music (and art)

heres an interesting idea that i uncovered a little later on in Art Theory by Robert Williams.

quote Wassily Kandinsky: the various arts are in the process of drawing together, and are finding music, the most non- material of the arts, to be their best teacher.

this is interesting enough on its own. and deserves plenty of contemplation. but... i'll jus go for the breadth and relinquish the depth. ho hum. so now... relation to art! the visual one.. ahaha.

furthermore: music leads us into a realm where musical experience is a matter not of the ear but of the soul alone.

painting is related to music most evidently in the workings of color. like musical sound (oh ok, so theres unmusical sound. i guess there must be unpainterly pictures. cool.), color directly influences the soul. color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. the artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. 

quite a few years before, J. A. M. (i tink its funny his initials spell JAM when he's been accused of "flinging a pot of pain the public's face" with his um.. aesthetic painting? tink in context of Wilde- art for art's sake.

well in context, "Nature contains the elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick and choose... as the musician gathers his notes and forms his chords until he brings forth from chaos some glorious harmony. to say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the palyer that he may sit on the piano." of course in this case, he's trying to say that Nature is useless, too. maybe like Baudelaire. wow.

well the bk itself is pretty heavy. so if i even understand half of it, and retain half of tt, i tink im pretty well off. and of course organizing thoughts is useful... on a sidenote, i cant say im gd at either music nor painting. sad.

discipline

haha i feel like a hypocrite writing abt discipline. wonder y.

anw there discipline has several meanings. it can be a noun. first like.. the discipline of art. or an adjective, he is very disciplined. or a verb, like, u need to be disciplined!

well frankly, discipline is something difficult. if not everyone wld be disciplined in their discipline and not need disciplining (er.) likewise, the benefits of being disciplined is tt it makes u better than others. and i guess u get the benefits too. like u hv a more efficient allocation of resources by being disciplined; u do things with more economy and save things like time. 

of course we all read abt this or that person who has, after a lifetime of dedication, perfected an art or something. well i suppose when alot of ppl do it it becomes a discipline. so u can recreate the path and achieve the desired result by disciplining yourself accordingly. but something like individual discipline in a pioneering discipline is relli quite cool. or rather, the results r quite cool. er.

so wats the point talking abt all this? hm. mebbe its a crystallization of my desire to be more disciplined..

yea right.

this side of heaven

ok after a relatively long interval between posts (the longest since this excuse for a blog started), ive once again decided to write abt things i only half know abt with an especially presumptous title.

i'll try to explore ideals here. so before i begin, i guess its best to invoke a much more learned person to give his views. this wld be Plato. Plato believed that the true knowledge of anything is a knowledge of its ideal form. By that he means the objective existence of something in a realm apart from this world. furthermore, our mental representations of things may bear some resemblance to the ideal, but this is completely inconsequential and insignificant; ideals are elevated far above real- life objects. even abstracts.

ok go figure. so this means that the computer u r on now... is not the "ideal" computer. it subscribes to the ideal of the Computer. it is only a partial and imperfect representation of the ideal. the fact that we recognize different computers as computers is because they participate somehow in a single idea or form of computer. hm. ok, it sounds absurd for physical objects but it kinda makes sense when talking abt concepts.

Plato illustrates this by referring to things like "justice", "goodness" and "beauty". these things cant be said to be wholly present in this world; they are incomplete and lacking in some ways or other. but the fact that we find them meaningful and important implies that somewhere, their perfect forms exist. when we say something is good for example, we acknowledge that we have come into contact with a higher, invisible reality, that we have somehow transcended this world of sense experience to something purer and more perfect. our ability to recognize these abstract qualities comes from our existence before birth, when our immortal souls lived in the heavenly realm of ideals and knew them directly, in their pure form. when we see them in our earthly life, our memory is jogged, and we remember, or rather "unforget" our previous, more perfect life.

sounds like spiritual mumbo- jumbo, but try to leave aside the modern creation of religion and jus take this as a world view.

so, in order to transcend reality, and elevate oneself in this life, one should see "through" or rather, past things, events, wdv of this world, to the Ideal.

well and good, but this is despite the knowledge that, try as we might, there is no way to achieve the ideal in this world, in this lifetime. thus, should ideals be pursued? is there really any point in pursuing an unachievable goal, an unattainable dream? is temporarily perceiving the essence of anything worth the delusion upon returning to reality? knowing that we stand on this side of heaven, should we really try to partake of a part of it, or would that be arrogance? in some ways, a little is better than nothing, but i cant help but feel that that little leaves a void when it is gone that makes it even more insignificant. so, putting this into context: should abstract things we know have an absolute truth be pursued in this lifetime? and should we indulge in their opposites so as to make comtemplation of them in a future (and interestingly, also past) lifetime even more palpable due to contrast? i tink it wld be quite a gd course of action, assuming tt u can go back to that heaven when ur done here, removing all connotations of heaven as a place that u can only go to if ur a good boy (or girl (or anything besides)). and how is this different from delayed gratification really? haha...

well i dun tink its gonna change the fact that there r gonna be idealistic ppl pursuing ideals here and now and in the future, cos we dun noe wat the afterlife is like. or if there even is an afterlife at all. but i just think tt its relli quite sad that ideals are ideals for the sole reason that they'll nvr be achieved and that ppl r gonna be disappointed in chasing them down.

innocence and experience

i tink one of my teachers once told me that innocence is lost with experience. i guess that makes sense. i mean innocence is freedom from guilt (or sin, wdv u take tt to mean), or simply ignorance (in the neutral sense). and well the only way u get rid of either is through sense experience.

building on that thought, ive kinda wondered if its only um. logical. and efficient, if u can somehow organize ur experiences such that u lose ur 
innocence little by little. ok for example, if u read a kiddy bk now tt u didnt 
read when u were young, u'd probably find it relli stupid, cos obviously ur experiencing it against the uh.. template? that is ur life so far. and obviously u've grown alot since u were a kid. however, this cld be some great kiddy bk, but u'll nvr fully experience it for all its greatness, because u've lost that kiddy innocence. ok in context, lets say u R still a kid, and u hv the option of reading 2 equally gd bks tailored for u, however, they hv a content tt reveals new things abt life. ok u can only choose to read one, knowing tt when u read either one first, the second isnt gonna make tt big an
impact on u cos the first one has revealed the same thing tt was new to u then, but not anymore?

expanding on the idea tt u'r shortchanging urself if u deny urself like... experiences suited for ur age right now (like b4 u "outgrow" em later), is the converse. what happens if ur not rdy for smth, but u force it (or in most cases hv it inadvertantly fed) on urself? in one sense, this is "maturity", but i tink its also kinda sad when u see someone "grown up beyond his/her years". then again, there are those tt can go through life, as Wilde puts it, "unspotted by the world". once again, the two r mutually exclusive. and here u cant hv both worlds; but the question is, is there relli a balance?