Excellent stuff...thanks for sharing with everyone. Again, THIS is what the
list should be about - NOT how bad our President is...although I agree with
a previous post pertaining to the importance of getting inside the mind of
fellow music lovers and musicians.
Thanks Muffin...
quoted 83 lines From: Muffin <muffin@signmytits.com>
>From: Muffin <muffin@signmytits.com>
>To: <idm@hyperreal.org>
>Subject: Re: [idm] Music
>Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 21:52:40 +0100
>
>on 10/10/02 8:27 pm the person going by the name Jason Stickel at
>j_stickel_otfp@hotmail.com spake :
>
> > Anyway, this is somewhat related, but a bit off topic from the initial
> > post...BUT, I recently read an article pertaining to a small percentage
>of
> > people who are able to describe tastes as geometric shapes. They
> > interviewed this guy who was talking about how a certain taste, say,
>"sour",
> > for example, tasted like triangles. Really strange, but I suppose it
>ties
> > into that whole aesthetic of relating emotion to sound on some
> > scatterbrained, mescaline trip type of level. Good stuff, this is what
>the
> > list SHOULD be all about...my humble opinion of course...
>
>Search for 'synaesthesia' [american spelling is 'synesthesia'] ... The
>Oxfored English Dictionary describes this as 'the production of a sense
>impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of
>another sense or part of the body'.
>
>I've met a few musicians who are affected by this psychological[1]
>condition, most commonly the 'see sound'. Each one describes it
>differently,
>some see tone and timbre as colour and shape, other's see melody as shape
>and colour and form, some even have sound hint at smells. I've experience
>music give me goose-bumps. One has to consider how the mind interprets
>sound. Whilst we may be able to identify the individual components of a
>piece of music to say 'Drums', 'Guitar', 'Voice' [ok not IDM] does the
>synaesthesic affect happen at a higher or lower brain level [IE before we
>understand the sound or after we understand the sound]. Similar crossing
>happen with numbers and colours or shapes and colours. Some people smell
>words. Some people have colours for the alphabet, and hues for words.
>
>Many many people recount that music will help them remember things the
>other
>way around, such as a song reminding you of a person, or a time or a place,
>or even use it to trigger memories for revision of school subjects. Why
>shouldn't these memories of shapes and colours be triggered by music? Like
>hallucinogenic drugs will bring these shapes and colours into your mind by
>power of association and letting you look at your mind to a deeper level.
>Have you ever been reminded of your childhood by the smell of freshly cut
>grass on a spring morning, or looked at something and had a memory brought
>back that seems unrelated.
>
>In many ways this all seems logical to me. We don't understand how the
>human
>mind works, and how we remember things. We have a good idea that our
>memories are vast, much vaster than what can be stored in a computer memory
>of equivalent size. But how we store memories, in what form, and whether
>they stay intact is another matter. Of course this also leads into the
>philosophy of interpretation, in that as soon as we experience something we
>memorise it, but that is a memory with our own subjective point of view,
>however so is our memory, and the associations with that memory will always
>be tainted by the subjectivity.
>
>It's why music is not just something we hear, but something we feel,
>because
>it is part of a whole experience that is there at the time of the event.
>Close your eyes and you hear the music, and feel the music and the
>temperature of the air, the slight glances of a draught round your neck and
>your bodies wellbeing and the state of the chemical balance in your mind
>[natural or unnatural] are all remembered in one way or another along with
>the music.
>
>My favourite quote on music is Leibniz : "Music is nothing but unconscious
>arithmetic" ... I'd argue with this heavily, but I still like it :)
>
>d.
>
>[1] possibly neuroglogical : see 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat'
>by
>Oliver Sacks
>
>
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