Is there much you enjoy that lacks meaning? Meaning is a lever, a ballast. Everything is supposed to mean something. Isn't that why we live? If there was no meaning to life...wouldn't that be distressing? Kant said two things can acceptably be devoid of meaning; music and laughter. Music, or sound, is in everything. It is the unique quality of an object's relationship with space and time. Clap your hands and you hear relativity. The earth makes a sound as it moves. Of course, nothing alive can hear it. We dress up sounds with our connotations but they never really belong to us. Our time signatures are the product of prevailing base-ten cultures. I would say that laughter is the sound of chaos, the acceptance of meaninglessness; to me it means release from order, what time signature is your laughter in? This is just my meaning.
Before ears there were sounds. Before scales and tones, there was order; an object cannot disobey its inherent frequency, an object's sound is its truth. This is the singular beauty and meaning of a sound.
Sound is dangerous. Sound can be a seducer, a rapist, an easy fuck, a life-long love. No matter how hard a person might try, there is a sound that exists somewhere that can unravel you from inside. Maybe for only a moment. Our mistake is to then delineate meaning. That the sound has shaken you simply reflects your circumstance. The sound will vibrate forever, but for a moment your life moves with it. The sound is a mirror, and who looks to a mirror for truth?
But we must communicate with one another. And we must labour beneath an idea of meaning. So when we say a sound means something (which is akin to framing a mirror in a gallery) and we combine this sound with other sounds that "mean something", really, we are creating a tapestry of mirrors. Alone as we are in this benign, indifferent universe, of course we shall listen to mirrors.
Before ears there were sounds. Before scales and tones, there was order; an object cannot disobey its inherent frequency, an object's sound is its truth. This is the singular beauty and meaning of a sound.
Sound is dangerous. Sound can be a seducer, a rapist, an easy fuck, a life-long love. No matter how hard a person might try, there is a sound that exists somewhere that can unravel you from inside. Maybe for only a moment. Our mistake is to then delineate meaning. That the sound has shaken you simply reflects your circumstance. The sound will vibrate forever, but for a moment your life moves with it. The sound is a mirror, and who looks to a mirror for truth?
But we must communicate with one another. And we must labour beneath an idea of meaning. So when we say a sound means something (which is akin to framing a mirror in a gallery) and we combine this sound with other sounds that "mean something", really, we are creating a tapestry of mirrors. Alone as we are in this benign, indifferent universe, of course we shall listen to mirrors.