The pleasure of a cumulative note, of a satisfying finisher, the note that takes you out of the chasm and into the light – such a note has power. Harmony, the multiplying, hardy relation of one thing to the other, is implicit in every system. Implicit models build up nature, and we in turn base our conclusions and motivate conclusive actions towards preconceived implicit models, in search of that satisfying end; a constructed architecture of narrative we lean on.
Structures are how we see and aspire to see the world. We scrawl along the ridges of universe to outline physical models. Constantly, we procure psychological models. By the structure of mathematics, we set loose deep learning algorithms, multi-use by the rhyme of transient predictive models. Even our entire conception of understanding seems to be based on the belief that there is a model to explain what we don’t yet know (Weinberger 2). This is induction, motivated by manipulable precepts.
Sir William Rowes Hamilton indirectly influenced an epiphany of new reach in physics by his seeing of a constant analogy between mind and nature (Mabie 5). This idea of analogy and symmetry is seen to be true everywhere from the artisan’s aesthetic to fundamental physical laws, motivating physicists’ method of hypothesis (Wilczek 229). The legacy of physical understanding can be seen as built on what looks to be a serendipitous assumption: “More and more, as our understanding of fundamental physics has progressed, we have come to ascribe the rich texture of reality to ideally simple laws acting in a complex environment” (Wilczek 240).
Throughout Wilczek and Devine’s book, themes and variations of the natural uniformity and symmetry of structure are presented, along with the laws of transformation that enable such perspectives (29, 141, 254-256, 289). Humanity has matured our understanding from ancient obsession with whole numbers, through Pythagorean irrationality, and into classical physics’ support of quantities capable of continuous variation. It was the implicit motivating hypothesis that nature has deep underlying systems of order and symmetry that drove us along through it. We see discrete structuralism like a design principle in nature – with no right to expect such a theme!
The bases of music are rhythm and harmony. Rhythm is ordered recurrence in time. Pure tones are those whose vibrations are particularly simple and periodically orderly. Tones harmonize if their intervals of tonal vibration are in rhythm – that is, when their periods are proportional. Given the usual set of twelve pure tones, harmonies between them can be seen in relation geometrically – for instance, through John Coltrane’s tone circle (Alexander 4-5). Einstein compared the pursuit of music and scientific research as seeming to offer “a point of union between the lonely world of subjectivity and the shared universe of external reality” (Wilczek xi).
If our interpretation of what’s going on in the world is “a comparison of our raw perception with our preconceptions” (Wilczek 335) and if the fabric of reality is composed of harmonious structures, then analogy may have some discrete basis, and the pursuit of understanding across disciplines may lend insight to one’s hypothetical intuition.
The composition of music presents the most abstracted example of methodized harmonic form. In Fundamentals of Music Composition, Arnold Schoenberg takes the concept of form to mean that “[a piece] consists of elements functioning like those of a living organism” (1). The presentation, development, and interconnection of ideas is based on relationship, differentiated according to importance and function (Schoenberg 1). Motive can be perceived as the germ of the idea: “the features of a motive are intervals and rhythms, combined to produce a memorable shape or contour – which usually implies an inherent harmony” (Schoenberg 8). The narrative of the composition is then controlled by the treatment and development of this initially defined motive (Schoenberg 3). Flow is the establishment of a continuous flux, in perfect proportions. Through this, music produces a “stream of intention” (Jourdain 302). The ability for an idea to make maximum impact with minimal hindrance has to do with its having good flow.
A story, to our tastes, requires a bit of impedance of flow to make the “good stuff” have relative flavor. Story is from what we ascribedly center life. It has such pull. There is a certain narrative structure by how we live our life, base our life off of, and make sense of it all. In 1995, Kurt Vonnegut theorized the existence of a few common functional story arcs from which literature is pieced. Twenty years later, Vonnegut’s theory was validated. By determining the emotional valence of a segment of story text, then analyzing how this sentiment changes from moment to moment, a piece of literature may be plotted as a function of sentiment vs. time. The result is the mapping of a story arc. Andrew Reagan, with the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab, comprehensively used this method of sentimental analysis for over 1,700 stories with data mining techniques. The study’s result is remarkable: “we find a set of six core trajectories which form the building blocks of complex narratives” (Reagan 1). In film, we see that if a story doesn’t follow the conditioned types, we’re less likely to accept it. We don’t automatically fit it into our minds as evident truth, where we feel and keep with us that “this must be so”.
Contour is hard-wired into our brains (Bar 2192). It’s our means of creating and comparing narrative – the basis for our agentive self-awareness (Bayne 485). Similarly, Gestalt psychologists formulated two rules inherent in our perception of melody: With the Law of Completeness, our minds prefer complete patterns, with few melodic skips. With the Law of Good Continuation, our minds are observed to unite two melodic lines lying along the same trajectory. Profoundly, “melodic forms that consistently contradict these laws do not exist” (Jourdain 80). So sheer is our tendency to fit experiences to a model that we force continuity between some perceived cause and effect without conscious basis: “We perform many unintended behaviors that require some artificial interpretation to fit them into our views of ourselves as conscious agents. Even when we didn’t know what we were doing in advance, we may trust our theory that we consciously will our actions and so find ourselves forced to imagine or confabulate memories of ‘prior’ existing thoughts” (Bayne 479).
We build up understanding through fantastic analogy. Story-driven activities, such as those offered by play and entertainment, offer analogies by means of fantasy from which we build our models of perceived reality (Bateman 14). Similar to classical composition of music, film theory abstracts linguistics to apply the mechanics of language – that of word, thought, and narrative – to film (Rosen 6). These negative relations, based on differences between linguistic signifiers, are put together with positive relationships to visual, real world objects to present an analogy to the audience (Rosen 5-6). Analogy is abstract, to which harmonious structures may be clearly perceived.
Rudolph Laban’s seminal idea was to discern human movement as having a harmonic structure analogous to that of music. He sought to elucidate “the means through which distinctively different elements of movement cohere in meaningful actions” (Moore 5). Laban puts it this way: “Man lives in two worlds. The world of space and time of his external surroundings and the world of the strength and flow of his inner center of effort [that is, his inner motive].” He continues: “These two worlds merge in man’s action if oriented outside, towards the external surroundings; and in man’s behaviour, if oriented inside, towards the inner center of effort” (Moore 171). Laban devoted his studies to a sort of naturalistic inquiry that generated grounded theory regarding the taxonomy of human movement: he saw dynamical “movement moods,” actualized through the lens of his geometric dynamosphere and kinetisphere models. The dynamosphere studies eukinetics: psychological movement of the “inner” domain from mood to mood; the kinesphere studies choreutics: physical movement of the “outer” domain from place to place. With effective dance, the two parallel movement domains keep step harmoniously: “Structural integrity: maintained through rhythmic alteration of stable and mobile spatial inclinations; vitality: maintained through balanced pattern of exertion and recuperation” (Moore 181).
It may be proposed that because of these models of logic and spirit, our intuition has sense. “Everything we do, including grasping a moment of music, commences with a sort of fleeting hypothesis that is confirmed or disconfirmed; every subtle mismatch is countered by adjustments to the next anticipation” (Jourdain 302). We have a value-driven, identity-forming pallet. Values prescribe meaning, which prescribes impact, which may be moved to some forceful result.
Values may be eroded by compromise, by counter, or by the impression of betrayal from the object of those values itself. Values are drawn out in desires, in which we can either have meditative contentment (sustainable pleasure) or eternal violence (tortured pleasure). Tortured pleasure puts stress on one’s system, and can break down that structure.
It is by dependency that this dynamic takes place. Dependency is a necessitation, a biological truth and a haphazard reality, as from the start we do not sustain the life we need on our own. From dependency comes trust, the shared ownership of ourselves and our offerings to the object of our loyalty. This loyalty leads to or comes as a result of submissive deference, by which self-ownership is taken, to the worship of the taker: that new person, force or idea. Because people are ultimately controlled, directed, and motivated by what they find purpose and identity from, we are ultimately spiritual beings. To motivate action is power. By this, humanity’s inherent worshipfulness is its most powerful and evocative quality, from which much power may be claimed.
Because this is fundamentally psychological in nature, and conceived from the structure of imparted or direct experiences, one’s reaction and narrative model can be skewed from some original self-supporting understanding and mechanic of justice. The results of this can be as extreme as triggered responses and implicit self-manipulation of rationale in response to stimuli (Bar 9, 11-12). This is emotional, its logic feigned by association. This emotion begets dogma, a necessary pillar to uphold an illusory structure of identity.
Emotions and motivators cumulate in emotive force. Not only by an external force – often, it is by a crowd of peers that an impetus of narrative leanings gains strength. When people relate to things by the crowd, you could see it as a structure of props, only facetiously held together as its own support. It’s like the pursuit of a solid “twang” of a string – the satisfaction comes relative to the other notes, but is not certified in their tuning. A sustainable harmonic model is first based on the pure tuning of the base note, and then derivably on the tuning of the other notes relative to it. Without both rules in check, the system will swing into discordance. Regardless of the integrity of a social system, it is a whirlwind of power: there is deep effect to the people’s affection.
We search for what is architecturally sound. It is in this search that logic and spirit coincide. Logic and the idealization of value alone is benign, a construct without a soul. There’s an inherent futility to it, a lack of life to all of our personal ideals when they aren’t connected to a larger construct. If there is life then, there is a bright shining point to all our efforts. It is spirit that gets us there, that possesses us to an aim.
If a feeling of what is satisfying is inherently harmonic, then different relations between notes must express different feelings – the spectra of which being connected by a spirit of value and desire. This mechanic is observed in shifting macro-cultural differences regarding tuning and harmony (Jourdain 73-77). Without truly sound structure, there is no balance, no storehouse, no perception of beauty, and no sustained or honest pleasure. From the mechanic of taste comes the cultural anthropology thereof; itself centered and controlled by value distribution and ethic. Just as the cuisine of a culture may be all sweets and salts, with those associated implications for health, another culture may have attained a different profile to their nutrition and spice. Musical tastes tend similarly – compare the shallow efforts towards ecstasy exhibited by loosely-grounded hedonists to the richly rewarding progression towards ecstasy present in nobler works. This is morality, exemplified. If success is derived from some feeling of satisfaction, with satisfaction itself being derived from some harmonic progression to euphoria, then different morality codes offer varying rates of success, with differing definitions on what that success is and is surrounded by.
For there is both architectural soundness, and architectural compromise. That which is sound, in the vein of truth. Otherwise it is structurally compromised, inasmuch as it is motivated by some spirit of effection towards a fallacious vision. Such structures may be held together by partial legitimacy, lengthening its moment of apparent sustainability, but ultimately be ephemeral.
As structure is to logic, harmony is to spirit. Spirit is empowered by story. Story distilled could be surmised as: the way things should be, and what goes horribly wrong. Narrative; as motivated by conflict, aimed at a resolution (Rosen 4). Progression; from dissonance, into harmony. Such a story, in essence, reverberates with the story of humanity. We look for a perfect spirit, to guide us to some harmonic model of the way things should be, motivated by the dissonant problems of our shared existence. We desire a life-giving spirit, to heal and to satisfy.
We see there is form. And while there may be a structure of absolute integrity to which everything may rest, our tendency to lean on a form by desire allows such forms to be compromised. The potential lies in filling the vacuum in our hearts. The method by which this potential may be claimed is by trust-basis mechanics (Denning 89), which at worse may end with the usurpation of one’s values. Plato once said: “our senses give us only a very partial and often misleading picture of the world” (Wilczek 57). The rest of our awareness is inferred. Furthermore, differing landscapes of presented and inherent reality – seen clearly in language barriers – deeply effect our conceptual bearings (Boroditsky 65). Emotion is critical to reasoning (Jourdain 309); and narrative is capable of manipulating some deeply-engrained psychological tendencies. In this pursuit of understanding, our goal is to develop a heightened perception: where “the rough-and-ready perception with which evolution has supplied us is leavened by an admixture of our own creation” (Wilczek 340). We, unlike the animals, have the “happy burden” of choosing what we are prepared to see (Wilczek 339). Self-perception is a signature of our humanity (Sengers 428). If we don’t choose our mindset, it will probably be chosen for us (Harris 5). The battle for our minds is one that isolates and obfuscates and demonizes the wrong thing. It’s a war on noticing; and ownership is the victory.
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