My next big topic is music. Music. That thing we know so much about in our hearts, but very little about in our heads. Why does it have such an emotional impact on us? What is going on when a song provokes a certain emotion? What is happening when a song gives us a particular piece of imagery? Why do lyrics to random songs pop in our heads from time to time? Why does it stir us? And why do we crave it? I do not propose to have hard and fast answers to these questions - only observations about the psyche, which I believe plays a prominent role in determining the extent to which, how, and when we are affected by music. This is, for the most part, uncharted territory - so forgive me is my language is clumsy.
There seem to be unique forces in the psyche, as I have mentioned above. Can we deny that thoughts are different from emotions? Can we deny that emotions and images are distinct? I don't think so. So the psyche both produces and interacts with these various forces. Is it permissible to call them thought-force, emotion-force, image-force? Well, I don't know. We don't know how they move, but they most certainly move. And even if we cannot describe which way they are moving, how fast they are going, along which route they are traveling, etc - they most certainly move in and out of both your and my psyche. Something is propelling them - or seemingly propelling them. They have a dynamism, this is clear.
Music, or melody, seems to be another one of these "forces." A song pops into our head, and that is different from a thought, which is different from an emotion, which is different from an image. Here, though, we come to the question: well, how many different varieties of psychic "substances" are there? It would be silly to put a cap on it when one considers the vastness of psychic experience. Can we lump all bodily experiences - all physical sensations? - into one type of psychic "force?" (Here again the word force should be understood as referring only to the quality of movement "through" the psyche - or, "in" and "out" of consciousness. No further qualitative modifiers can be added with any certainty.) How about matter? Can all our experiences of matter (as distinguished from entities - such as thoughts - that are confined to the psyche) be lumped into one kind of psychic phenomenon? And what about numbers? Do they all belong to a certain type of psychic species? We cannot be certain.
The only thing we can be certain about is that there are distinctions. There are unique types of psychic entities.
2 comments:
Hey Mark,
You mentioned this I think, something about it having to do with prayer. So maybe there is a part of our psyches that does the praying. My experience of it this morning was that when I was waking up, I heard one message that communicated something that I did not want to hear, something that I considered to be negative. And then something else chimed in, singing, “With my lightning bolts a-glowin’, I can see where I am goin’.” (part of the Arcade Fire song, “Wake Up”) Which occurred to me as hopeful and encouraging and in fact had the musical vigor to get me out of bed to write this. Love you (sorry if this is embarrassing you can erase it; but then I will be mad, just kidding)
mark-ass, you are amazing! you have brilliant thoughts and insights and are making me think-kinda hurts! i have been using a different part of my brain all semseter but you excite me on this topic! figure this one out....yesterday i was walking to class and i was stressed out for my pharm test when "whoomp there it is" got stuck in my head and my lower half couldn't help but walk in beat....
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