...Steve Grand points out that we are more like waves than permanent 'things'. He invites his reader to think... of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there after all, weren't you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place…Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.*
* Some might dispute the literal truth of Grand's statement, for example in the case of bone molecules. But the spirit of it is surely valid. You are more like a wave than a static material thing.
Besides my other numerous circle of acquaintances I have one more intimate confidant..my melancholy. In the midst of my joy, in the midst of my work, she waves to me, calls me to one side, even though physically I stay put. My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known, what wonder, then, that I love her in return. ..Søren Kierkegaard
Melancholy is an emotion often occasioned by people or places; we feel melancholic about a lover or friend, or a meaningful place in our lives, perhaps somewhere we have once lived. The quality of the feeling resembles and overlaps with sadness, but is more refined, involving some degree of pleasure, although not as much as bittersweet pleasure. Melancholy also shares a family resemblance with love, longing, yearning or missing something, as well as feeling nostalgic or the emotion that accompanies reminiscing. Although melancholy clearly belongs to this set of emotions, it is also a distinctive emotion in its own right.
The memories that evoke melancholy are, like other memories, vividly real, faint and sketchy or somewhere in between. The reflective aspect of melancholy often involves the effort of recollection, that is, the reflection necessary for retrieving memories that are faint and sketchy. This explains the solitary state of mind that accompanies melancholy and facilitates the attention needed for such retrieval. When the memories are vivid, or become vivid through retrieval, our reflection is characterized more by contemplation rather than the effort of recollection.
But whether actively recollecting or contemplating, the significance of memories is in their role as a narrative for melancholy. It is in the unfolding of the narrative that we find the more specific objects of this emotion. Melancholy can involve shades of other emotions..sadness, love, longing, pleasure and even dread..and each of these emotions may be a response to either a whole narrative or aspects of it. For example, as the narrative of a past love affair unfolds in memory, a negative feeling, a tinge of sadness, comes when reflecting on the bitter end of the affair; longing and pleasure are felt as we recollect the various pleasures of being with that person; while the dread comes in one sharp moment of recapturing the feeling of loneliness felt without that love. The narrative supplies the objects of each emotional moment in reflection. When examining the melancholic response to art we shall see that the narrative of memories is replaced with the narrative of the artwork where, for instance, the narrative of a film becomes the object of melancholic reflection.
The emotion of melancholy is not unique in its richness and its dual nature..we have pointed out that the sublime enjoys an analogous position..but it deserves more attention in the context of aesthetics. What is specific, perhaps even unique, to melancholy is the role it can play in our everyday life, in contexts that are not aesthetic in the prima facie sense. When mourning transforms itself into melancholy, when the desperation of a loss has calmed down and is mixed with pleasurable memories, then we have an instance of melancholy, which in itself seems to create an aesthetic context of its own. The calmness and reflection involved in melancholy resemble the traditional requirement of contemplation in the aesthetic response. Melancholy in this everyday context may lack the intensity of artistic experience, but its refined harmony is no less a significant aesthetic feature. The pleasure of melancholy does not come from excitement or intensity, but indeed rather from overall harmony we are experiencing. When feeling melancholy in the sense we have outlined, we are in control of the ..lower.. emotions; we have won both overwhelming sorrow and joy. The reflection constitutive in melancholy makes it a rational, controllable emotion. We have been able to take some distance from our previous experiences; we have given them a place in our own history. The result is that we are more in harmony with our past, and we can enjoy the feeling of melancholy, rather than sink into sadness.
This feature, perhaps more than any other, makes melancholy an ..educative.. emotion. It is an instance of a mature, reflective emotion, the experience of which provides a way to cope with painful events in human life. It is clear that melancholy is no substitute for feeling sorrow and sadness; when facing loss we have to go through these emotions. But melancholy can step in at a later stage, and do justice both to the dark and bright sides of our existence.
We have also seen that melancholy is not a strange emotion in art, or in our aesthetic encounters with nature. It occurs in many forms of art, both in the modern and in the classical. It is in no way an archaic phenomenon, although in the extremities of the present culture, it easily goes unnoticed. Those looking for joy or sadness..not to mention horror..are not satisfied with the subtle mixture of pain and pleasure in melancholy. But there are those..as the quote from Kierkegaard in the beginning of our paper suggests..who have had a sense for melancholy, and who have been able to enjoy the very distinctive pleasure it brings along.
Our days are numbered.....the animals have had enough!
BBC NEWS website
Last Updated: Monday, 24 April 2006, 17:11 GMT 18:11 UK
Police hunt Leone 'killer chimps'
Police said Bruno had instigated the attack
Police in Sierra Leone are on the hunt for a group of chimpanzees, who escaped from their wildlife sanctuary after a fatal attack on construction workers.
Armed reinforcements are combing the area after a Sierra Leonean died and four people were seriously injured.
Security personnel said the five men were attacked on Sunday after entering the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary.
Angry chimps killed and mutilated the driver. Three North Americans are in a hospital in the capital, Freetown.
Another Sierra Leonean was also badly injured - and reportedly needed to have his hand amputated.
A worker at Tacugama told the BBC that some 24 chimpanzees had escaped, while six had already returned.
The violent attack was instigated by Bruno, the first chimpanzee taken in by the sanctuary and its alpha-male, along with two other primates, police said.
Villagers warned
Armed police arrived after the attack and fired shots which caused panic among local people.
Tourism Minister Okere Adams visited the scene just outside Freetown and said police were searching the area to find the chimps and bring them back to the sanctuary.
"We are combing the area and beyond to bring the chimpanzees back but would not harm them," a police officer told AFP news agency.
The authorities have warned residents of the mountain villages around the sanctuary not to approach any chimpanzees they come across.
The sanctuary was set up a decade ago to give shelter to orphaned and abandoned chimpanzees.
Across West Africa, chimpanzees are under threat from hunting, logging and human encroachment.
Chords that make you go.....hmmmmmm
Current mood: chipper
The emotional and physiological responses to sound waves..........or, Killer chords and Meaningful moments.
We've all experienced it at sometime, that moment on the dancefloor when the shivers run down your spine, (and i'm not talking about when ur pill kicks in!) or a tune on the radio that for some reason makes the hairs on your arms stand up on end and your heart beat faster, or the old record that always puts a lump in your throat......what is that?? I've had many moments with music that have really touched me in a way that few things ever got close to, a moment that has produced such an intense feeling, that trying to describe it is like trying to describe what love feels like. Its almost a feeling of magical "oneness" with the music, or a deeper understanding of the sentiment its conveying, it's a truely beautiful thing. But it does have a set of rules that all need to happen for the magic to work. The first and probably the most important of these is the frame of reference .....a moment in your life that your mentally transported back to, to almost experience again, or a set of special circumstances that invokes a powerful emotional response, for instance, in the months before Sinatra died, I couldn't listen to any of his recordings without bursting into floods of tears, not because I was overly sad he was going to die, but because of the huge amount of sorrow it was going to cause my dad, who idolised him......"Fly me to the moon" would just floor me!
Also, another important part is the actual content of the music at that point, its probably unlikely that your going to spontaineously burst into tears, or have a cosmic moment of universal musical oneness whilst listening to hardcore gabba techno or deathcore metal......pretty unlikely, but not impossible, however I've had many moments listening to the darkest DnB or gnarliest rock tracks and still got a flush from it......that bassface moment! and more worryingly, I've found myself getting stuck in a loop listening to one particular song over and over again simply because of a change in a couple of bass notes right at the end of a tune, that taken in isolation, just doesnt have the same effect, but back in the song, puts goosebumps and shivers all over.......go figure!
There also always seems to be a combination of a set of notes or chords that somehow resonate inside you, that causes a flush of chemicals that in turn triggers the frame of reference, which then either brings a tear, a smile or in some people extreme anger and violence into a reality moment, these magical chords are the musical equivalent of the Holy Grail for most songwriters, a quest to find that perfect moment when melody, chords, lyrics and emotions colide to create what is nothing more than sound waves and air pressure, but that can cause us to experience all manner of powerful emotional responses.
To sum up, I guess trying to gain a deeper understanding of our relationship between music and art, and is a bit of a quest for me, I'm facinated by how subjective and emotive the whole thing is, but how in turn, it can cause very similer experiences in most of us. So the next time you find your hair standing on end or skin tingling or indeed, wanting to smash something into tiny little pieces......ask yourself why, you never know where it may take you.
good
awake
creative
loved
chipper