In its neural capacity, the brain is networked and methodic, a process-oriented apparatus that is in part computational, like a computer. Both words (computer and computation) derive from the Latin verb
putare ('to think', or 'arrange') plus the the prefix
com- (also 'con-, col-, cor- or co-'), which can mean 'together' (or 'with'), or can translate roughly as 'wholly, full on, or completely'. I say roughly because this prefix also works as a non-verbal intensifier--- kind of a linguistic exclamation point, but moreover emphasizing action and heightening its performance. By 'heightener' I mean both senses of the word-- it is more noticeable or conscious, and it signals more going on than typical routine action.
So, for example, the Latin verb
iacere means more simply 'to throw or toss' (like you would lob a ball to a friend or toss treat to a pet), whereas its intensified version
conicere means 'to hurl, or heave' or even aim and shoot or fling or dart-- like a skilled baseball player will fire a ball to home plate, or lovers will shoot or send knowing or feeling looks to each other across a crowded room. An example of the prefix in English might be 'sequence' vs 'consequence'; the former signifies actions in a row, the latter the causes and effects between them. Or how the word 'note' means to 'observe, mark, or
notice', but 'connote' means to 'suggest, intimate, or predicate', therefore implying a deeper meaning than the literal one we just make a note of happening (usually, we take a note to look into something later, when we look more closely into its connotations...).
I go into this much depth because there's an analogy in how the brain works like this too. Our brain's total action is
heightened-- there's always more potentially going on. In its collective, simultaneous computations, the mind serves as kind of a mainframe running our bodies' networks like a laptop's hard drive runs all its systems. Some processes, like those of the organs or skeleton, are complex in physique but simple (or rather 'unconscious') in operation: with these, once we've learned the action, the neurons always fire in the same patterns and areas in our brains. In our typical routine actions, whether it be in the brain's sending signals to the heart processing our blood or lungs our breathing, or in those parts of our thoughts that transmit info on our daily habits (to see this, follow the basic thought patterns of your habits: from basic mental notes "ok, grab my keys, wallet, cell phone and lock the doors on my way out"; to more technical ones like driving or riding a bike or checking email and facebook, typing in passwords, scanning web pages etc): in these types of thoughts our brains are running and thinking (*
putare) systematically and routinely.
Other processes, however, are heightened even further in the brain---
brain scan research shows this, where certain forms of thought, exertion, and emotion light or fire particular areas of the brain up more. When we're thinking about something critically-- when we're feeling something more deeply (like love or anger, fun or fear)-- or when we're acting or performing in a deliberate manner (like a musician or actor on a stage, an artist in the studio, an athlete on a sports field, or explorer on a expedition or spiritual person on a pilgrimage etc etc)-- when we're doing any of these things our brain is furthermore and moreover "
computing"--- that is, it is performing additional functions, and interacting more deliberately with the engaged environment or situation. When we are brought to a higher state of consciousness, the mind is affected or stimulated more, and it is precisely this heightened state which in turn conducts us into the world and integrates us in its deeper subliminal energies...
The heightened or enlightened mind is like a crucible that animates and kindles the entire self, and the selves of others too. I mean this literally--- consider how you actually feel when making art, playing music, feeling chemistry with a significant other, or fully engaged with something or someone you love. Even if it's a cold night and we are still and relaxed, beyond not noticing the chill, in the heat of the moment we sweat, breathe more heavily, and actually feel our mind or soul or heart afire. When he was a young man and soldier, Socrates is fabled to have stood in the dead of winter facing a snow storm meditating while wearing nothing but a loincloth. His fellow soldiers huddled freezing near the fire, yet steam emanated from him. ((Similarly, I've always been amazed by this experience of making music or art, or from teaching: If I'm under the weather, no matter how sick I feel, that ill feeling goes completely away when in I'm in that creative or galvanic space, either for the duration of creativity or even altogether. Last week for example I had a very bad back; nothing I could do could make it better, but then we had band practice and minutes into the performance I was as mobile and flexible while performing as ever, and after a week my back has finally started healing.))
As I see and experience and explore it,
this heightened awareness and creative involvement is the spark of life---- and it is here that we reach beyond ourselves into the world around us.
And so, by
extension,, (by *reaching*-- in both directions, and in both senses of this word: by extending oneself
and by making full, heightened, psychosomatic contact with someone or something else),, we extend beyond our own minds or consciousness to the consciousness of others and to the phenomena of the world around us. That word phenomenon connotes both of these heightened meanings: a phenomenon is most literally a "occurrence, circumstance, or fact that is observable by the senses" (American Heritage Dictionary), but it more commonly refers to something or someone remarkable, impressive, and striking in nature or the world around us-- something or someone "phenomenal" that catches and arrests our attention. Phenomena act as links between thought and experiences, or between presence and awareness, between life and love. Philosophers from Plato to Kant to the Existentialists etc, explore and explain them as vital principles and dynamics that merge and interfuse nature ("out there") and our minds ("in here"). When they hit us, phenomena engage us, in both senses of this word too: they arrest or engage our attention, and they involve or engage us in the outside world, intensively so.
We are
opened in, so to speak.
The sound of a chord struck brings two discrete entities together. The musician and the audience encounter and make and experience something more than themselves in the beauty or fury or journey of the song. We reach out, to more than ourselves, in such experiences, and in the deliberate act of reaching, something meaningful outside yourself merges with yourself, and with others who share in the music. I'm speaking of
music literally here of course, but I also mean it as a metaphor for any chord in nature or electricity or life that strikes us. This is why we also use that expression "a chord's been struck" to say that we've developed a good friendship or tight bond with someone, such that we affect each other on a deeper level.
To extend the metaphor, art, nature, music, exercise, good food, friends and family, love etc are all phenomena that harmonize our selves with others. ---Or maybe it's not a metaphor--- the expression "the music of the trees" seems neither literal nor metaphorical, but something more, something beyond the abstract. Many people express that they hear music in any and all of these phenomena, and often, if the mind is engaged and attuned to the resonations of the world around us, we are making our own music in our journey not just through but into that world. That could literally be the soundtrack we're sometimes hearing in our minds, or the way we live a life of awareness, engagement, and action: the soundtrack we perform or make of our lives for others to hear, and jam along with to boot.
In this space we transcend, beyond our selves and beyond the limits of our own minds. In the terms of the broader analogy I've been drawing of the brain's computations, if the mind is the hardware, the central nervous system is the software, the electromagnetic matrix in us which reads the resonances of the world around us, the environments and people our nervous system absorbs, reads, interacts with, and itself has an effect upon. This has been a common principle for Shores explored in other entries of this blog: we call our music electroacoustic psychosomatics because we believe that music is not only heard by physically felt and experienced. The same goes for environments, whether natural or human: we not only only sense or experience them, we
cor-relate with them, and them with us. Shores are not only physical spaces, but experiences of any boundaries, and the blurring or blending of ourselves into them. Emphatically so, in a heightened state.
This will be the topic of the next blog in this series and potentially our next album after the Open-Ended LP [(oh yeah, announcement: we've been developing the Green Sound material into a full length album to be recorded later this year, more on this in a blog very soon)] , how the central nervous system reaches from the mind to the world.... and how music and the soul are the medium of this phenomenality....
