Objectivity

To me being objective means trying to rid ourselves of the biases that we possess. That doesn’t sound very well defined but I think that it should include trying to not colour all of our thoughts and impressions based off of our opinions, feelings, and to a certain degree to put our preconceived notions to the side before we judge people or situations. It’s practically impossible to be entirely objective because if you think about it, we make sense of the world by comparing it to our ideas of how we think it should be. Every time we learn something new, we try to link it back to what we already know.

Looking at it this way, I’m not a very objective person. I tend to not speak my mind until I’ve talked to a person enough to have an idea of how they think. Doing this affords me the leisure of being able to have discourse with the person using their own logic. That is how I like to interact with people, get to know them, and learn a little about how they think. Afterwards see if I can understand their point of view and relate to them and just see what happens. Though there are many times when I can’t afford to do this, after all being entirely socially awkward until maybe after spending about 30 hours or so picking at someone's brain is no way to make connections much less even just meet people. One such incident that I remember, I wasn’t even sure what to make of it, I still don’t know what to make of it today.

I remember this female who at the time I knew she was a classmate of mine, but I had never spoken a word to her or even had any interaction with her until that day, the Thursday before finals started. I remember they were talking about homosexuality. I interjected with something that I had read about 3-5 months back about semi-recent study on homosexuals. The study had mentioned about how they had found that most homosexuals were homosexuals because of social/environmental reasons. I had mentioned that personally, I think of homosexuals as two groups, those who are born as “men trapped in a woman’s body” or “women trapped in a man’s body” and those who become homosexual for some reason or other. Because the former group’s preferences seem to be from birth it would suggest that their preferences stem more from genes than other factors, and I consider them to be true homosexuals. She looked at me in an odd way and said that she didn’t believe that homosexuality came from our environment, nor does it come from genes. She then said to me that it came from within us. I thought about it for a moment, and pretty much said that things that affect our development either come from our environment, or our genes. The term environment is used in a broader manner it includes our living conditions, parents, family, friends etc. She insisted to me again that it’s from something within us, and not affected by the environment but not from our genes. Entirely confused I tried to press her for her thoughts, just to have her elaborate on “it comes from inside.” She didn’t and so I just gave up because there was no point in pressing her for more information when it seemed futile. She went back to studying for our Proofs final, and I went back to trying to work on a proof and that was that.

I utterly failed at being objective, but I also tried to understand her view, which I also failed at. Though I have to admit I’ve tried to figure out what she meant, and seeing her view is a bit hard for me because I subscribe to the idea that we can quantify and study things. I’ll admit, there are many things you can’t study, like ghosts, they kind of lie outside of the realm of science for the pure and simple fact that so far no one has been able to recreate an incident enough times to figure something out. I guess she could’ve meant the soul, though I’m not sure what the soul is, much less what can come out of it. From most descriptions the soul seems to be an integral part of the core of our personality, but our personality is heavily influenced by our surroundings, and I'm not sure what part is the environment and which part is the soul.

Favorite Song . . .

After a bit of thought I realized I don't actually listen to many songs. I listen to a lot of music, but not a lot of actual songs. It did occur to me though that of the few songs I listen to on a more regular basis, Mozart's requiem would definitely rank near the top alongside "Ode an Die Freude," though I do happen to like "Tentai Kansoku" and Bump of Chicken in general when I'm sick of hearing classical music played on the radio or something.

Mozart's Requiem all in all is about 50 minutes of music; depending on the conductor could be a few minutes longer. To be honest though I'm not even sure who performed the particular recording that I have, I have even forgotten how I came upon it. I am fortunate in that the recording I do have of it is a recording of the full piece, and not broken apart into its different sections. It also never occurred to me to look up the lyrics until I tried to write this blog entry. I never liked it because of what the lyrics mean, I've always assumed that they were in Latin, because I didn't know them until a day or so ago. I did manage to find a translation and it kind of was a surprise and kind of wasn't. The god of the book religions was mentioned several times was the semi-surprise, but a few seconds after delving into the stanzas I remembered that many artists during that time and earlier in Europe had to write tributes to religion. One of the first reasons I like this piece in particular, is that unlike almost anything else that W. A. Mozart wrote, it's not a "happy" piece. One of the things I hate about most of his works is that they’re all happy pieces almost as if the guy was on antidepressants all the time he was writing. Though its origin is not entirely clear, though it has Mozart's name attached to it, it's a well known fact that he did not write the whole song (it was posthumously unfinished). We do know that he wrote at least the very beginning, as to how far he actually did write no one knows. The other composer who finished it, no one knows how much he had taken from Mozart's unfinished notes and how much is entirely his composition.

One thing I guess that attracts me to this piece is possibly the complexity. A lot of popular music is rather simplistic in the sense that most of it is a standard form that can be described almost to the exact number of measures of each part. There is also the ridiculous amount of repeated melodic lines that have a different set of lyrics. I've always been attracted to complex things, like how I prefer Go over chess, or very clever things. Though I don't actually try to analyze it, I just listen to the melody. I love the dramatic crescendos that are in it. I don’t really know how it’s important to me; I didn’t grow up listening to Mozart. I grew up listening to Chinese opera, traditional Chinese music, romantic music and baroque. I was exposed to Mozart because pieces like “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (which is one of those pieces I hate from Mozart) are so popular and as I got older, I was exposed to his concertos and that was when I really actually started to listen to Mozart. With that in mind . . . I guess it’s important because I like the melodies and the layering in different parts actually now that I think about it seems to sound like counterpoint. I’ve always been amazed at counterpoint, it’s something that I absolutely admire about composers who are able to do it well. J.S. Bach was a master of the technique and I’ve always found it just astounding how composers are able to start melodies that are seemingly independent ideas that just constantly move forward but the harmony they produce is entirely connected. It’s also a composition form that I’ve always wanted to learn, but . . . well I’m not immersed in the world of music anymore. So Mozart's Requiem I guess would be a part of my past that's no longer alive which I guess is kind of fitting.





Here is the First Video in a playlist:

Musings on Endtroducing

I don't really have a favourite piece, but I did notice a few things about the album. The motifs that are found in DJ Shadow's album are (to me) kind of odd, it almost reminds me of one of the looser definitions for music which categorizes music as “organized sound.” It feels odd (to me) mostly because he takes snippets of ideas from various different sources, a fair amount of those ideas hearken back to some jazz roots. There also seem to be some ideas that are taken from what sounds like baroque, classical music and voice recordings from TV shows or speeches or something. Some parts to me it feels like there's almost a disconnect of ideas. Some parts here and there (like at 1:40 or so in "Stem/Long Stem") it feels like he interjects a random idea almost like a person jumping into a conversation for a sentence making a few random comments and then runs off as the music continues more or less where it left off. That being said there actually is some structure to the album as a whole.

“Best Foot Forward” seems to set the environment that the rest of the album is framed. It is almost like a sampling of the different timbres that are going to be present. Most composers have some set of instruments instead DJ Shadow uses the recordings as his instruments for the composition. It showcases some spoken word sections, rhythms and the record spinning type sounds. The second piece, “Building Steam with a Grain of Salt,” I find to be of much more interest because a lot of the ideas that DJ Shadow puts in it, are developed throughout the album. The ideas I think that he develops throughout are the rhythm and repetitive melody. He almost takes the listener on a journey first, exploring the rhythm idea in “The Number Song.” Though the repetitive measures he puts in different sections of the music drives me nuts. It always feels like it is going to move forward but it doesn't and it repeats the theme (one such section is “Organ Donor”) for a while before moving forward. Though I have to admit I don't pick out rhythm or harmony as well as I do melody, but I think he does similar things with the rhythm too it just doesn't drive me up the wall quite the same. The album is rather interesting as a whole it reminds me of the variation form.