band, Maximum Capacity, but we were hindered by the lack of a drummer, a real bassist, and the ability to write songs or play instruments.
College was more of the same. I played with lots of people, but I could never find a coherent group of people to consistently play with and write songs. But I kept writing songs myself. For some reason, though, I never shared them. I hated the fact that I would have a song ready to be played by a band, and the other people would make all these changes. I know, that's megamaniacal. But when I've written a straight-out rock song, the last thing I want is someone suggesting that we start with a Pink Floyd-inspired, 7 minute psychadelic intro. The ideal was to have a bunch of people who were interested in making a similar type of music. Or, failing that, who were willing to do pretty much whatever I told them to. It's not that I think the stuff I write is superior to what everyone else writes. It's just that the kind of collaboration that I think is necessary for a band to exist has never existed in the groups I've played with.
So I said fuck it and started my own band. Consisting of me. Kinda like Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, only not industrial and shitty. I started recording my own songs on my computer, unhindered by what anyone else thought. I originally recorded only acoustic guitars, though, because it was really hard to record electric guitars given my limited technology.
Eventually, I completed what might be called an EP. The quality wasn't very good, and it was very rough. But I was proud of it. I never sold it or made very many copies of it, but I gave a few away and people were really complimentary about it. Although, really, I only gave it to my friends, and they weren't about to tell me that the thing sucked.
Still, the I wanted to have a band name. So I came up with one based on - what else - philosophy. My favorite philosopher is Socrates. One day, in one of my philosophy classes, we were discussing the idea of the platonic forms. Basically, forms are ideas. You can destroy a table. You can destroy every table in the universe. But you can't destroy the idea "table." The particular expressions of the idea, your coffee table, for example, are not important. What's important is the idea - the form.
Plato uses the allegory of the cave partly to illustrate the relationship between the particulars and the forms. In this context, the particulars - the coffee table in your living room - is a mere shadow, a knock-off, of the form.
There are two types of people, then. Those who recognize that the important things are the forms. Not just the form of table or the form of tree or the form of tire iron but the Form of Large, the Form of Justice and, above all - the sun in the allegory of the cave - the Form of the Good. These people, according to Plato, are the true philosophers, the true lovers of true knowledge and true wisdom. In The Republic, Plato calls some of these people philosopher kings and says that they should be the ones in charge of society.
The second type of people are those that fail to recogize the importance of the forms and instead revere the particulars. These people are not in control of their desires and impulses, and are merely caught up in a race to see what pretty but meaningless things they can accumulate. In short, these myopic fools are too busy naming the shadows on the wall to realize that they're shackled and that they cannot move. They will never leave the cave. They will never understand the Form of the Good. These people Plato calls the lovers of sight and sound.
And that's where the name of the mythical band that exists only in my head comes from.
- Superhero
- Rock star
- Lawyer
I've wanted to start a band since the day my mother told me she'd buy me an electric guitar if I cut my long hair. Unfortunately, bands have not been so easy to pull off. First of all, there was an extreme lack of talented musicians in Arizona, at least in my social circles. And what talented musicians there were were interested in making music that did not appeal to me at all. About the closet musical match I've ever had, in terms of song writing and ambition, was Santi. We tried to form a band, Maximum Capacity, but we were hindered by the lack of a drummer, a real bassist, and the ability to write songs or play instruments.
College was more of the same. I played with lots of people, but I could never find a coherent group of people to consistently play with and write songs. But I kept writing songs myself. For some reason, though, I never shared them. I hated the fact that I would have a song ready to be played by a band, and the other people would make all these changes. I know, that's megamaniacal. But when I've written a straight-out rock song, the last thing I want is someone suggesting that we start with a Pink Floyd-inspired, 7 minute psychadelic intro. The ideal was to have a bunch of people who were interested in making a similar type of music. Or, failing that, who were willing to do pretty much whatever I told them to. It's not that I think the stuff I write is superior to what everyone else writes. It's just that the kind of collaboration that I think is necessary for a band to exist has never existed in the groups I've played with.
So I said fuck it and started my own band. Consisting of me. Kinda like Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, only not industrial and shitty. I started recording my own songs on my computer, unhindered by what anyone else thought. I originally recorded only acoustic guitars, though, because it was really hard to record electric guitars given my limited technology.
Eventually, I completed what might be called an EP. The quality wasn't very good, and it was very rough. But I was proud of it. I never sold it or made very many copies of it, but I gave a few away and people were really complimentary about it. Although, really, I only gave it to my friends, and they weren't about to tell me that the thing sucked.
Still, the I wanted to have a band name. So I came up with one based on - what else - philosophy. My favorite philosopher is Socrates. One day, in one of my philosophy classes, we were discussing the idea of the platonic forms. Basically, forms are ideas. You can destroy a table. You can destroy every table in the universe. But you can't destroy the idea "table." The particular expressions of the idea, your coffee table, for example, are not important. What's important is the idea - the form.
Plato uses the allegory of the cave partly to illustrate the relationship between the particulars and the forms. In this context, the particulars - the coffee table in your living room - is a mere shadow, a knock-off, of the form.
There are two types of people, then. Those who recognize that the important things are the forms. Not just the form of table or the form of tree or the form of tire iron but the Form of Large, the Form of Justice and, above all - the sun in the allegory of the cave - the Form of the Good. These people, according to Plato, are the true philosophers, the true lovers of true knowledge and true wisdom. In The Republic, Plato calls some of these people philosopher kings and says that they should be the ones in charge of society.
The second type of people are those that fail to recogize the importance of the forms and instead revere the particulars. These people are not in control of their desires and impulses, and are merely caught up in a race to see what pretty but meaningless things they can accumulate. In short, these myopic fools are too busy naming the shadows on the wall to realize that they're shackled and that they cannot move. They will never leave the cave. They will never understand the Form of the Good. These people Plato calls the lovers of sight and sound.
And that's where the name of the mythical band that exists only in my head comes from.
The Collected Works of The Lovers of Sight and Sound
The Lea Demo
The Lea Demo was something I was working on throughout the later years of college. It existed in several forms, depending on what I was working on at the time. The seven songs available here represent the most common (and, in my opinion, best) songs that I did during those years. These are very rough around the edges in some places, and downright terrible in others. For example, "East" features a verse I forgot to sing. In case you get curious, the birds on "The Last Sunrise" were recorded live in the the Voodoo Lounge in my old house in Flagstaff. They belonged to my grandmother. I don't know how many of these songs I'd write now, but I wrote them then, so here they are.Singles
Since I started law school, I have not had the time to work on a full-blown EP like the Lea Demo. However, I have been able to put together two songs, both of which I've posted before. Here are the links, in case you haven't heard them yet.
Your Feedback
Please leave any feedback, constructive or otherwise, that you might have here. I'm going to try to come up with a more sophisticated way of doing this, but this will have to do for now. Thank you for listening and taking the time to let me know what you think.
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