Assumption: poetry consists of sound and sense.
The sound is that of a beating heart.
The sense is one of yearning to return.
As I reviewed Hofstadter last week, I enjoyed rereading another of his Platonic dialogues, "A Courteous Crossing of Words," this one between SL #641--a believer in the ideas of I Am a Strange Loop--and SL #642--a doubter of the ideas of I Am a Strange Loop:
SL #641: Earlier, I described your "I" as a self-reinforcing structure and a self-reinforcing story, but now I'll risk annoying you by calling it a self-reinforcing myth [emphasis is Hofstadter's].
SL #642: A myth?! I'm certainly not a myth, and I'm here to tell you so. (291)
SL #641 then explains itself this way:
The "I" -- yours, mine, everyone's -- is a tremendously effective illusion, and falling for it has fantastic survival value. Our "I"'s are self-reinforcing illusions that are an inevitable by-product of strange loops, which are themselves an inevitable by-product of symbol-possessing brains that guide bodies through the dangerous straits and treacherous waters of life. (291)
Such dramatic language would seem to invite literary support, but first we find support from another take on the physics of thought -- Zen Physics:
We are the products of our life stories. [...] So, inevitably, a lot of what we remember is not what actually happened--whatever this may mean--but rather a kind of myth or confabulation that helps us sustain the impression that we know what is going on. [...] We maintain a sense of continuity and so provide a basis for our feeling of personal identity at the cost of never knowing what is true. We are as much a myth as the stories we tell ourselves. (Darling, 1996, 35-36)
Darling goes on to assert that "[t]he brain, in effect, appears to have a resident storyteller that works ceaselessly to link everything that comes to its attention into a single coherent narrative" (87).
A single coherent narrative. A myth. A monomyth. That's what Joyce called it in Finnegans Wake, and it would become the basis of Joseph Campbell's concept of the hero's journey:
The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation--initiation--return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth. (Campbell, 1949, 30)
Separation--initiation--return. We do it over and over; furthermore, we remember each iteration and use it to inform the next iteration of the set of strange loops we call life. And the lifestory that we construct becomes a myth with a single protagonist: I.
So what is myth?
For Marshall McLuhan, myth "is the mode of simultaneous awareness of a complex group of causes and effects" (McLuhan, 1962, 266). This "complex group of causes and effects" is simply another way to express strange loops of separation--initiation--return; therefore, McLuhan's definition of myth would certainly support both Darling and Hofstadter. But James P. Carse gives us, perhaps, the most concrete definition of myth:
Myths [...] are not stories that have meanings, but stories that give meanings" (Carse, 1986).
Without myth, life would have no meaning. That is why I am a myth.
Last week, I spoke briefly to David Gilmour's emphasis on I in "Learning to Fly"; this week, I thought we could look at the I a bit more closely, beginning with a poem called "I".
I
what is I?
that which wonders aloud
wandering aimfully through
that which is familiar
is it a function of YOU?
the world that I sees
pondering endlessly clues
the light of mortal night
is it a fragment or the center?
a figment or a fact?
I wants to listen
but it won't stop screaming
somebody please
please listen for me
* * *
Since we've now been introduced to Hofstadter and his seminal concept of "strange loops as the crux of consciousness" (1979, 709), let's skip through his more recent work, I Am a Strange Loop, to see how his thinking has evolved over the past 30 years:
What I mean by "strange loop" is -- here goes a first stab, anyway -- not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive "upward" shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle. [...] In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop. (102)
Hofstadter then follows with a wonderful discussion of "Drawing Hands," a lithograph by M.C. Escher that hung in my office at McCook Community College until I moved out of the faculty ranks and into administration last year. I kept "Drawing Hands" there as a metaphor for the writing process; Hofstadter uses it as a metaphor for thinking, itself--a "paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop."
So what does all of this have to do with I?
In any strange loop that gives rise to human selfhood, by contrast, the level-shifting acts of perception, abstraction, and categorization are central, indispensable elements. It is the upward leap from raw stimuli to symbols that imbues the loop with "strangeness." The overall gestalt "shape" of one's self -- the "stable whorl," so to speak, of the strange loop constituting one's "I" -- is not picked up by a disinterested, neutral camera, but is perceived in a highly subjective manner through the active processes of categorizing, mental replaying, reflecting, comparing, counterfactualizing, and judging. (187)
In other words, the I is made up of self-referential symbols that are constantly being re-examined by that same self-referential I. Because at least some of those symbols are the symbols used to represent other Is, that which we call I is unavoidably "inhabited" (to use Hofstadter's term) by those other Is; thus I is, to some extent, a function of YOU.
So how does Hofstadter connect this loopy I to consciousness? Like this:
Consciousness is the dance of symbols inside the cranium. Or, to make it even more pithy, consciousness is thinking. As Descartes said, "Cogito ergo sum." [...] This dance of symbols in the brain is what consciousness is. [...] Note that I say "symbols" and not "neurons." The dance has to be perceived at that level for it to constitute consciousness. (276)
Finally, gyrically, in his conclusion titled "I Am a Strange Loop," Hofstadter resorts to metaphor:
Poised midway between the unvisualizable cosmic vastness of curved spacetime and the dubious, shadowy flickerings of charged quanta, we human beings, more like rainbows and mirages than like raindrops or boulders, are unpredictable self-writing poems [emphasis added] -- vague, metaphorical, ambiguous, and sometimes exceedingly beautiful. (363)
So there you have it: I is a poem.
This blog takes its name from the driving force behind Frank Herbert's early novel, Destination: Void (see "Chapter 1", below), but for me, personally, the real motivator in pursuing this blog is to reproduce the group project that I require of my students while reading Herbert's novel in my online Science Fiction class. The assignment is to collaboratively describe consiousness using Herbert's novel as the primary source, but giving free rein to source discovery beyond that. Here is one of the best examples of that effort: Earthling 8. By the time I wrote last week's entry on "Learning to Fly," I had completely forgotten that Earthling 8 had leaned so heavily on Pink Floyd for their inspiration, but I'm sure it was still bouncing around in my brain somewhere. Thank you, crew!
In addition to requiring Herbert as the primary source, I always kick off the project with a quote from Doug Hofstadter in which he introduces his concept of consciousness as a strange loop:
My belief is that the explanations of "emergent" phenomena in our brains--for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness and free will--are based on a kind of Strange Loop, an interaction between levels in which the top level reaches back down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself determined by the top level. [...] The self comes into being at the moment it has the power to reflect itself. (Godel, Escher, Bach, 709).
This resonating recursion is fundamental to much of W.B. Yeats' gyrical poetry and philosophy, but I think it is nowhere more clearly shown than in Ted Kooser's brilliant "Skater".
Project Consciousness is just like that.
In preparing to write this piece, I checked several websites for the lyrics to Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly" (see The Audio File, left). Disappointed with each of them, I decided that the problem lies not so much with the listeners' ability to transcribe Gilmour's words, but with the very attempt at transcription itself. After all, orality is the essence of rock, which Marshall McLuhan describes as "a kind of education based upon an oral tradition, an acoustic experience, which is quite strangely remote from literacy" (Understanding Me, 229). Therefore, my approach remains strictly oral, but in order to work in the typographic medium that is blogging, I must type the lyrics in some manner. Because I could find no agreement on punctuation--never mind the words themselves--I chose to completely eliminate all punctuation marks (which do not exist in the spoken word) as well as all capitalization with the exception of the word I.
I am doing so because one of the most interesting aspects of the lyric is Gilmour's emphasis of the word I. While the alphabet that we use in English typography is, in fact, entirely phonetic--i.e., the letters represent sounds (phonemes) not meaning (morphemes)--there is one exception, and the exception is the letter i. While inarguably phonetic, the letter I also represents the most central meaning known to conscious beings: selfhood. And, as we shall see, this I, this point of view, is central to the lyric.
So how does this I learn to fly? Through the hero's journey, naturally, and along the way, it shows us the struggle to return -- to return to the tribal orality that is rock.
into the distance a ribbon of black
stretched to the point of no turning back
Entering the scene in medias res, we are immediately thrust into a, supposedly, civilized hero's journey, standing, literally, at the point of departure, described by Joseph Campbell:
As apprehended by the mystic, it marks what has been termed "the awakening of the self." [...] But whether small or great, and no matter what the stage or grade of life, the call rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration--a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand. (The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 51)
a flight of fancy on a windswept field
standing alone my senses reel
We move into the unreal world of imagination--a flight of fancy--but Gilmour has just a little fun with us on the way. Remember, this is orality, and though most listeners would transcribe the fourth line as "my senses reel" for the sake of cliche, the ear really cannot make that distinction, and just as readily picks up a Kantian pun: "my senses real." As McLuhan points out, "Joyce never tired of explaining how in Finnegans Wake the words the reader sees are not the words that he will hear'" (The Gutenberg Galaxy, 83).
a fatal attraction is holding me fast
how can I escape this irresistible grasp
Here we see a classic example of the hero's refusal of the call; however, it may be a rhetorical question. The hero is both drawn and repelled by the prospect of this journey.
cant keep my eyes from the circling sky
tongue tied and twisted just an earthbound misfit I
What is the crux of the hero's problem? As a rock hero, it can only be the tension between his visual education and his auditory nature, as McLuhan makes clear:
The hero has become a split man as he moves towards the possession of an individual ego. And the "split" is manifest as pictorialized models or "machinery" of complex situations such as tribal, auditory man had made no effort to visualize. That is to say, detribalization, individualization, and pictorialization are all one. The magical mode disappears in proportion as interior events are made visually manifest. (The Gutenberg Galaxy, 52).
As humans can learn to fly only in manmade machinery, and this lyric clearly indicates learning to fly in a propeller-driven aircraft, the hero finds himself crossing the first threshold in a solo journey of self-doubt, sitting alone in the belly of the whale:
ice is forming on the tips of my wings
unheeded warnings I thought I thought of everything
no navigator to find my way home
unladened empty and turned to stone
At this point, there is some disagreement as to the words in the lyric. Each of the sources I found transcribed the next line as
a soul in tension thats learning to fly;
however, I believe it is just as reasonable to hear the line as
sole intention its learning to fly
This was my initial hearing of the verse, and frankly I prefer it. Either way, it sets up the road of trials for our hero:
condition grounded but determined to try
cant keep my eyes from the circling skies
tongue tied and twisted just an earthbound misfit I
This is the essence of the human situation--the lifelong yearning to fly, the undeniable fact of gravity. Our hero, however, overcomes his humanity:
above the planet on a wing and a prayer
my grubby halo a vapour trail in the empty air
across the clouds I see my shadow fly
out of the corner of my watering eye
a dream unthreatened by the morning light
could blow this soul right through the roof of the night
In a clear example of apotheosis, the hero defies gravity and, in doing so, as he must, experiences deification.
theres no sensation to compare with this
suspended animation a state of bliss
I don't know what being is. And I don't know what consciousness is. But I do know what bliss is: that deep sense of being present, of doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself. If you can hang on to that, you are on the edge of the transcendent already. (Pathways to Bliss, xxiii).
The hero is now master of the two worlds, which we see in a telling change in the refrain. Recall that in each of the previous instances of the refrain, the hero can't keep his eyes from the circling sky; now, however, he has slipped into the acoustic, non-viewpoint reality of the auditory man, and he's gone:
cant keep my mind from the circling sky
tongue tied and twisted just an earthbound misfit I
In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan defines a "sacred" universe as one dominated by auditory media, including the spoken word. "A 'profane' universe, on the other hand, is one dominated by the visual sense. The clock and the alphabet, by hacking the universe into visual segments, ended the music of interrelation" [italics added] (210). So, how can McLuhan's concept of "sacred" vs. "profane" be applied to music, itself?
With the electronic music instrument, any tone can be made available in any intensity and for any length of time. Note that the older symphony orchestra was, by comparison, a machine of separate instruments that gave the effect of organic unity. With the electronic instrument, one starts with organic unity as an immediate fact of perfect synchronization. This makes the attempt to create the effect of organic unity quite pointless. Electronic music must seek other goals. (471)
For Brian Eno, those goals are nothing less than heightened awareness and consciousness itself. As case in point, consider "And Then So Clear". The use of vocoder immediately makes any attempt at organic unity pointless, as McLuhan, notes, but it does speak well of "the music of interrelation." And what we gain through Eno's impressionistic vocal is a mythic understanding of consciousness--clarity--itself, the very substance of sacred music. Check it out.
"Stars" -- eight minutes of expanded consciousness, made aural by Brian Eno (see The Audio File, left).
This piece from the Apollo: Spheres & Soundtracks album composed with Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno exemplifies the points Tamm makes about Eno's notion of ambient in Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound: 1) the atmosphere is "colored" by a drone-like background layer; 2) the sonic density is fairly low, giving the impression of significant space between aural events; 3) there's a ton of signal processing, most notably echo and reverb in spite of the well-known vacuum of space that might be indicated by the title; 4) many events occur at levels barely above the threshold of conscious hearing; and 5) it's completely alive between your ears (147-148). And, though Tamm cites Eno's references to Marshall McLuhan's "gobal village" on several occasions, "Stars" is a perfect example of McLuhan's concept of cool.
For McLuhan, a hot medium is "one that extends one single sense in 'high definition.' High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, 'high definition.' A cartoon is 'low definition,' simply because very little visual information is provided. [...] Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience" (Understanding Media 39).
Eno's "Stars" certainly extends a single sense, but it does so in such low definition that it compels the listener to fill in the space, to travel the lightyears between stars, to become a voidsucker--one with the universe--to experience the consciousness of a god--that is, to be more fully human.
