SEA CLIFF and LISTENING

SEA CLIFF
ORIGINAL ART ACEO  
2.5" x 3.5"

To view my Gallery or purchase this painting please visit Daily Paintworks. If there is no current bid you may contact me for the "Buy Now" price. Larger originals or prints may be available. 


"Rather than listening to music while you paint, listen to the sort of wisdom that can help grow your career." (Cory Trepanier)

I read that quote in a recent Robert Genn blog and it got me thinking. I'm old enough to have seen massive changes in how we take in information and I'm sure many of my readers are in the same bracket. 

When I was a child my parents had a wonderful piece of furniture which played 78's and was also a radio. It dominated the room and had a beautiful walnut wood veneer which I spent hours admiring and tracing the patterns with my finger (when no-one was watching). I also cherish the memories of listening to the radio with my father when he came home for lunch and "children's hour" stories (I'm showing my age here). The BBC is a great institution, long may it survive! And so is the CBC in Canada, the ABC in Australia and the BBC World service, all of which have held me together during my ex-pat life. There is a wonderful group working hard on saving the CBC here.

After 78's came 45's and then 33 RPM LP's (for the young this was the speed the record turned). By this time I had a job and saved my pennies to buy records from The Beatles to the Moody Blues. Ah wonderful times with not much else to do but spend a lazy afternoon listening to great music! 

By this time cassettes had come on the scene and I received one of my most memorable gifts, a cassette recorder. Wow! Before this recording machines had been huge, expensive and mainly owned by schools and the very rich. I felt like a queen with my book sized machine. For years as the family moved apart, we sent recordings to and fro between us. My father taped drives he took and I probably gabbled on about the latest fashions. Blank cassettes were expensive so we just recorded over them and sent them back, but I still have a cassette somewhere of my German grandma who passed away 30 years ago - eerie to listen to but hard to throw out. Naturally this was also a method to record the latest tunes off the radio and save money on records.

Next came the short lived 8-track, a silly invention with a huge cassette which loudly changed from one track to another. My husband was so proud of his and it dominated the room with it's huge person sized speakers. That monstrosity came and went and people mainly played cassettes in their car and LP's at home. 

The next big change was the introduction of CD's which was around for quite a long time. People went through their record collections and purchased their favourites in CD form. CD's were so much better quality and it was mesmerizing to hear the sound of each piece in an orchestra without scratches and hisses.

The final blow to all this was the computer age and miniaturization. We can now "stream" and "download" pretty much anything from the internet, even tunes from old TV shows and recordings of great speeches "I have a dream!" We have tiny pocket sized players which go everywhere with us: On these we record, listen, watch, research and talk to friends while we walk down the street. It's a magical world, but I can't help pining for things of the past.

So back to the original quote ... what got me off on this tangent is the fact that I have many wonderful motivational cassettes from great names like Deepak Chopra and Loise Haye, which I would just love to listen to while I paint. Trouble is I don't have a cassette player any more. Anyone else in the same boat?

Cat #13089 Sea Cliff