Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Description
Keynote for 2017 Shanghai New Music Week The French writer and philosopher, Montaigne (1533-1592) explored ‘ways of living’ in a series of philosophical essays and his playful statement about his cat expresses something of the way he was able to come into a highly empathetic relationship with an amazingly wide range of experiences, things and beings. I propose that composing, far from being ‘useless’, also offers ways of coming close to things through a mode of aesthetic play that allows us to experiment with thinking and feeling.