Notes

I wonder why instruments are played with vibrato. It's almost universal--if it has the capability to do so, people developed a method of playing the instrument that involves wavering around one note. Bowed string instruments--violin, cello, the Chinese erhu--and also plucked string instruments like guitar, as well as voice. Why are humans attracted to vibrato?


Does it render instruments more similar to the sound of the human voice? Is it because when we speak we change notes very slightly on words, or at least on emphasis in the different phonemes of the word? So if the note itself doesn't vary, there is at least change in the stress behind different aural units and thus our ears are predisposed to find small modulations in sound and find them pleasing. In that case, the underlying principle seems to be language. Is music language?


I remember in music class we discussed what exactly music was and whether something like Gregorian chanting or Koranic reading was considered music. I think it would be incredibly fascinating to study the neurological basis of music--because here is something so fundamental to humans, so universal, accessible (it's around us all the time!), and yet we know so little about it. We understand very little about it, since we do know things like what chords sound pleasant and how they can be mathematically described. Oh, there was this one old video I remember watching, it might have been disney and maybe it was fantasia, where a narrator talked while strings got proportionally cut and vibrated at different frequencies...what was that??


Furthermore, music does odd things. There's the fundamental power of music to make you feel something. But why does that happen? Why can sound invoke pictures, colors, moods, stories while the other senses do not? Or if they do, seeing an image is already engaging the part of your brain that processes visually; eating food generally doesn't grab you and change your entire consciousness (unless you are Marcel Proust, or really really into food and probably also french) and let you keep experiencing that the whole time; etc with the rest of the senses. I guess that seeing an image can put people into emotions, or create stories--otherwise the entire genre of modern "art" would just be a blob on another blob--but it doesn't engage the rest of the mind-senses.


I always played piano better when I had a story that the music told. I remember when I was learning a piece for the WMTA competition called La Lutine Puck, my piano teacher Karen (who made me love piano and was just an amazing person) and I made every phrase capture some part of Puck's character. He was a mischievous elfin thing, who pranced around. Another classical piece I played which regrettably I can't remember the title of since all classical pieces are called the same name plus or minus an arrangement of letters and numbers (I think it was a Bach) had counterpoint voices, which I made into a tale about two people who loved each other but the the woman couldn't love him back for some grandiose, Baroque reason. Some pieces, like the Raindrop prelude, made the story itself--but still, it was so fun to darkly rage through the thunder part and suddenly return to recapitulation. Everything relaxed, the whole atmosphere changed, and I always imagined a rainbow against dark clouds receding in the distance while the sun shone through the rare type of rain that falls sometimes after a storm and the sun comes out.


Anyway. Getting carried away. Music does odd things. The Mozart Effect, this effect--http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/131/3/866.full which was a study where stroke patients who listened to music showed the most recovery. The Royal London Philharmonic played a concert for plants. Music and memory are somehow linked, since Alzheimer's patients often remember more when listening to music. Wish it'd help my memory cause it needs it.


It's late and I need to sleep but one last thing that popped into my head (but is a thought I've thought of before--I'm like a recycling factory for thoughts). What is the effect of lyrics on music? Does putting lyrics to music limit the possible interpretations of that melody, that sequence of tones because then do you listen to the words and not simply the music itself? Or does it open it up to more interpretations, since you have a semantic story on top of a musical one? Hopefully tonight will be one of those nights when I sometimes hear orchestral music before falling asleep. Too bad we can't record the sounds in our dreams.


Also--to think about later: what happens when your mind creates while you're asleep? Like seeing an idea for a painting, or being in a room (where you're like, a giant mushroom or something) but on the wall is a painting and that painting is one you've never seen before but your mind made up to decorate your dream room with. It's like a creation within a creation.


STOP! BED! okay.

i eat you eat we all meat (gross sorry)

at cleanup for slow food cafe today, i shared some odd potato pear drink (that had peach garnish on top) with this complete stranger. we were doing dishes and briefly wondered what the soupy thing in the glasses was (it was essentially small talk), so he got some and said you should try some of mine, go ahead and taste it first! it sounds weird upon retelling i guess, but that's precisely what i'm trying to figure out. i remember i was kind of taken aback for a second. why does it seem strange/provoke a feeling of...almost over-familiarity? maybe because sharing food is one of those things that is somewhat like sleeping with someone (rating: PG. i mean, spending time unconscious with someone for example at sleepovers in middle school, with friends in college, etc, when you wake up and you feel weirdly closer to that other person in a way that's indescribable) in that it's Sharing with a capital S.


what am i getting at. i don't really know, i should be writing a lit essay.


food and sleep are both acts of extreme trust i guess, when you think it to the bottom. furthermore, they're both absolute necessities to all humans everywhere so they inhabit a forced overlap between people.


food has so many different sides, it's really fascinating.


socially: facilitates bonding, sharing, whatever happens when people sit down and eat together that is consuming something besides just molecules. like that cat empire lyric, "because sharing a meal is something i wish the world could do." i guess also uneven distribution of food, food deserts, when tied to economics. farmers markets, farmers. slow food. the growing knowledge divide between consumption and production. organic.


biologically/chemically: things like lactose intolerance, glycolysis, the citric acid cycle, digestive enzymes. also, what happens chemically when you cook something--what is really going on in the proteins due to the heat, what happens on the molecular level when you caramelize something for example. what actually HAPPENS?


culturally: different cultures built whole different identities from how they eat, when they eat, what they eat. that also can tie into underlying biological reasons, like how it's not really healthy to drink cold water during a meal and before westernization, chinese meals were never served with cold water. or how you're supposed to refuse food a couple of times before accepting, even if you want it, to have good manners.


economically: food subsidies, what goes into giving us the food that we see at the supermarket. socio-economic stuff, more precisely. why food costs what it does, petroleum driven monocultures, etc. importation, globalization, food aid giving to africa that undermines growing a food economy in the countries there. cash crops, politics.


oh there's politically as well.


i may think too much.


do you ever think about the foods that you'll never get tired of eating? and by think about i mean make a list of.

hi scott!

conversation with a friend afar + conversations with the small one pt 2

the friend


j: herbivores are sea urchins?
c: herbivores sea are urchins!
of course


j: woah WOAH
that is a different permutation than i had in mind
please explain


c: you've never heard of the verb "to sea?"


j: and the adjective "are?"
c: yes!
god you catch on fast


j: i know, i pride myself in my ability to destroy language


c: ah, now we must create it!
to create, one must destroy
I AM SHIVA


j: SHEEVER


c: ICICLE


j: EYECYCLE


c: EYECYCLOPSICLE


j: LOPSICLE!


c: BOPSICLE!


j: BOPSI
taste the rainbow


c: JONSI hear the rainbow


j: jonsi is one letter away from being an anagram of my name


c: wait, i meant the singer jonsa


j: OH
okay


c: JASON is the rainbow
but not gay


j:that is the highest of compliments
thank you
so, i might have gotten myself in a band
!


c: OOO!!!
congrats!
what? who? what do they do?
sing? dance? play in the sand?
of seaaaaatttle




the small one


kelly: we gave angie's dog a ride home
connie: what kind of dog is he?
kelly: the curly medium kind




connie: the evil one in thomas and the tank engine?
kelly: no he wasn't evil he was just GRUUUMPY
kelly: his name was marvin






connie: yeah, you ate very little (kelly doesn't eat enough food)
kelly: YOU'RE very little!!!




Kelly: This is what mommy would want me to be: standing against the wall, reciting Chinese, while doing math. Then she would come back and say good job Kelly.


Kelly: Tyra has this really big perfume sprayer...really big sprayer...Tyra has a really big perfume.




Kelly: oh yesterday i watched spirit!!!! i love that movie
so my life doesnt suck




Kelly: DID YOU FEED THE FISHES
Mama: They look fine.
Kelly: No! Mommy can’t you tell they’re trying to get my attention!

Peace (and War, which is the length of this post)

This afternoon was a really good one. Good in aspects that are both people related, thought related, and world related. I went into lab and hung out with everyone--it reinforces my opinion again, that simply spending time with people can be one of the most crucial posts on which to build relationships. When you overlap in time, little things can come out of it that nevertheless play important roles. Things like: hearing the same story as everyone else, which later is referenced; saying a simple statement about the professor whose class you had today (and who imitated electric fish searching for mates in an anthropomorphic manner, after giving you a falconry lesson); doing a task meant for other people, inciting someone to come up to you and hug you. All of our relationships are built up of the thousands of tiny little things we overlook, perhaps even more so than the large, specific events and actions we may recall better or consciously strive to enact. It's like in Orlando, the book by Virginia Woolf, when she says that most of our time is spent in non-being, performing routine tasks we don't even attend to. Our relationships with people are largely built upon moments of non-relationship-consciousness (to make a really long word).


Furthermore, all people are looking for kindness and when given it, will most generally give it in return. I really appreciate how at my lab everyone says goodbye to everyone else when they leave, and everyone remaining says goodbye to them. There's something so kind in such a simple gesture. Some people may believe it trite and annoying (such a small thing!) but "in the particular is contained the universal." That's a quotation from Joyce, in A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. I wish I could claim credit. I wrote it on my whiteboard and it summarized exactly what I was trying to say. Also, James Joyce could've written the song title of many a Panic! At the Disco song, going by that title.


Second great thing about this afternoon was when I stopped on my bike back from the hospital and sat at one of the benches on lakeshore. Then I got my notebook out and wrote some things down. It was incredible, to be outside and thinking. I actually got to the rational bottom of one of my general amorphous thoughts--and that makes me so happy! One of my friends, who's an amazing, logical thinker, is really good at it and I thought I'd give it a try. So often, I don't follow through and break down my gut instincts into just why I feel that way. It was such a satisfying feeling. Plus, it was truly gorgeous outside. Have you ever just looked at the way the October sun hits golden tree leaves and lights them up like incandescent gold? I can look and look at that until it feels like every bit of me is filled up with gold and blue sky.


The third great thing was going on my run. and the thought that came from that run (I'm loosing the steam to capitalize...). i went on a 6.5 mile run, which i've discovered is pretty much my optimal running distance. shorter than that and i don't fall into the meditative mood running sometimes puts me in, when i come back feeling like a happy sponge. anyway, i was going my usual way back along picnic point and i was having a fairly shitty time--tired, it was windy, etc. and then it hit me: if you're not enjoying this, then you're not running. Not running! straight up. what a thought. if i was going along and feeling like every part of me was complaining and going what the fuck connie I REBEL I WILL ROLL AWAY AND NEVER BELONG TO YOU AGAIN goodbye, then i was actually just ambulating at a fast pace. running is more than that. when i really feel the running, it feels like i can go forever. i remember once eva and i went running in fog, and then another time we went running in the winter dark, both times for nearly two hours, and both times it didn't even feel like i was expending any effort.


so i told myself that if i'm not enjoying this then something is wrong and i need to do something--slow down, look at trees, look at leaves, stop, go somewhere else--until it is fixed. if i'm not enjoying running, i'm not running. and my god it worked. i went into the back of picnic point, and it was just the trees, me, squirrels scaring me. kind of spooky because there was absolutely no one else out there in the wind-blown shade. i picked up leaves. i looked (transparent eyeball! that's emerson, the old crazy man) at everything. because it was so beautiful that to be outside, to be running, to see it all, couldn't NOT be enjoyment. then i didn't want it to end and went running around university bay fields, where there were less things to look at; i ended up looking at the sky (our earth is so big and so small) and running through crunchy leaves on completely unnecessary detours from the path. i think i looked seven kinds of idiot with leaves clenched in my hand, stomping through leaves on the ground, grinning, but man it felt awesome.


also it was great because even though i had been running for a long time i still passed several people. and then, while i stretched/stood at the union, a trio of policepeople came with a newly trained police dog and took a picture. the dog sat on one of those pillars by the alumni center while its owner, a policewoman, stood next to it and expressed embarrassed to be taking the picture. it was so cute. i worked up the courage to say something to them (police people, eeek) because i wanted to but was almost too shy to, and said it was an amazing picture to the policewoman, who seemed pleased.


yes. it was a good afternoon.