Music and emotion

Visual arts, music, poetry and other forms of art.
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Cerastes
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Re: Music and emotion

Post by Cerastes »

Insanus wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 2:19 pm I see! That makes sense. I would argue that perhaps there's no emotion at all without the "when".
A valide argument. Wel..At this point it necessarily will become abstract crazy talk. (Don’t worry, I like abstract crazy talk)
Emotions need to connect to a „when“ to manifest on an individual level just because they do not have an own „when“. To be exact, I think that everything needs a „when“ to be experienced.
For example almost everybody has experienced irrational fear. There is no need for fear but the fear is there and it connects to a situation. The time-related triggers are individualistic. The same situation can cause joy to one person and pain to one person and fear to another. If we take the univesal magnetism into account, timeless emotions (-) connect to time-bound situations (+) to be „born“ and cause a physical effect, so to say.

So I agree with fra Nefastos that music is of direction-giving or structuring kind with the difference that I interpreted emotions to be „timeless“ by themselves instead of following an individual, psychic time. Still I find the idea of psychic time or spirit time interesting but I did not decide yet if it makes sense to me.
Insanus wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 2:19 pm I'm not convinced there would be emotion without relationship to something: how could we experience anything new (excluding perhaps some always/new life experience, fresh silence or something) with no memory at all to compare it to? Maybe it's the same with first note of a musical piece. A musical chord is a structure and if we are nitpicky it could be called"rhythmic" because it vibrates..
Yes, basically it's always the contrast that causes existence. Every note is a rhythm in itself, i.e. a wave that only manifests itself because it has a repeating interval of amplitude and linear time.
“Granny Weatherwax was not lost. She wasn't the kind of person who ever became lost. It was just that, at the moment, while she knew exactly where SHE was, she didn't know the position of anywhere else.”
(Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)
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Nefastos
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Re: Music and emotion

Post by Nefastos »

Insanus wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 2:19 pmI'm not convinced there would be emotion without relationship to something: how could we experience anything new (excluding perhaps some always/new life experience, fresh silence or something) with no memory at all to compare it to? Maybe it's the same with first note of a musical piece. A musical chord is a structure and if we are nitpicky it could be called"rhythmic" because it vibrates..

This precisely is the turning point between two kinds of "feelings": 1) the feelings of temporal status (astral, kâmic, emotional: the ones with play with the poles of attraction & repulsion), and 2) the feelings that connect to the oneness and present bliss that is beyond mere attraction. These are the "feeling" aspects in the two triangles: kâmic & buddhic. The real alchemy is to use the former to get to the latter, or make gold out of base metals of desire. Naturally we yearn to the nourishment we know, but the actual thirst paradoxically can only be satiated by the deeper experience of the substance we yearn only intuitively. (The "new" emotion of buddhic nature, that actually transcends emotion, because it is its fountainsource.)

The secret is seen in the form and name of the heart center of Anâhata, literally "the unstruck sound". It vibrates without vibrating. That is, the one hearing "the voice of silence" has developed his subtle ability of harmony to reach beyond space and time in order to reach the true "harmony of the spheres" which is in the relation of mathematical schemas without the need of them actually being in temporal interaction. For their simple existential being is the interaction to begin with, without the need of anything to "happen". Or, that happening itself would obstruct the understanding of that eternal event of supreme happening itself.

This same paradox of vibration also came up in the other words in the book I was reading the last night:
Spanda-Kârikâs wrote:He [Shiva: God] is never without spanda [vibration].
Spanda-Kârikâs wrote:"The entire gamut of entities appears (outside), because it already exists in the Lord's Self [God's divine being itself]. Without its existing in Him there would be no desire for manifestation."
Spanda-Kârikâs, commentary notes wrote:The root-meaning of the word 'spanda' is 'having slight movement.' The Lord [Shiva: God] is acala, non-moving. Therefore, movement cannot be ascribed to Him.

I took the commentator's quote from Utpaladeva in the middle also because he evocatively uses the word "gamut" here regarding this subject. On the ends of that statement there are two other statements, the teaching and its commentary, which apparently cancel out each other. But that exactly is the point. The occultist/devotee has to go deeper into the Vâc (mystic sound) where it starts to change, and finally inverts into its complementary opposite. That complementary opposite of the struck sound is the unstruck sound, the sound of silence and the deeper aspect of Vâc. It is still sound, as the basis of rhythm and harmony, and able to transmit meanings to the soul that still has its other leg in the temporal; but itself it is beyond dualities. Because the process to accomplish this is a journey, any kind of music and sound can be used as a way to find the complementary sound that is, seemingly, soundless (i.e. it sounds on a plane that is beyond physical and ultimately also beyond the astral states, in the oneness where things actually do meet).
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Insanus
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Re: Music and emotion

Post by Insanus »

Great answers!

It's true that a thirst can be satiated by the deeper substance like Nefastos said. This process is personally my justification for the whole "ethics of desire" - thing Imentioned in that other topic, but it's also a question of time/timing.
Considering music and kamic attractions, the "when" does not exist on a continuous line of linear time. When the meaningful dramatic chord hits, it works just because it comes after the buildup &c. Music has a narrative, it tells a myth. Timing, not time, is relevant. The dynamic aspect is important: objects are not in space here, space is just the distance betwewn them. Clocks don't measure time: they give a standard for timing, like a metronome.
Similarly synchronicities are experienced in relation to some other experience. I'm trying to say that certain emotional-energetic states work within "musical scales" and the scales are mental structures necessary for those kamic dynamics to occur harmoniously. Maybe one could think of music as the art of using those dynamics in the alchemical process, imitating choirs of spirits in order to enable certain energetic structures in everyday life. That sounds out there but at least my experience is pretty close to that. In this alchemy you could arrive at a spirit-experience that would function as a new clock-standard for before, after, and meaningful. That could be magical, if you could start a process you'd know leads to experienced synchronicities.
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