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This video project, as almost all of my projects have, started out as a very different beast than the one I ended up with. I always intended to do a video project about the influence of social media on people's emotions, but as I was musing and brainstorming I started thinking about a very recent time in my life when my emotions became largely dictated by digital communications from a particular person. This seemed to fit well within McLuhan's idea about a "simultaneous happening," and that "we have had to shift our stress of attention from action to reaction." (McLuhan 63) I don't think this was a good shift in my case. I felt nauseous waiting for the next excruciatingly emotional texts, or I was learning about Instagram posts second- or third-hand when they contained important information that one really should not be posting on social media. I felt constantly blindsided. I could never see the next big event coming, I could only wait for the floor to d

  John Cage, circa 1986. I have never considered silence as much as before I started researching this man. More than even his connections to McLuhan, I found myself wanting to write about silence in John Cage's works and how deeply important it is to his art. I am often told when performing solo music to "take more time" or allow myself time to breathe and time for the music to breathe. In orchestra rehearsals, sometimes we are told to make the silences as exciting as the sounds, if it fits the character of the piece. However, I have never taken it to the level of Cage. It inspires me to seek silence out in music, and play around with it too. I don't think I could be as brave about it as him, but I think I would learn a lot from the attempt alone. I did also find joy in reading about Cage's life and work and thinking about his connections to McLuhan. His artistic sensibilities are somewhat unfathomable to me, for the reasons mentioned above, but he seems like some