Hi, all,

There's a truly enjoyable article reprinted in the November/December 2008 issue of the Utne Reader (yes, that's what it's called, after its founder; it's the Reader's Digest of the alternative press) entitled "Blue Notes: The Life-Giving Link Between Mood and Musical Expression," by Moira Farr. It's reprinted from the Walrus, May 2008, a Canadian general interest magazine. You can find it in the archives on www.walrusmagazine.com/ Lots of anecdotes and lots of accessible research, particularly why "sad" songs, like much of what we play on the NAF, make us happy.

I simply prefer sound moods......not science. I want to feel the music, not dissect it.

Rick--

That's okay by me! I'm also trying to exit the cerebral cortex machine myself, more often these days. But I can't always find the off switch. So consider the little science burps a remnant of a youth misspent--reading Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, of course.

As for Star Trek (like that segue?), Data played the violin, and Captain Picard, of course, played. . . the flute! In a parallel life, naturally, but his only memories of that life was the little ditty that came to mind whenever he picked it up. Hm. . . sounds like the research they're writing about in those darned pop science magazines!

Does knowledge of the science lead to more self-consciousness or to higher consciousness (where sound moods might become more elevated)?

Good question. I think it's unanswerable in scientific terms, since doing science with people generally requires lack of information or downright lying about the purpose of the study. Clever species, aren't we?

The brain-scan stuff does suggest that music takes a huge trip around the brain, not necessarily in perfect sequence: from the ear to the amygdlia (golly, it's just too hot to spell) where we process sensations; to the frontal cortext where structure and tune is identified; to the emotional centers of the brain where associations, memories and moods are accessed; and finally to the several places where endorphins are synthesized. Based on this map I'm willing to venture a hypothesis: there is always some kind of "consciousness" involved, if consciousness is roughly equivalent to cognitive rationality ("This piece is in sonata allegro form"). That doesn't however have to mean full-blown analytical cognition always turned on. It can also be "tacit" awareness (like when we drive a car and listen to radio at the same time), or other kinds of logical functions scattered in between (as in,"Gee, I missed the horn solo since the bassist is playing now"). Mood might function differently--there are a lot of folks who get, say, the tonal structure but the emotion goes right by them.

My guess is that for the most part when we hear music we need to employ all the functions, sensory, cognitive, associative and emotional, before "self" consciousness becomes "higher" consciousness. If we stop and get stuck somewhere, we either engage the music some more, perhaps at other waystations, or put on a CD that promises a richer journey.

We haven't defined "self" and "higher" either, so all this is just rhetoric.

Silly me ... I imagined it as a rhetorical question with a fairly clear answer--for the same reason that some works of art or music become enjoyable only after we understand them better, and just as we can learn to savor fine wine or Scotch whiskey even if we initially dislike it. If we view consciousness as a continuum from the unconscious (asleep or dead) to the conscious (awareness and instinct) to the self-conscious (reflection and prognostication) to higher consciousness (the intuition or unself-consciousness of Buddhist philosophy or martial arts) we might argue that only the latter has access to the full range and palette of human emotions.

Of course, we can only accurately gauge ourselves (though fMRI technology is pretty amazing), and we may never know what we could be or could feel if we don't challenge ourselves to do more than react instinctively. I always laugh when people say something like My parents did _____ to me, and I turned out fine. How could they know what they might otherwise have been?

As related to flute playing, I would prefer to learn as much as possible in order to develop a more powerful intuition than to simply react unthinkingly to my immediate circumstances. Maybe that's the human flaw--or just my flaw--that I'll probably never get to that state of unself-consciousness before I die ... but it's worth a try.

Not merely rhetoric, but a very practical goal (or impossible dream), I would say.

As I mowed today, I did not run over a Frog, nor a yellow Grasshopper, I also missed chopping up a few Snakes. This was causing me to think, much the same as you are writing, but I don't think I can explain it well...

I guess if I had to sum up my summation of mowing all day in a cacophony of earplug-buffered noise, I would say it caused me to see that once, or maybe Once, we all, All of Humanity, Once knew "civilization", but not the dictionarydotcom "civ⋅i⋅li⋅za⋅tion
  /ˌsɪvələˈzeɪʃən/ [siv-uh-luh-zey-shuhn]
–noun
1. an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, industry, and government has been reached.
2. those people or nations that have reached such a state.
3. any type of culture, society, etc., of a specific place, time, or group: Greek civilization.
4. the act or process of civilizing or being civilized: Rome's civilization of barbaric tribes was admirable.
5. cultural refinement; refinement of thought and cultural appreciation: The letters of Madame de ..."

version. At One Time, We All knew Civilization throughout all of our daily affairs with "Everything" and not simply "societal norms". Anyway, somehow in my strange self, we are saying the same thing. Toksa.

I've been mulling this over all day because of the power of your images, even though I didn't really understand at first. It finally hit me, though, that many of us metaphorically speaking focus on a single task such as mowing, or even flute playing (or simply on ourselves), and plug our ears to the world beyond these things so much that we miss the effect we might have on frogs, grasshoppers, snakes--and other people. We sometimes shut ourselves off from "civilization" while pretending to participate in it. This is the problem I have with those who say that art can mean anything or that it means whatever a person says it means, effectively shutting out the possibility of shared meanings for a culture or for general humanity.

Thanks for your response. It made me think.

We should rename this thread "The Philosopher's Corner."

Some reactions:

I may have misread Rick's statement about his preferring moods over dissection. If "moods" are emotions, and "dissection" is what we have been calling "self" consciousness, "cognitive rationality," "reflection and prognostication" or the mental origins of "civilization" in the dictionary sense, then I reacted two posts later by saying I didn't think you could listen to music without some dissection simply because of the way the mind works. You can learn to adjust the analytical intensity of that dissection high or low, though, and most of us do.

Rick, if I am misreading your statement, please correct me.

On the other hand, I think I understand Paul's question about self and higher consciousness much better now. I agree that deliberate self-cultivation or self-consciousness, functions our minds actually perform, enriches our musical experience and is well worth it. (I don't know about whiskey--how about beer?). For example, I have been passionate about classical music ever since my freshman music appreciation class, offered by a master teacher who taught not only the forms but the feelings that go with them. I also agree that "higher" or "unself" consciousness is the epitome of musical if not all experience, requiring all the components mentioned, plus that element of Zen mindfulness that brings us back to Being. One Native American term that might be helpful here is the Navajo "hozho" or "balance." When balance between the elements is achieved, their distinctions drop away.

As for civilization, this conversation has led me to wonder if we'd be better off as a civilized species if we can make conscious efforts to reduce the more solipsistic and higherarchical (I actually typed this; I think I'll leave it) connotations of words like "self" or "higher," and meditate on our connection with Life, Earth and Cosmos. And flutes.

Thanks for the discussion, guys!

I read your reply this morning before I left the house. I appreciate, very much, discussions such as this. I believe they create defacto bonds which are made tangible only by interactions. Such is the stuff of Relatedness. We have been inundated with the appendage "good" relations, or, "good" relative, yet, we as Lakota originally knew it was more important to be a full Relative, good/bad together and through that, The People Live. We had to(have to)have an honesty that transcends decorum, and goes straight to effectiveness. Just as we used to be told to "not add anything in, or leave anything out", especially the Stories and reports from Scouts, as honesty in these things meant the People lived...or died. Toksa Ake'. I appreciate discussion so very much. Wopila Tanka.