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https://www.positive.news/lifestyle/arts/almost-life-saving-moby-on-the-healing-power-of-sound/>
"Regardless of which musical genre was dominating
Top of the Pops that week,
the 1990s were a musical gold mine. From Nirvana’s angsty grunge to the
Brit-pop battle of Oasis versus Blur or even the Girl Power era of the Spice
Girls, there was something to get everyone’s rocks off. But there was one
artist that transcended it all, unifying metalheads and teenyboppers alike:
Moby.
With his trademark black-rimmed glasses, shaved head and concerned look, he was
not cut from the typical rock star leather jacket cloth of his peers. But
tracks such as
Porcelain and
Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad became part of
the soundtrack to the decade. His music has threaded its way through popular
culture, appearing in everything from
The Beach and
Twin Peaks to the
Bourne series and, more recently,
Stranger Things.
The artist is almost as well known for his activism as for his music. A vegan
since before it was fashionable, he has large tattoos down his forearms
reading: ANIMAL RIGHTS. He traces that commitment back to childhood, when his
struggling single mother regularly took in stray animals that became companions
to a shy young Moby.
Unlike many rock stars who come across as naturally outgoing, brash and
fame-hungry, Moby is known as the polar opposite: quiet, nervous and anxious.
His anxiety, he tells me, comes from many different places.
“It’s informed by heredity, it’s informed by epigenetics and personal
experience, but it’s also just informed by the human condition,” he says.“It’s
informed by the world in which we live. Unless you move to a really
well-appointed cave, even if you’re the most well-adapted person, I don’t know
how anyone can look at the modern world and not be dismayed.”
With eco-anxiety and mental health concerns growing in a period of economic,
environmental and social instability, that outlook may come across as
pessimistic. However, Moby channels his struggles into something that soothes
him.
“Because I’ve been battling anxiety and insomnia for almost my entire life, one
of the only things that helps me to become less anxious, that helps me to
eventually fall asleep at three o’clock in the morning, is some iteration of
quiet, beautiful music.” He describes the “utility of music” as something that
is at times “almost life-saving”. That belief sits at the heart of his new
album,
Future Quiet, which he created with the idea that it might function as
a form of musical therapy."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
