I've been getting into Music theory (and some music psychology, but not much cos it's a pain).. Alot of what we do is very emperical ie we know if you do X Y and Z you'll get a certain result. We dont really know why, we simply use "feeling" to navigate us around... Secondly the western music system has cracks in it, that normal musicains like our sleves dont challenge (about your comment on the notes)... If you wanna understand what i'm talking about listen to the more intresting stuff by Philonious (sp?) Munk ... he really does get some odd sounds... About phrasing, hmmm... I'm sort of in agreement, I'm having serious trouble finding phrasing that hasn't been used to death.. but I do feel more natural writing in 5/4, simply by going by "feeling"... So i dont know...
I think it's important to improve your speed wether you use it or not, simply as it gives you more creative freedoms... but, here's where the but comes in, it's certainly not a substitute for a song that convays "feeling", and there is a limit as to how fast you can go and have people actaully get it, there's a minimum separtion between notes... but as was said before, it creats an EFFECT, rather than being a piece of music....
So i'm still undecided... but i'm agreeing a lot with Ponyone...