Guten Tag,
Its been a few days since the last post and there has been a lot going on these days in apt 209. Lets see the olympics have started, not without proper drama, NBA All-Star weekend, Tigers press conference, Nick Faust hit 20,000 rating on RYM, Erin Abeln celebrated her birthday, CPAC in Washington DC, OBAMAnomics, Big Papa T is coming down to hang, job hunting, black history month, free jazz and academics. Crazy week.
I want to comment on the distinction between human realities. I have been at a crossroads as of late on what we perceive and how it varies from person to person. Yeah, it may seem apparent that we, as humans, see different social and cultural scenarios with a common reality because we all preceive, but what happens between witness and thought is where I want to examine. Without diving to historical limits, there are a couple notable arguments in this field from Hume and Locke. Hume points that what we see in the external is merely a mental representation of what we think we see. The issues here is where do the representations come from? and how is it so that we just happen to see common things, such as, colors, shapes and words? John Locke accounts for these questions in his argument that there is only the external and because we have innate ideas of things in the external they exist. While these philosophers make valid points, I can only be so critical from a human aspect.
I have recent been exposed to these thoughts and have been trying apply them in the real world with varied success. There are many examples in recent events that I could draw on, music seems like the most interesting to me. Music is a higher form of cognitive style and by style I understand to be a product of taste and taste is acquired through study of the cultures past and present so style is a triumph of what we ultimately perceive in the external. This translates over nicely to what I want to say about music and human perception.
Peoples taste in music seems to me the most interesting part of meeting someone because it says so much about their style. Ok, for example you meet someone that says they are into "everything really" but if you were to play some Coltrane they wouldn't understand because there knowledge only goes so far as their iTunes playlist with Britney Spears, Kid Cudi, 30 Seconds to Mars, one or two Outkast hits and Contemp. Country. Where as someone who is steeped in musical study and seeks to find the source behind the music we hear. I do not mean even to go as far as musical theory studies, but just the search for the movement behind o lets say current pop music. One will almost be lead to understand that different generations had various musical thresholds. In the fifties, stars like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly reigned supreme in the pop charts while the threshold was pushed by hard bop jazz, with Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis. Why is there a small minority of humans that want to examine our beliefs in musical taste?
I would have to say that this where reality differs from one person to another. It is in the variance between witness, or in this case hearing, and thought make their impression and a persons real style is shown. The way a person hears a tune can make all the difference, whether said person is an active listener or passive. There is a different opinion about a given song for every person in the world. This is my point about human perception exactly. How can we say we see the same thing when it clearly varies so much in even musical taste? We can even consider the artist as an example. An artists content could be the same as others, Funk/Pop/Rap, but the form in which they present it in is as different as seeds on a bun.
John Zorn is a prime example of exactly this. As a musical composer as well as music digest-er of sorts, Zorn has made an impression on me that is the reason for this entirely too long of an entry. more to come...
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