Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Life Begins at Two

I don't like to get all self-referential this early in the morning, but in my book I present the idea that humanness could never have emerged merely as a result of a big brain. Rather, it could -- and can -- only occur as a result of individuals being linked up in the transitional space between them. Thus, you could say that the large brain was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. The sufficient condition was the invention of the neurologically incomplete and helpless infant (and this is leaving aside the essential factor of the final cause, the nonlocal archetype of man as such). (This, by the way, is one of the reasons why I don't believe intelligent life exists elsewhere -- the evolutionary neck is just too freakishly narrow.)

Interestingly, it is the same with music. "A tone," according to Zuckerkandl, is not yet music." Rather, "music actually begins when a second tone has followed the first." Therefore, strictly speaking, "the smallest particle of music, then, the musical atom, is not properly the tone but the connection of the tone with the tone, the interval." So really, it's a kind of threeness: tone 1, tone 2, and the link between them. Presumably, any living thing with ears can hear a tone. But only humans can link tone to tone in a meaningful way.

Like life itself, music is "ordered motion," a "complex kinetic organism." Not only can we perceive its motion, but its direction. Even children can discern "the rise and fall of the tones in musical space." In other words, they can distinguish "high" notes from "low" ones. Which is interesting, because no one looks at violet and sees that it is "higher" than red; nor could you create visual music by presenting successive beams of light vibrating at different frequencies. For that matter, no one would say "that the fourth floor of a house was sharper than the third, the first flatter then the second" (Zuckerkandl).

In music, high notes, such as those played by the flute, are often associated with gaity, with spring, with frivolity, with angels and fairies and similarly fruity things. Is this just culturally conditioned? Would it be possible to use the flute to express deep gravity, like the voice of God? I doubt it; not for nothing is Barney's last name Fife. However, it can obviously communicate an aspect of God, which is no doubt why Krishna is never far from his flute. A quick google search reveals the following:

"Flute is the oldest musical instrument known to mankind.... the flute is very close to Nature and sounds very melodious when played in an atmosphere surrounded by Nature.... For example, if you take a short flute to mountains or a thick forest and then play, the echo of the sound bouncing back either from the leaves of the trees or from the mountains is simply very delightful. Every flute player in such circumstances receives a celestial experience. Nature actually talks back to you."

Back to the twoness -- or threeness -- of music. Like time, music "moves forward," even while retaining and remembering the past. The reason why music is possible is that one tone recalls the previous one and "anticipates" the next; there is a curious lack of fulfillment present to each tone, as it "completes itself" by handing over the melody to its neighbor. Again, very strange when you stop to think about it: "No musical tone is sufficient unto itself; and as each musical tone points beyond itself, reaches, as it were, a hand to the next, so we too, as these hands reach out, listen tensely and expectantly for each next tone."

Therefore, to be "in" music is a phenomenologically complex state, for one cannot merely be in the moment and hear what it is all about; rather, "to be auditively in the time now sounding means, then, to always be ahead of it too, on the way to the next tone." I suppose it's no different than understanding speech. In so doing, we don't recognize the fact that listening only to the individual words will not reveal the meaning of what the speaker is saying. Rather, we must simultaneously listen to and beyond them.

Seriously, it's amazing that unambiguous meaning can be transmitted from mind to mind, except in the case of purely objective information. In order to accomplish this feat, I must have a meaning in mind, reverse engineer it by selecting the individual words to convey it without distortion and with all subtlety in tact, and then hope that the hearer will take those words and reassemble them to arrive at the same complex meaning.

To cite one obvious example of how communication can go awry, I can't think of a single troll who understands my actual meaning before attacking it. Instead, they use my words to construct a monstrous chimera of their own making, and then attack the trollucination.

Along these lines, at American Digest a commenter remarked that "Science is much harder then religion, because religion doesn't have a lot of really hard math." Actually, it's the opposite. Science, especially the closer it gets to math, is an example of information that can be conveyed from head to head in a very unproblematic, undistorted manner -- which is the very reason why it results in such a philosophically simplistic world, a world far too simple for the human mind to exist in it.

In contrast, the truths, say, of Shakespeare, are far more complex and subtle. Who would be foolish enough to compare the intellect of Shakespeare to the typical worker bee scientist? Among other things, Shakespeare, although writing 400 years ago without benefit of modern science, tapped into deep human truths that will always be true. Unlike science, they are not subject to fashion or to revocation by a tenure-seeking mediocrity.

In Our Culture, What's Left of It, there is a chapter entitled Why Shakespeare Is for All Time. Scientists tell us that there is no such thing as "essences," including such fanciful notions as "self" or "human nature." Fortunately, Shakespeare knows nothing of that postmodern nonsense, but "is interested in the essentials of human nature, not the accidentals of human history."

And there is surely a reason why one can pass through our elite universities without ever encountering Shakespeare, but learning all kinds of multicultural nonsense about lesbian poets and post-colonial authors of color.

For, among other things, Shakespeare undercuts the first principle of the left by destroying "the utopian illusion that social arrangements can be made so perfect that men will no longer have to be good." He knows that human nature is inclined toward the temptation to evil, which "will always make a mockery of attempts at perfection based upon manipulation of the environment." Instead, "prevention of evil" will always "require personal self-control and the conscious limitation of appetites" (Dalrymple).

In contrast, one could master everything there is to know about natural selection, but it would reveal no wisdom whatsoever: "Statistics will not lead us to enlightenment about ourselves, any more than elucidation of the human genome will render Shakespeare redundant. Those who think that an understanding of the double helix is the same as an understanding of ourselves are not only prey to an illusion but are stunting themselves as human beings, condemning themselves not to an advance of self-understanding, but to a positive retrogression" (Dalrymple).

This is an example of how the melody of man can be played backward to reveal a hidden satanic message.

49 comments:

Stephen Macdonald said...

Dalrymple has such a fine mind and an impeccable moral sensibility. I'm always a bit mystified when I learn men like him are atheists. I suppose it represents a limitation for which the afflicted compensate by unconsciously leaning on the spiritual foundation of the culture in question.

Gagdad @ work said...

He had an exceedingly strange childhood. He says that his parents literally spoke not a word to each other in his presence. Thus, there was a total lack of familial harmony, not to mention a failure to achieve the sense of three-in-onement.

GB said...

Speaking of which, it is commonly the psychic "wound" that is the source of special insight.

mushroom said...

Dalrymple doesn't believe in the god I don't believe in either.

With regard to the high/low note thing, when my granddaughter was between two and three, my wife would let her play with one of her electronic keyboards. My granddaughter would hit the highest note on the far right, and say, "This is Jesus." She would then hit the lowest note on the left, drop her own voice, and say, "This is the devil."

mushroom said...

Speaking of which, it is commonly the psychic "wound" that is the source of special insight.

I know somebody that needs to hear that today. Thank you.

Retriever said...

I like the link to and baby makes three. Had never thought of how that relates to the Trinity before. Thinking of how things are changed, changed utterly by the kid's arrival, and how it becomes a three D family as opposed to 2D. More, tho, with your relating it to music, thinking how two notes can't do that much to each other, but three can harmonize or make a horrific din. Also, thinking about how a three legged stool is stable, even on an uneven surface. And dimly remembered geometry on triangles...

As to Dalrymple, it's sad for him. I don't mean that patronisingly, as he is so perceptive and writes so well about cultural malaise. I would hope and pray that he finds his way home to God (the world is full of spiritual orphans who achieve great things but still lack)

I dunno about the family harmony as the prerequisite for a relationship with God, tho. May be misreading your comment, but thinking about the hideous family dynamics in the Old Testament that nevertheless shaped the patriarchs and prophets. Also, I have always been curious about the home life of Jesus. In my old life, working with kids in care, they used to speculate endlessly about how Joseph must have felt, being Jesus' foster father, and the complicated emotions that must have prevailed in that divine/human triangle. They were not being irreverent, but they knew foster parents, and they knew stepparents...

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, there is no linear relationship between a certain kind of family and a particular type of pathology. There are just too many other variables.

Gandalin said...

Bob,

Thank you for the comment on the interval. This is exactly what I was trying to point towards in my brief comment yesterday. The interval is the unit of music, not the tone.

Peter Plonsky used to say that conventional western music was based on pitch (the sound of the nervous system) and rhythm (the sound of the circulatory system), whereas he was interested in a music based on glissando - a way of connecting two pitches across a rhythmic time-span.

But I think the concept of the interval is better.

It suggests that what defines music is not a pitch, what you call a tone, but the relationship between two tones or pitches.

Life can very well be characterized as a musical form.

Spiritual life, in particular. The Scriptures of many religions are like the score that requires a performance, the living lives of the practitioners, in order to come into being.

Traditions can appear to become ossified when they devote more effort to commenting on the score than to performing the music.

But the score is vitally important, to maintain the continuity of the music, and to know that the same music is being enlivened.

julie said...

Speaking of babies...

Going back to notes and tones, it's interesting how some intervals sound beautiful until they get set into motion one after the other and what sounded good can suddenly sound awful (like parallel 5ths). And conversely, some intervals that sound awful and discordant alone can actually enhance and add new meaning to a chord (as in a major 7th).

Rick said...

This sort of scientific approach to music, may explain a good deal of just what it is, but it can't explain all of it, can it? I know we know this. I overheard a song the other day that followed all the rules but man I wouldn't call it music. It was a stupid, not even goofy waste of time. But it was produced in a studio. And I guess the kid driving the car thought it was for him. I can appreciate a light bubble gum pop song.
The part that was missing, the beauty, I suppose, seems to be the core of the thing, and you just can't explain that part. You know it when you hear it. And when you don't.

Rick said...

In fact, I might say that you can tell that you are going to like a song before you like it yet.
Would you say this was the case with you and jazz, Bob? ...like you knew something was there but you couldn't hear it yet?

shoprat said...

Like Huxley's Brave New World where the worker drones of that society couldn't even comprehend what Shakespeare was saying.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Good evening fellow Raccoons.
I'm catching up today after another 'puter mal-function, but at least we (Patti, actually) discovered the root problem, so here's hopin' I can get back to the helm and get this ship underWay.

Please pray for our oldest daughter who has a bad case of the swine flu.

Thankfully, the swine flu is milder than the "flu" flu, but it's been hitting young folks hard, due to less exposure to viruses than us older, er, more mature folks, from what I understand.

We're also prayin' our granddaughter don't contract it.
Thank you.

Mushroom said...
Speaking of which, it is commonly the psychic "wound" that is the source of special insight.

"I know somebody that needs to hear that today. Thank you."

Hear here! :^)

Anonymous said...

Who would be foolish enough to compare the intellect of Shakespeare to the typical worker bee scientist?

You, apparently.

Most scientists do not consider themselves in competition with Shakespeare. It takes a mediocre intellect to be incapable of seeing that these two views of the human are complementary rather than competitive.

Gagdad Bob said...

I'll say!

Stephen Macdonald said...

Factoid:

Designated Hitter as Moral Hazard: American League batters are 15% more likely to be hit by a pitch than National League batters.

Daniel Pink is the Dalrymple of baseball.

ge said...

i took 5-year-old isabella to her beginners violin class...on the way home a string quartet was on the radio. "They're saying 'Hello! Hello!'" she observed, re the strings' strains! [no vocals present]

Van Harvey said...

"a commenter remarked that "Science is much harder then religion, because religion doesn't have a lot of really hard math." Actually, it's the opposite. Science, especially the closer it gets to math, is an example of information that can be conveyed from head to head in a very unproblematic, undistorted manner -- which is the very reason why it results in such a philosophically simplistic world, a world far too simple for the human mind to exist in it. "

The sort of person who says such a thing, is the type who mistakes calculating for thinking, and defines 'correct' answers, as only those which can be examined in near perceptual level terms, such as "(think... think... think... 3 guzinta 13... 4 timeswid 1 left over...think... think... think...) ' so by assigning carefully calculated numerical values to behaviors such as generosity and punishment, this theory comes out to 4.1 and that theory comes out to 4.1... so... (think...think...think...) yep I agree, free will is an illusion and darwininian cant trumps all religious theory "

The truth is that scientistic thinking, as with the modernistic proregressive philosophy which gave rise to it, is anti-conceptual, and anti-hierarchical, and so in the most meaningful sense, is not able to recognize the wider, deeper Truths which make contemplation, even life, worthwhile... "a world far too simple for the human mind to exist in it" indeed.

When they say they find Shakespeare boring or spiritual thought pointless, it's sort of the equivalent of a tambourine shaker looking at sheet music for Mozart and tossing it aside "Pshaw! Tells a person nothing about where and how hard to shake it! "

"This is an example of how the melody of man can be played backward to reveal a hidden satanic message."

Yep.

Van Harvey said...

mushroom said "Dalrymple doesn't believe in the god I don't believe in either."

;-)

Me neither.

julie said...

Chastek:

"If these poor children had no taste for harmony by nature, then we owed it to them to culture this taste in them through art, education, social pressures, the promotion of good music and the shunning of bad music. It would be hard to imagine a more consummate failure than the failure of popular and elite Western culture over the last sixty years to provide this basic good to people."

Anonymous said...

Bob wrote:

"This, by the way, is one of the reasons why I don't believe intelligent life exists elsewhere -- the evolutionary neck is just too freakishly narrow.)"

I am curious as to why, aside from the freakishly narrow evolutionary neck,you don't think intelligent life exists elsewhere.

I've given it some thought and I can't come up with any reasons.


Reddy to Trollucinate like A MAdMan....

Gagdad Bob said...

Maybe my standards are just higher.

Late Convert (the loyal lurker) said...

"In music, high notes, such as those played by the flute, are often associated with gaity, with spring, with frivolity, with angels and fairies and similarly fruity things. Is this just culturally conditioned? Would it be possible to use the flute to express deep gravity, like the voice of God?"

The best symphonic flautists produce a tone with cold, hard steel at the core. It pains me a bit to say it, but the trumpets will merely announce God's arrival; his voice will surely be the French Horn's. Brahms symphonies prove this beyond the shadow of a doubt (OK I'm only half-kidding).

Joan of Argghh! said...

The reason why music is possible is that one tone recalls the previous one and "anticipates" the next; there is a curious lack of fulfillment present to each tone, as it "completes itself" by handing over the melody to its neighbor

This is why I had to tell my massage therapist that her choice of "zen music" was totally enervating, and had almost stressed me to the point of madness. She had a CD of so-called music that was only one long sustained note with buzzing and tinkling bells all around it.

It created the opposite of peace and tranquility in my Spirit, and told me volumes about her own. I couldn't explain to her in words what was wrong, but now I know that I was experiencing the nihilistic "music" of nothingness. This confirms to me also, that eternal nothingness is not bliss. It is madness.

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, and soon to be discussed in far more detail in a subsequent series of posts...

Joan of Argghh! said...

To be honest, I did tell her that her music made me contemplate. . .

Contemplate taking a baseball bat to the stero!

.

Rick said...

Patient: “Doc, there’s something wrong with my stereo right after I listen to zen music.”

Doc: “Don’t listen to zen music.”

RR

godfrey said...

as always, bob, this is fun and stimulating reading. thanks.

trollicious said...

"To cite one obvious example of how communication can go awry, I can't think of a single troll who understands my actual meaning before attacking it. Instead, they use my words to construct a monstrous chimera of their own making, and then attack the trollucination."

Wow. Then you either aren't paying attention or you are persecuted past the point of pleasantry by the idea that someone somewhere may understand your idea, yet disagree with you. You don't really see yourself as a preacher, do you Bob? I certainly don't. You seem more like a songster than a huckster, and where is it written that the audience has to agree with your meaning? Can't we still sway with the music? Give yourself a break. I sure have.

spanky said...

WTF????

Rick said...

Bob,
In your current reading, or any previous, have you ever seen mention of a culture (ever) without a form of music? Or even a person who was without any experience/knowledge of music of any kind? Like I think you’ve mentioned a feral boy in your book, let’s say, whose first experience of music was after childhood?
I guess what I’m getting at is, can we know how much of a love for music is learned? All of it? None of it? Is all of it just simply re-awakened?
I know how I’d like to answer, maybe I could guess yours, but what do you know about my first three questions?

RR

godfrey said...

Melody and rhythm are of course inseparable because melody is a sequence of tones.

A Benedictine monk named Dom Mocquereau at Solesmes Abbey in France described the rhythm of Gregorian chant (a foundational art form in the West in many ways) as "free" (i.e. non-metrical) rhythm. This does not mean random rhythm, which would not be rhythm at all, but mere randomness. Rhythm represents an ordering of some kind.

I think it's derivative of some earlier theorist's view, but no matter: Mocquereau says that a single isolated beat is not a rhythm. To have the latter, you need at least two beats, or a pair. Da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, etc. A heartbeat, for instance. So duple rhythm is "elemental." But here's the interesting corollary: triple rhythm is also elemental, because if you try to reduce it to smaller rhythmic groups, you get a group of 2 and ... a singleton of 1, which is not rhythmical. Consequently, a group of three beats is also "elemental."

http://musicasacra.com/pdf/mocq-web.pdf

At this point, the real fun begins: a Gregorian chant, being the musical setting of a text (e.g. a psalm), largely follows the rhythm of that text. The chant compositors made free-rhythm melodies, which can be described as a daisy-chain of rhythmic groups of 2 and groups of 3. Because the sequence is not regular/symmetrical, you get this beautiful, undulating rhythmic effect, a kind of bouyancy, a sense of weightlessness.

Well-sung, this kind of chant is exquisitely serene and, I would say, iconic. Check out CD's by the Nova Schola Gregoriana (Italy), just to take one of many examples.

In short, triple rhythm is an elemental rhythm. Mixed with duple rhythm, you have something beautifully natural and suggestive of divine relations.

Gagdad Bob said...

Rick:

One of Zuckerkandl's points in volume 2 is that no, there is no culture without music, just as there is no culture without language or religion. Thus, man and music co-arise; or, you could even say in a certain sense that "man is music" (although music is not man, i.e. the whole of man).

Dang, I wish I had more time to blog. Maybe tomorrow....

debass said...

Is rap music, music? It has no melody. Many primitive cultures have only rhythms without melody or harmony. Is that music?

Gagdad Bob said...

If man can make music, this must bring with it the absurd possibility of music that is "less than music." Like evil, it is a deprivation, not an ontological reality.

Van Harvey said...

With apologies to NB, I agree.

godfrey said...

of course "rap music" is music

music is organized sound

it's a math

it's not melodic, though

its harmony is mainly pan-tonal collage through sampling, weaker regard for key center, etc.

this is from a guy who loves contrapuntal music above all else

Rick said...

Spengler says, this is what Benedict has to say on the matter:

“Music begins with respiration and pulse, the inborn rhythms of human life. We may intensify these rhythms with percussive accents and electronic amplification and, through this intensification, achieve the momentary sort of exaltation that seems to buoy the audience at rock concerts. As Benedict has written, this is the opposite of Christian worship: “It is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe.”

It's an interesting read. I think NB mentioned it a while back..
RR

Rick said...

Van, you look different.
New books?

RR :-)

Rick said...

That better be a "Van for Prez" mug.

RR

Retriever said...

But, Anonymous, what about Christian rock or other Christian forms of modern music? It isn't all schlock. And it isn't the opposite of Christian worship. In fact the services where it is played well are twice the size of those with the Bach, etc. that I personally prefer.

Rick said...

Hey, I'm just tellin you what I heard at Spengla's.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the concept either, but it's a start. Of something. I'm considering it anyway... running it through the filter..

:-)

RR

julie said...

Music: the universal language.

Retriever, I think it depends both on the music and on where it takes you. If you're feeling elemental passions for the people onstage, regardless of the brand of music (Christian rock bands don't get an exemption), you hover closer to cultic worship. If, however, you're carried closer to O by the experience, then it works in service of something higher.

Just my 2¢.

Aquila said...

OT: Leftist child abuse and exploitation at its finest.

Retriever said...

Agree, Julie. Thinking that one of the things I like in more traditional worship is that the choir and organist are either up in a gallery or behind a screen or in the choir so at least partially masked. So one can just listen without having a performance in one's face (which can lead some to focus more on the personalities than the music).
Also, the first time I took my son to hear the new (and good) band at the evening service at our church, I was sure he would like it. Instead, he said "Mom, it seems too much like a show..." Out of the mouths of babes (he was 10). The musician/minister at that service was very charismatic, but definitely too much of a performer and it could be distracting at times. I think ideally one never sees the singers/musicians/organist and then one can sometimes be lifted up out of oneself into timelessness with God. One's prayers dispersing and moving like incense clouds up thru a beam of light.

Another example of sound bringing one closer to God, I think, is that having the Scripture reader of the day up front seems dead wrong. It becomes a performance and people can focus more on the person than the Word. Better to have them read in a gallery so people can hear the Word of God disembodied, tho real.

In the same church (which tends towards too much of the cult of the personality of the minister as many Protestant ones do), a beautiful Stations of the Cross on Good Friday evening, in the dark with just candles, and those of us who read the various stations are invisible, up in a gallery. People may or may not recognize the voices, but it's the story they get lost in, not whether a reader fumbles or has ugly glasses or a grey suit.

Thinking about how people must have cherished concerts or overheard fragments of music more before recorded music, paid more attention. In a similar vein, how the average medieval peasant would have only ever heard the Word of God (and, maybe, seen a stained glass window with one image from Scripture). Never read it. But how much more alive a story comes via music or being read aloud (so long as the reader is intelligible!)

Stephen Macdonald said...

Factoid with serious implications, if true:

Apparently the Indian practice of sutee (burning of wives at husband's funeral) originated when invading Arab Muslims systematically enslaved and gang-raped all captured females regardless of age. Many Hindu women elected to commit suicide rather than fall into their hands.

Not sure yet if this is true. It came from a Bangladeshi scholar in a newspaper I found on the plane.

Van Harvey said...

Godfrey said "of course "rap music" is music music is organized sound"

Rap is to music, as Kant is to Philosophy - 'philosophical' machinations engaged in to support a predetermined conclusion, but having nothing to do with engaging with, finding or even pursuing, truth - instead it deliberately avoids or hides the truth. Rap may utilize rhythm and some crude approximations of harmony, but for an alternate purpose having nothing whatsoever to do with Music.

Van Harvey said...

Ricky said "Van, you look different. New books?"

More books, less hair.

;-)

Van Harvey said...

Heh, speaking of pictures, I got caught in this one between & behind the two labcoats, (yeah, with the wires around my neck. geek.) Stephanie on the left, who pulled this whole thing together, with just 5 days notice. I gave a miniscule bit of aid, but as is typical with Nurses, she did what had to be done and made the Dr. (on the right... he wasn't sure what to do with the ball when he got it & tossed it to her) look good.

Pasty face harry reid might be feeling good about his vote today, but we'll see about making tomorrow a different story.

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