Essay 1 - Schopenhauer & Andrew Bird, Danse Caribe

The passage from the text that I used in my original blog post and in my paper is the following: "He therefore draws nature into himself, so that he feels it to be only an accident of his own being. In this sense Byron says: Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part / Of me and my soul, as I of them?" (83)

My paper is structured first with an overview of Schopenhauer's philosophy, then with a more in-depth look at how he conceives of art and music. I look at how the listener is transformed, body and soul, when listening to music, and I argue that Andrew Bird's "Danse Caribe" is the type of song that Schopenhauer had in mind. I talk specifically about the combination of lyrical and non-lyrical music in the song, and about how it accentuates the non-lyrical violin solo that has the type of powerful melody, one that brings us up and down, then side to side, as non-representational feeling, a story of movements that allows us to access and ultimately glimpse the Will.