Interestingly enough, not all feelings result from the body's reaction to external stimuli. Sometimes changes are purely simulated in the brain maps.
Antonio DamasioRead
I cannot listen to Beethoven or Mahler or Chopin or Bach when I write because those composers require you stop what you are doing and listen.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the idea that certain composers demand full attention, making it difficult to focus on writing.
Antonio Damasio highlights the immersive nature of certain composers' music, suggesting that their work is so rich and engaging that it compels the listener to pause all other activities and fully appreciate the art. This implies a distinction between music that can accompany tasks, such as writing, and music that requires one's undivided attention.
Themes
MusicCompositionAttentionWritingImmersion
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of focus in art, this quote could effectively illustrate how some works of art demand complete attention.
More from Antonio Damasio
All quotes βThe autobiographical self has prompted extended memory, reasoning, imagination, creativity and language. And out of that came the instruments of culture - religions, justice, trade, the arts, science, technology.
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Consciousness permits us to develop the instruments of culture - morality and justice, religion, art, economics and politics, science and technology. Those instruments allow us some measure of freedom in the confrontation with nature.
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...I sense that stepping into the light is also a powerful metaphor for consciousness, for the birth of the knowing mind, for the simple and yet momentous coming of the sense of self into the world of the mental.
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When you deal with something like compassion for physical pain, which we know is very, very old in evolution - we can find evidence for it in nonhuman species - the brain processes it at a faster speed. Compassion for mental pain took many seconds longer.
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We do not merely perceive objects and hold thoughts in our minds: all our perceptions and thought processes are felt. All have a distinctive component that announces an unequivocal link between images and the existence of life in our organism.
Antonio DamasioRead
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