Previously I have written about counting to one. This is pretty much the focal point of my intellectual life (hmm, that sounds kind of sad). The distance between zero and one is profound, especially if you think about it in terms of the distance between undefined and defined. The fact is that I don’t know how to take action, or even if action is needed, if I don’t know what one is. So, in the absence of one being defined, I start attempting definition because then I can move on.
It is often an iterative process, this business of defining things. This is especially true of real, but to my mind, very abstract, things like relationships. There may be a feature of these things such that creating definition actually changes the thing. Perhaps this is the Observer Effect in action – by the simple act of observation the observer interacts with the observed and thus creates change. In the same way, I suspect definition creates change, intentional and otherwise, in abstract and non-abstract things. “What?” you say. “If something is non-abstract how does defining it change it? ”
Simple. It changes how we think about it. It changes how we think about it. It changes our perception of the thing and the context in which we find it. It constructs a new reality. Music does this too when it is associated with a person or event. It adds context easily tied to memory.
I listen to music when I work. I have yet to have a song be associated with a given project, or even just a definition. I don’t know if it is question of density or iteration – there’s often just too much going on. We almost never time to celebrate the completion of one project before returning to work on another.
I wonder though, what I might be working on that I might associate with:
The drunken politician leaps
Upon the street where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep, they wait for you
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin’ from my broken cup
And ask me to
Open up the gate for you
On the other hand, I spend a lot of days listening to First Wave on SiriusXM.
Swimming them so well
Glad to see
My face among them
Kissing the tortoise shell
Some fresher feeling
Belonging
Or just forever kneeling
Where is the sense in stealing
Without the grace to be it
There’s always something new
And when you really really need it the most
That’s when rock and roll dreams come through
The beat is yours forever
The beat is always true
And when you really need it the most
That’s when rock and roll dreams come through….for you…
random data from a tumored head 