(no subject)
If the truth exists and is meant to be found, one needs to look no further than music. That is not to say that music holds the truth, although this statement is certainly valid and arguable, but rather is to say that if there is a truth, it borrows from the duality that music allows. Truth, after all, as we are meant to understand it, is anything but one-dimensional. Truth is many things: it is all around us yet entirely incommunicable through any standard means of communication that we tend to favor; it is everything and nothing all at once.
Clarification, of course, is needed. Truth cannot be shared through the written or spoken word. Certainly, there is an element of truth in every word we utter and every syllable that we compose, but this truth manifests itself as words only until it is augmented by something which can appeal to our emotions as well. The communicable part of truth is logic, is a truth that already lies within each one of us and is merely waiting to be brought out. The latent pieces of truth are the ones that we are born with, they are the truths that we possess without ever knowing them, are the truths that we know without ever being able to explain them. It is not the latency of truth which makes it so hard to realize, however. No, truth is communicated in ways that we cannot understand ourselves, and just as much as we require this communication, the communication requires us so that we may be vehicles for its transmission to the world.
What music provides the listener with is an aesthetic experience; it communicates to us in ways that we cannot communicate with ourselves or with one another. Our ability to communicate as humans is limited to our abilities to construct, learn and share a common language, and goes no further. However, we are able to transcend this boundary by using other tools, namely the arts. However, where a painting may speak to its viewers in ways that the viewers could not speak to or amongst themselves, the communication originated by static art is temporal, and relatively unimpressive. Communication that is introduced musically inherently possesses a dynamic quality that the still arts cannot match. This is not a reprehension of the still arts, but rather a summation of its abilities as it pertains to communicating dynamically. Where music can change, still art cannot, and therefore is unable to communicate with its audience in the way that music can.
So where does the dynamic nature of music come into play as regarding our discussion of truth? Simply, music does two things. Firstly, it communicates in the aesthetic realm, something that both dynamic and static arts can do. Secondly, and particular to the genre of dynamic art, it develops and maintains an ever-changing presence, displaying the effects and affects of emotion and energy that still art cannot develop as extensively. Still art does maintain the ability to express emotion and energy, but it can never change the emotion or energy, two variables which are extremely dynamic and need to be able to change in order to communicate with their audience. But music and its dynamic qualities as an art are little without the presence of written and spoken (sung) communication to augment its ability to communicate.
Words, as we have discussed previously, are what we as a race use to share thoughts and ideas with one another. Music is a way of sharing emotions and energies with one another. While words have the potential to describe emotion and depict certain things, the use of any adjective form creates a bias and a stereotypical response to any given ideal. Here we review Dana Gioia's poem entitled Words:
The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.
And one word transforms it into something less or other-
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.
Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper-
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.
The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always-
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.
Although using words, Gioia clearly argues his case that the use of words not only typifies but de-humanizes any situation which they are used to describe. As a race, we are not above the use of words - they are in fact our best asset when it comes to sharing ideas and thoughts - but words cannot appropriately communicate the aesthetic. Something else is needed in order to show an audience the way in which one feels at a given time. This is where music comes in. Dynamic by nature and possessing a natural duality, music not only tells the way in which the author feels, but also goes on the chronologically depict the rising and falling of their emotions. In this way, one is able to verbally write or speak the correct words to explain the story that they are attempting to communicate, and to also take the audience on a journey through their own ups and downs, and make them feel what the author is feeling as the piece is being written.
Truth, as previously mentioned, is something innate in humanity; we are all born with a little piece of truth inside of us. Whether or not anyone will ever be able to realize the whole truth remains to be seen. But if there is ever a chance for someone to realize the hidden meanings that the world has in store for us, it will be with the aide of music along with his fellow man.
And this, of course, is why we pay money to be a member of a faceless audience serenaded by all-too-familiar faces on a regular basis. Because with any luck, we will eventually take a piece of their truths with us. Truths which will help us to grow as people, truths which will help us to share with the world. Truths which will take us one step closer to realizing that ever-elusive Meaning of Life.
Clarification, of course, is needed. Truth cannot be shared through the written or spoken word. Certainly, there is an element of truth in every word we utter and every syllable that we compose, but this truth manifests itself as words only until it is augmented by something which can appeal to our emotions as well. The communicable part of truth is logic, is a truth that already lies within each one of us and is merely waiting to be brought out. The latent pieces of truth are the ones that we are born with, they are the truths that we possess without ever knowing them, are the truths that we know without ever being able to explain them. It is not the latency of truth which makes it so hard to realize, however. No, truth is communicated in ways that we cannot understand ourselves, and just as much as we require this communication, the communication requires us so that we may be vehicles for its transmission to the world.
What music provides the listener with is an aesthetic experience; it communicates to us in ways that we cannot communicate with ourselves or with one another. Our ability to communicate as humans is limited to our abilities to construct, learn and share a common language, and goes no further. However, we are able to transcend this boundary by using other tools, namely the arts. However, where a painting may speak to its viewers in ways that the viewers could not speak to or amongst themselves, the communication originated by static art is temporal, and relatively unimpressive. Communication that is introduced musically inherently possesses a dynamic quality that the still arts cannot match. This is not a reprehension of the still arts, but rather a summation of its abilities as it pertains to communicating dynamically. Where music can change, still art cannot, and therefore is unable to communicate with its audience in the way that music can.
So where does the dynamic nature of music come into play as regarding our discussion of truth? Simply, music does two things. Firstly, it communicates in the aesthetic realm, something that both dynamic and static arts can do. Secondly, and particular to the genre of dynamic art, it develops and maintains an ever-changing presence, displaying the effects and affects of emotion and energy that still art cannot develop as extensively. Still art does maintain the ability to express emotion and energy, but it can never change the emotion or energy, two variables which are extremely dynamic and need to be able to change in order to communicate with their audience. But music and its dynamic qualities as an art are little without the presence of written and spoken (sung) communication to augment its ability to communicate.
Words, as we have discussed previously, are what we as a race use to share thoughts and ideas with one another. Music is a way of sharing emotions and energies with one another. While words have the potential to describe emotion and depict certain things, the use of any adjective form creates a bias and a stereotypical response to any given ideal. Here we review Dana Gioia's poem entitled Words:
The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.
And one word transforms it into something less or other-
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.
Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper-
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.
The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always-
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.
Although using words, Gioia clearly argues his case that the use of words not only typifies but de-humanizes any situation which they are used to describe. As a race, we are not above the use of words - they are in fact our best asset when it comes to sharing ideas and thoughts - but words cannot appropriately communicate the aesthetic. Something else is needed in order to show an audience the way in which one feels at a given time. This is where music comes in. Dynamic by nature and possessing a natural duality, music not only tells the way in which the author feels, but also goes on the chronologically depict the rising and falling of their emotions. In this way, one is able to verbally write or speak the correct words to explain the story that they are attempting to communicate, and to also take the audience on a journey through their own ups and downs, and make them feel what the author is feeling as the piece is being written.
Truth, as previously mentioned, is something innate in humanity; we are all born with a little piece of truth inside of us. Whether or not anyone will ever be able to realize the whole truth remains to be seen. But if there is ever a chance for someone to realize the hidden meanings that the world has in store for us, it will be with the aide of music along with his fellow man.
And this, of course, is why we pay money to be a member of a faceless audience serenaded by all-too-familiar faces on a regular basis. Because with any luck, we will eventually take a piece of their truths with us. Truths which will help us to grow as people, truths which will help us to share with the world. Truths which will take us one step closer to realizing that ever-elusive Meaning of Life.