This brings us to the mediation that words bring through concepts such as love, or understanding. I've been trying to figure out what it means to understand someone, or to understand anything. I have felt that I understand someone before, and I pick the word, "Understand" to that feeling, but how did I decide that word matches up with that feeling? What conditioing brought about that kind of understanding? (See, there it is again.)
And now to prove Gabe's point further that all I talk about is love: The concept of love is something that even more people struggle with, hopefully something we all question at some point. (Like the song is, we should all ask oursevles at least once, "What is love?" ) I'm not even going to attempt to tackle what love is. Though I have my views on it, and while I do believe I could be understood, (Whatever that means) it's an understanding that would develop over time. If I were to ever say I love you, (in any sense of the word. Anyone out there we need more words for the concept of all the different kinds of love? Eskimos have 50 words in their language for snow because it's everywhere. I think our lack of having words for love prove we don't have enough of it in our culture. =( ) I would hope you would understand because we would have built up some sort of previous connection. You would understand what it meant for me, myself, to love another human being but only through the feeling itself. (If that makes any sense. It's 12:20 in the morning. I should probably be sleeping.)
Love, understanding. I believe these feelings are something that are better off not mediated through words. (Not that they shouldn't be debated, that can bring people to a closer understanding.) When I tell someone I love them, it is saying many things at once. (And I mean love in any sense word. A love between a parent and child, a love between friends, lovers, etc.) Many feelings that have no word attached to them. It's a short cut, in a way. There is no possible way for me to convey every feeling I feel for a person when I love them through words, so I just use the short cut and hope they understand. But mostly, I would hope that the word would just help the connection we were were feeling, and would not cause the feeling. The connection of love would already be established, the word love would just help make that connection stronger.
With understanding, is understanding the same as empathy to another person? If I understand your feelings, have I been in simlar place that you've been in before? Do I understand your intentions? Or do I simply understand the feeling that you are feeling right now?
Back to empathy. True understanding (ding) of a feeling is something not that is not felt through words, it is felt through a connection. But at the same time, I see contradictions. Can it be possible to feel the exact same way that another person feels at the same time? Is the feeling truly the same? Can a person simply just know when the feeling is the same?
A lot of these concepts of mediation through words can also used for religon. The core feeling of all religons is essientially the same. Buddism, Taoism, Christainity, Judiasm, Transcendenalism, were all made to come closer to "god." The main character of Life of Pi, Pi, said that there are many pathways one can take to get the top of a mountain. All paths are paths, and none of them have to be the "right" one.
This sums it better than I could:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyTOIHhFla8
And just because I like to make fun of my own obsessi--I mean, fascination of what I call the "the philosophy of feelings":
4 comments:
Interesting points. Although I'm not sure you ever really made a point. I mean, I guess I agree that words and conversation limit (mediate) our ability to comprehend what other people are saying. But I'm not sure about some of the other stuff. Like, as in, I'm not at all sure what you were talking about. But you've got the 12:30 excuse, so it's okay.
As for your comments on my post:
That's a fine way to use Limewire, as we've talked about, it's more about how the medium is used, and you're in the minority there.
Also, it's all good that you go to shows and buy merch. However:
Saying that you don't like to buy albums simply because not a lot of the money goes to the artist is a contradiction in terms because you're right that not a lot of it goes to the artist, but SOME does. And the rest does go to record companies, and labels, and distribution companies, etc. And yes, bands could pull Radioheads, but the problem is, only well established bands could do that.
You see, new, small, unknown bands need PUBLICITY if they're going to make any money at all, so that they can keep producting their art. That's a large part of what the record companies provide, and I think it's less likely that they'll die off completely and more likely that they'll just become advertising/distribution companies, having less of a hand in the actual making of the album.
Which brings me to the final topic, the album. While it is true that many songs are pieces of art on their own, and hopefully a really good album would be chock full of such songs, I really do thing that if an artist (key word) puts out an album, they do it for a reason. That's why they also put out EPs. Because they're cohesive, and have songs which wouldn't fit on the album that they're making. No, I don't think that the new Britney album is deserving of any listens at all, (not that I've heard it), and it's quite possibly that those songs don't fit together as a piece of work, most albums are sequenced, written, produced the way they are for A REASON. That's why every radiohead album sounds different. That's why good bands change their sound on each consecutive album.
OK?
And yeah, your comment was about as long as the original blog post, but this one is long too, so I shouldn't be complaining.
I totally left a long and complex response to your last comment but it's not here. And I don't want to retype the whole thing. But basically,
if I remember correctly what you said, hipsters at lincoln had to find out about the bands they talk about somehow, and I can tell you that these "indie bands with large fanbases" of which you speak did not get that way simply by word of mouth. Publicity is key. And labels provide that.
Also, not all labels are evil. There are indie labels, which are pretty sweet, not corporate, and almost your ma-and-pa bakery of the music business. There are A LOT of them in fact.
And finally, it's not stealing music that I'm against. I'm fully aware of the student budget, and I steal music all the time. But I do it by checking CDs out from the library (they have a great selection) so then I have the whole album, plus album art, from one source, so all the songs are mixed at the same level with the same audio quality and everything's nice. Also, there's eMusic, which is a subscription based thing. I think they may have upped their rates since I signed up (I got to keep my rates), but I'm paying 10 bucks a month for 40 songs. Thats 25 cents a song. And it's entirely indie labels. It's still a great deal at whatever price it is now.
So there are alternatives to supporting the corporate jerks without downloading your music.
Getting a CD from the library is different because torrents give you each song, individually, often uploaded from different sites, possibly out of order. A CD is EXACTLY HOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO SOUND, aside from vinyl for some purists.
Maybe I'm just not up to date on how torrents work these days, but that was the impression I had, and besides, most people don't use torrents, they use limewire. different.
In indie circles, yeah, I think torrents are more popular. But i think you'll find that your common hip/hop pop fan will use limewire.
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