Example

    Composer, teacher, and author
    Born November 4, 1941 in Oklahoma City
    B. Mus. (Oklahoma City) 1964
    M. Mus. composition (Oklahoma) 1965
    Ph.D. composition (ESM, Rochester) 1972



Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Aphoristic musings:

Cities are self-sorting information distribution systems.

One of the main functions of humans is the redistribution of trees and other plants.

Another important function is the preservation and nurturing of other animal species.

We are endoskeletal "brains" for the exoskeletal machines we have concocted.

Like Hermit Crabs, we skitter from one housing to another, as it suits us.

We are weird ant colonies, in which we can be workers, soldiers, and so forth, depending upon which exoskeletal housing we use.

Even musical instruments may be seen as exoskeletal extensions of our bodies.

Our highways are surrogate rivers.

Music provides a highway for neurons.

Thus, music is like an electroencephalogram in reverse.

We look for parallel universes: they are right under our noses! How many living creatures are there on Earth? There are at least that many parallel universes.

Our new age reconsiders the ancient idea of reincarnation: but what is DNA?

We exist as highly complex composite waves in time. Does the tiny virus achieve its impact through temporal displacement of an equally tiny segment of our wave-composite, thus altering our periodicity?

Perhaps the virus is the primary agent of evolution.

Evolution has not stopped; are we perhaps, even now, evolving into two or more distinct species? However long it takes, humans will not always be humans.

Technology in its broadest sense is what most clearly distinguishes us as humans. Other species are tool-makers; we make technologies.

(Tools per se are singularities; technologies are systemic.)

Whether or not "God" exists, or there are multiple gods, or the world is animistic, or there is an oversoul as Emerson thought, or a Jungian collective consciousness, or the Tao, or Nirvana, and so forth is really a set of moot points, because we are in the process of inventing IT. Our information age has created global TV, the web, and an infinitude of other such humanoid interconnective phenomena. As a result, we now live in the midst of a transcendental virtual reality mega-consciousness which envelops our planet.

(The Golem has come to life: huge, powerful, neither benevolent nor malevolent.)

Is this OUR mind? Or, are we in the infinite process of discovering deity or a reasonable facsimile thereof? Is this an "I-it" or an "I-Thou" relationship a la Buber? ...All of the above (and probably--no, certainly!--more), I have to think!

All of this has a symbiotic relationship with music--and the other arts.

Music and the other arts are perhaps the most essential component of our planetary mind (or collectively improvised deity). These creative modes of expression are possibly our most important technologies. They provide the most universal and fundamental--and at the same time, intimate--framework for communication.

One last "perhaps" for today:
Perhaps we humans are the "neural synapses" of "Old Mother Gea?"