Uncommon Measure

How does time shape consciousness, and consciousness, time? Do we live in time, or does time live in us? And how does music, with its patterns of rhythm and harmony, inform our experience of time? Uncommon Measure: Reflections on Music, Performance, andthe Science of Time explores these questions from the perspective of a young Korean American who dedicated herself to perfecting her art until, crippled by performance anxiety, she was forced to give up her dreams of becoming a career solo violinist. Anchoring her narrative in illuminating research in neuroscience and theories of quantum physics, Hodges traces her own passage through model-minority expectations and examines her immigrant mother's encounters with racism to come to terms with the meaning of a life in music. The lessons she learns enable her to move from anxiety toward acceptance, from rote re-creation toward the freedom of improvisation--