From: mgresham@dscatl.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Dream On (was: Re: John Cage is Dead)
Date: 31 Aug 92 04:49:16 GMT
Reply-To: mgresham@dscatl.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Organization: Digital Systems Co,  Atlanta, Ga

In article <1992Aug29.234102.15364@nuscc.nus.sg> smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:
}In article <1992Aug29.020131.24741@cs.rochester.edu> steyn@cs.rochester.edu
}(Gavin Steyn) writes:
}>    I'm really not sure how much overlap there
}>really is between different people's images of music.  Personally, most music
}>really doesn't put a picture in my head.  But whenever I talk to friends about
}>what music makes them think of, they always say that it makes them think of
}>a specific image (my guitar teacher and I clash pretty frequently on this
}>point--he asks me what a piece makes me picture, and I can only say,
}>"nothing."  It makes me feel something, but I never get a picture).  And
}>so there's just no contact on that level.
}>
}The trouble is that, for better or worse, just about all the communicating we
}do is verbal.  (Obviously, in THIS particular medium we have no choice.)  My
}guess is that there are various technical matters over which you communicate
}with your guitar teacher at a non-verbal (probably primarily motor) level;
}but when it comes to just "talking" about a given piece of music, all we seem
}to be able to do is . . . TALK about it.  That just happens to be the
}communication channel we use most heavily.
}
}There is a theory about dreams which has received a fair amount of attention
}recently.  The theory basically says that REM sleep is a period of extensive,
}but highly random, cortical activity.  However, just as nature abhors a
}vacuum, the mind abhors lack of pattern;  so, immediately upon waking,
}the first thing the mind does with all that randomness is to try to make
}sense out of it.  It does this by INTERPRETING the randomness as a story;
}and, VOILA, there is your dream!  One of the reasons I like this theory is
}that it provides an interesting justification for Freud.  It is not that there
}is all this evidence which is buried in the UNCONSCIOUS but rather that there
}is this CONSCIOUS activity of dream-fabrication.  A person who relates a dream
}is basically telling a story he made up.  Freud's approach may be realized as
}one of asking what sort of mental state would dispose one to make up that
}particular story.

Time for me to go out on a limb again (after all this time) with
some "intuitive" explorations on this.

Take this "random cortical activity" for example.

If I recall correctly, Stephen Jay Gould (who also happens to sing
bass in the Boston Cecilia) stunned the "survival of the fittest"
world by postulating that some species developed particular
features not because of "survival," but because those features
(such as the "square snail" shell) were all that were possible
among the options.  What if, amid the great variety of features
within homo sapiens, there are only a given set (however large) of
possible structural possibilities in cortical development.
Within those possibilities, then, the "random activity" would lead
to production of a then limited (though great) possible routes to
consequences, shaped (filtered?) by the experiences of the
idividual (within those available to it within the cutural
context) which had a role in developing the cortical stucture
as the individual developed; hence, the kinds of concepts or
images which could emerge from such random cortical activity would
also be limited (though great) and could therefore draw similarities
with other indivduals of similar cultural experience, but draw
differences from being that of individuals with different
individual experiences.  Enough similarity of cultural experience
would exist to misleadingly give the impression that the "expression"
comes from the "work of art" in spite of the marked differences in
individual images (or "feelings") about the very same work.

In other words, the random cortical activity occurs in a changing
"Pachinko game of the brain."  The activity is "random" though it
is within a fairly definitive frame (of mind).

Ok, ill-formed because this is all off the top of my head as I
type, but Steve (Smoliar), do you get the gist of what I am saying,
and can you give it better verbal expression (from your past
observations on my other intuitive ramblings)?  (You can also
think about how this relates back to Cage.)



Cheers,

--Mark Gresham

dscatl!mgresham@gatech.edu

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Newsgroups: rec.music.classical