By popular demand...
I was at the mall recently, hanging out with Jessica, as is often the case (much to her boyfriend's dismay). I noticed the way people were walking- in various lines and layers, and with the same cadence. Not just in step with the people they were immediately with- one could follow a rhytm back a good hundred feet, possibly farther, I couldn't tell from where I was. And it occurred to me, I'd had a similar moment before, back in the movie theatre when I saw everybody dancing. It made me think, as most things do.
I'm thinking there's a natural rhythm to, at the least, humanity. Bear in mind that the human imperative is the transfer of information, through space as well as through time. Now consider the most common means of sharing information- spoken and written language, paintings and sculptures and other art, music, even the less conscious communications like smell and taste. They're all incredibly complicated, if one strips the meaning from them. The English language uses a base-26 mathematical system (that's rooted in emotion, rather than logic). Base-26! I can't even do hexadecimal, but we use 26 characters to define the entirety of existence, and we use it with such freedom and confidence that we require it to think. Seems like awfully few, until we realize that maybe 95% of our species doesn't know anything other than decimal.
What's the most basic means of transfering data? What method do computers use, since we, as humans, can't accomplish any more difficult? Binary. On, off. Rhythm is basically just that- a series of ons and offs, one sound or event accented while others are not. I'm thinking people walk to the same beat due to the fact that they're all communicating with each other in a subconscious form of binary. Step, Step, Step, Step, Step, Step. 101010101010. This translates to a very simple message. "Hello, human. I am a human, and no threat. Observe my walkingness, which is the same as yours." If you think it's untrue, consider it next time you're in a public place, and somebody's running at you. People walk at you all the time at the mall, and you don't notice them. But a running person has a different rhytm than you, and is thus noticed.
I don't think anybody makes music. I think people are part of a huge system, and that system is so ingrained in everything we are that we're unaware of it. It's a constant pattern of binary, a function of humanity, an on-off that we're communicating even while asleep. The beat. The song. So music as we know it, as guitars and keyboards and scratched records and eukuleles, is just an expression of the system, the greater beat we live in and communicate with. It's humans complicating another means of communicating, is all.
I don't know, I didn't explain this very well. I'm mighty tired. I'll check back/revise later.
N
I'm thinking there's a natural rhythm to, at the least, humanity. Bear in mind that the human imperative is the transfer of information, through space as well as through time. Now consider the most common means of sharing information- spoken and written language, paintings and sculptures and other art, music, even the less conscious communications like smell and taste. They're all incredibly complicated, if one strips the meaning from them. The English language uses a base-26 mathematical system (that's rooted in emotion, rather than logic). Base-26! I can't even do hexadecimal, but we use 26 characters to define the entirety of existence, and we use it with such freedom and confidence that we require it to think. Seems like awfully few, until we realize that maybe 95% of our species doesn't know anything other than decimal.
What's the most basic means of transfering data? What method do computers use, since we, as humans, can't accomplish any more difficult? Binary. On, off. Rhythm is basically just that- a series of ons and offs, one sound or event accented while others are not. I'm thinking people walk to the same beat due to the fact that they're all communicating with each other in a subconscious form of binary. Step, Step, Step, Step, Step, Step. 101010101010. This translates to a very simple message. "Hello, human. I am a human, and no threat. Observe my walkingness, which is the same as yours." If you think it's untrue, consider it next time you're in a public place, and somebody's running at you. People walk at you all the time at the mall, and you don't notice them. But a running person has a different rhytm than you, and is thus noticed.
I don't think anybody makes music. I think people are part of a huge system, and that system is so ingrained in everything we are that we're unaware of it. It's a constant pattern of binary, a function of humanity, an on-off that we're communicating even while asleep. The beat. The song. So music as we know it, as guitars and keyboards and scratched records and eukuleles, is just an expression of the system, the greater beat we live in and communicate with. It's humans complicating another means of communicating, is all.
I don't know, I didn't explain this very well. I'm mighty tired. I'll check back/revise later.
N