Music - another thought

Music is our most universal endeavor to consciously experience time.

Because music is made of vibrations.
And vibrations is made of rhythm.
Music is not in the pitch but in the beat.

The beat is always moving forward.
It does not stop, it does not wait.
But our experience of the beat is not mechanical.
Sometimes one whole sequence can feel like a split second.
Sometimes one beat can feel like forever.

But if we move with the beat, we become synchronized with it.
We don't feel its passing; we feel it dancing.
That's when we feel like the beat can last forever.

And in that moment, time stops, and we live in an eternity in the space-time of the song.
And we begin to think we understand,
for that moment,
how there can be a reality that continues in its motion
even when all time has ended for us.

Come

Come

To the north to the south to the east to the west
I'm roaming the world and I'm looking for rest
I'm high on adrenaline and low on faith
Purpose is a meme and flow is a place
While I walk while I run while I sleep while I fly
Where do the enlightened find heaven in their skies
When I shit when I fuck when I'm sick when I'm fly
Freedom is a drug but satisfaction a lie.

Fee-fye-foe-fum
I'm living on an addiction of teenage boy dreams
Stretch the hamstrings bring out the drums
Age is a bitch but I'm not quite done
Take chances make noise believe in the fight
It's all an illusion but it's worth the run
I don't believe in the soul I don't believe in the past
I am who I am under my skin in my blood

To the east to the west to the north to the south
Humanity is a cancer but we're living it proud
Fee fye foe fum
While life says go till death says come.

We do not really experience time - we experience the discrepancy between our own change and our simulated version of time.

We panic when we start measuring out this discrepancy with our breath. If we breathed time the way a clock holds it between its hands, time, at least our simulation of it, would cease to exist.

We would be freed from our existential panic, and with any luck, we may indeed be freed even from ourselves.

In dance we synchronize ourselves completely with our simulation of time, and in meditation, we strip ourselves from our simulation of time.

Somewhere between dance and meditation is where we usually are when we actually experience the moment instead of our simulation of it.

But being in the moment is like being a raindrop falling into the sea, in that the line the separates ourselves from the sea of moments, disappears.

And thus we do not really experience time - because if we were really experiencing time, we would not be conscious of it. Ignorance is bliss, but how often do we get there?

Turns out ignorance is hard work!

MY VIEW OF THE WORLD Part II
The Frontline of the World

Language forms the basis for abstract thought. While I do not think that it is the only possibly way for abstract thought, it is the tool human beings have chosen.

We tend to say "the language of art" and "the language of science" - where do these meet?

Language provides two features - one to refer to concrete entities, and another to denote the intangible relationships between these entities. The former puts entities into our cognition, while the later gives form to the abstract. Let's call the former the "concrete" function of language and the later, the "abstract" function.

IMHO, "Art" tends to use the concrete to explain the abstract;
"science" tends to use the abstract to explain the concrete.

"Art" relies on experiences as proofs of the abstract. It is subjective and local. It keeps track of the material surroundings, in order for us to enrich our immaterial being.

"Science" relies on hypothesis and theories as proofs of the concrete. It is universal but removed. It builds not the world, but a representation of the world, in order for us to access our material world.

Which is to say, while "art" has always been depicted to dominate the "spiritual" realm, I would say that "art" is how we access the "spiritual" realm through the physical world, while "science" is how we access the physical world through the "spiritual" realm.

And I think some languages are better suited for science, while others are better suited for art.

Firstly because the vocabulary each language provides, limit what we can in the first place, perceive.

The cultural backdrop surrounding each language then builds up what we can reason.

Certain ideas are more difficult to explain in certain languages than others.

The same idea, may in some languages be expressed as a noun,and in others, as an adjective or a verb.

The form these ideas are expressed directly affect the complexity of the idea to the speaker, and that in turns limits the complexities of the acrobatics we can perform juggling it in our mind.

For me, Japanese is an art language. Nouns are preferred over verbs. There seems to be an obsession to noun-ify everything, and place it firmly into the perception. How the relationships between these nouns are expressed, on the other hand, is often ambiguous.

English, on the other hand, is a science language. Existing nouns are modified with adjectives, but these phrases do not always become an atomic idea in the mind. This makes it necessary for a lot of ideas to be explained, since something that cannot be represented as one single word is difficult to be treated as an endpoint in an argument.

For example "correct answer" is an atomic word 正解 in Japanese, and thus cannot be further broken down. In English, we can extend it into a new idea such as "correct non-answer", which might be used to describe an argument that is in itself correct, but does not address the key issue. Such a development would not arise from "正解".

In English, words like "shooting star" and "living room" are not handled the same way in the mind as "growing economy" and "dining experience". Partly it is because the former is used often enough that the mind groups them into atomic ideas, but also because the two words that form each of the former, mean something quite different from the phrases they form when put together. However, English as a language does not offer a grammatical construct to differentiate between the two.

Japanese however, does. A non-atomic idea would be "流れる星" (star which is shooting) while an atomic idea would be "流れ星" (shooting star). The former is an adjectival verb + noun, whereas the latter is one single noun. Noun-ifying ideas is a cultural obsession, and used in marketing and popular culture.

Chinese used to have this capability but, unfortunately, it is defunct in contemporary Chinese. For example, the atomic word "然" meaning "as it is" or "as so", is coupled with "自" meaning "self" to mean "natural" (自然=as it is itself), and paired with "必" meaning necessary to mean "inevitable" (必然=necessarily so). But a phrase such as "非然" which in classical Chinese means "not so" (非=not), no longer makes any sense in contemporary Chinese. This makes it necessary to rote-learn all the phrases that are acceptable in the Chinese language; the meaning of individual Chinese characters do not necessary have real applicative value to the speaker.

Which is to say that not all languages are equal, when judged in the light of specific applications. But I think their diversity represents the diversity of human thought, and that in turn, is a key to the resilience of the human species, in a snake-eat-rat world.

「縁」

If you toss a coin once, you will get either a head, or a tail.

If you toss it twice, maybe you can get both a head and a tail, but there is still a big possibility that you end up with all heads or all tails.

If you toss it three times, you get a better chance of getting both heads and tails. The chances of getting all heads or all tails is much smaller, but the distribution is memoryless.

And if you can toss it an infinite number of times, you will get both heads and tails.

And that is to me what evolution is. A near-infinite number of attempts at life, so that we cover just about every permutation possible, effectively lowering the risk of extermination by an acceptable threshold of threats. Okay "every permutation" is a exaggeration, but that is the basis of why i believe a property of the world is its immense richness.

Within this richness, is it possible to match one animal/person to another such that they function well together? If I have a sample set of 20 people, I can't say for sure. But if I am given the theoretical infinity, then yes.

Is the theoretical infinity possible?

In the macro scale, yes. But on the micro scale, no.

On the macro scale, we see it in nature, how certain species form symbiotic relationships with another. Given enough time, the species works out what it needs.

But that process is not worked out by one generation, or for one creature.

Which is to say, if you ask me if you will meet the person of your life, I will say, maybe yes, maybe no.

But if everybody can reproduce an infinite number of fuzzy copies* of themselves, the possibility becomes very high, and all that is left is for those copies to meet.

And that chance of meeting and forming a meaningful relationship, on the basis that a theoretical infinite number of variations are available, creates the situation where the two persons/creatures can decide to make something out of it.

This is for me, the definition of 「縁」.

*I think this is the mistaken basis why a lot of people want to have children, and have their children be similar to themseles. Cool it, let nature do its work.

ten thoughts on quality time

1. quality time is any amount of time spent not thinking you'd rather be somewhere else.

2. if every moment in life is a new experience, why should you be thinking about another experience that you cannot yet fully know?

3. while holidays create a period that increases the probability of quality time, do they also decrease the probability of quality time occurring while not on a holiday?

4. 100% quality time should really be the minimum we should aim for in any situation.

5. when we predict what a situation would be like we also define for ourselves the boundaries in which we allow ourselves to experience that situation.

6. my guess is that courage is not calculating risks and going into the situation knowing what will happen, as much as it is being in the situation and simply knowing what needs to be done there.

7. too much of life is lived looking back at the past and into the future. i suspect it has to do with the idea of living life and wanting to look back at it like it's a masterpiece of art.

8. evaluating art, is what a curator does. the artist moves on. once a piece of work is created, it should be already outdated, in the artist's time-frame.

9. in the curator's world, money can buy you quality time. but in the artist's world, quality time is as abundant as the air that you breathe.

10. you can either find time that has more quality in it, or you can put more quality into the time that you have. given any instant, everybody alive has the same amount of time. if that time isn't quality time, by elimination, you must be the problem.

In the face of Struggle, there are those who are resigned to their fate, those who try but don't manage, and then there are two camps that cross the Mountain.

First are those who tear apart what binds them to claim Victory, crossing the Mountain and growing from strength to strength. They are celebrated in history, because when they stood on the mountain, they were standing taller than the mountain. It is always inspiring that a man so small, can be at the same time so tall.

And there are those who struggle. Because when you struggle until you have no more strength left to continue struggling, you can find a place where you can reach out and feel with your hands what had been binding you. And you will know its true nature, precisely because you had so struggled with it. And you will no longer see the Mountain, but the flowers and the trees on the Mountain. And when you reach out to touch the mountain, the mountain will cross under you.

But then Age presents a different mountain. It had always bothered me what would happen when Age decides to take away my strength, take away my sight, take away my hearing. How can i scale a mountain like that? How do folks live with the constant pain in their bodies? How do you come to terms with the permanent handicap?

It is there that I remember our blind and deaf friends. If everybody is unique, what is a handicap? If we cannot see, how much more will we be able to hear?

Age must be life's greatest Justice. It gives everybody one chance to live a struggle you cannot conquer, so that once in your life, you get one compelling chance, to come to terms with yourself. It is not life wanting have the last laugh, but life, telling you, in case you never managed to see, that the biggest mountain that you have unknowingly been struggling with all this while, is really yourself.

f(action) -> reality
f(style) -> action
f(character) -> style
f(development) -> character
f(ambition) -> development
f(inclination) -> ambition
f(self, reality) -> inclination

我如是海。有水而满，却不可满。有水而是，却不是水。无水而空，却不是空。取尽其水则见不得，换尽其水则灭不得。如水滴，滴入海则见不得，分不得，取不得。反问何是海何非海？无海既是海，分不得是海与非海。无我既是我，分不得是我与非我。

你看到空，还是看到色？

Perhaps one of the great mis-accidents of the English Language is its differentiation between "hearing" and "listening", "looking" and "seeing". It creates in the English-speaking psyche an awareness of the cognitive mind that interprets the signals sent out by the senses. Fortunately or not, it makes us always eager to seek out the intention in the words and the meaning in the sights, so that we can perceive what is critical, and understand what is important. We want not just to be hearing, but to be listening, not just to be looking, but to be seeing. We interpret sights and sounds once we sense the slightest indicators - and pigeonhole them into our library of experiences.

But sometimes, we get so caught up with this business of experiencing that we forget to feel what's really around us. Once we match what we see or feel to our experiences, we don't hear the sound in the ears, but the sounds in our minds; we don't see the sight before our eyes, but the visuals in our heads - we try so hard to listen to that "inner voice" that we become deaf the music of the spheres.

Our vocabulary of experiences is both our greatest ability and our biggest handicap. When we attach words to experiences, we give meaning to them. We become able to contain all our experiences within the framework of a language - and words, in representing our experiences, become our experiences.

That is when we need to take a step back, and feel what is really around us instead of rushing into finding meaning in it. We need to learn to hear the "white noise" our brains so conveniently filter out, we need to smell the air, and we need to see the circle in the letter "o". We need to connect back to reality, and not let language remove us from our surroundings. We need to be here now. We need to be "here" in location, and "here" in time.

And I hope you don't manage to read this far. Because if you do, then you are here with me, and that's not where I hope you to be. Words have led you here. Words have created for you Meaning for being here. Words have created Questions. And Questions have created the Need for Answers.

Don't come here searching for answers, because there is none. Go, go back to where you are and find the reality around you. When you sit on the floor, don't ponder. Feel the floor, and feel yourself sitting on the floor. The floor you sit on is not asking you a question - why should you try so hard to find an answer on it?

Listen to the noise
-------------------

Our brains cannot handle a lot of things at one time. But the brain does very clever tricks. It learns to attach meaning to things. It then categorizes, prioritizes and filters out unimportant things so that we need to pay attention only to "important" things - things that threaten our survival, or things that can ensure our safety. I think it's all part of evolution, and the peak of our survival instinct. Attaching meaning to things keeps us in the game; it makes sense of the world - it makes sense of fear, it makes sense of happiness, and it makes sense of desire, and of sadness.

But the problem is, sometimes, the brain decides that so many things are important that we have everything in our face and nothing we can ignore. In trying to minimize the amount of noise we hear, our brain as a result gives us more noise - noise created by meaning - and we fail to hear the real noise - we stop hearing noise as it is, and stop seeing the world as it is. Reality gets filtered by our perceptions, and I think the opinion of most people is that there's nothing you can do about it.

But i think if you try really hard, and listen to the noise - you will start hearing the noise as it is. Your inner noise will be stilled. And you will find the place where meaning is made. And if you can stop that meaning from being made, I think fear, happiness, desire, and sadness can disappear. But I had a lot of difficulty listening to the noise - my mind tries to form images to match the noise i hear. That would create meaning. But my unfamiliarity with hearing the world, did make it easier to hear the world as it is. I wonder what it is like to be profoundly blind. Would hearing be as sight? Or is there no blindness where there is no sight?

I'm sorry this is written with such an assuming voice. I just need to put down what's in my mind.

happiness, i think, is a response to an exciting energy.

when you hit a drum with a mallet, it makes what is usually called a "sound".
perhaps happiness is like this "sound" thing.
when some invisible mallet hits you, you vibrate and emit "happiness".

happiness is not an emotion. happiness is not a motion.
it is a response to an exciting energy.
it is the product of an energy in motion rather than an objective or a feeling.

happiness is not love. love may end in happiness. but it may not.
different people vibrate to different energies, so not everyone
vibrates to love.

that is why nobody can tell you what happiness is, or how you can be happy.

happiness is not a specific manifestation, but manifestations add to
describe what happiness is. happiness is a class of manifestations. it is a template, a virtual class, an idea, rather than a particular instance.

some people find happiness in purpose. some people find happiness in being together. some people find happiness in discovery. some people find happiness in being able to hold together ideas and make sense in its totality.

some people find happiness in roller coaster rides.

but since happiness is the product of an energy, sustained happiness would require a sustained source of that energy.

of course you will first have to figure out what that energy is.

perhaps conditioning and religion can help condition you to resonate to a prescribed energy.

but everybody is different.

some people may find happiness in disrespect, in unbelief, in putting people down. is it fair to say that their unfortunate past made them so?
you are just as unfortunate that your past made you whatever you are.

ideas evolve because ideas get shared. we are all part of some brainwashing.

so let's have a little respect for other people's happinesses, and see how we can fit them in.

e:if meaning in life comes from books, then which came first, meaning or books?
e:^nvm
h:meaning! because there would be no books if there was no meaning to writing them. or at least something along that line
e:ya
e:so reading about the meaning of life is second-hand-knowledge.
e:someone already put into his/her mouth, chewed, and then put it into a bowl.

もし生まれつきのすべては、ゲームのように生まれるまえに選択できる設定だったら、自分はいったいなんで今持っているすべての長所、弱点、頭よさ、顔、人種、両親、体の癖、体質、生まれた国などを、選択してセットにしたのか、思い出せますか？

If everything you have in life were like the settings u gave to your character before you started a game, would you still be able to remember why you had chosen your strengths, weaknesses, how intelligent you are, how you look, your race, your parents, your body and everything that you were born with?

僕は少し思い出せたと思う。だけど、設定時想像したのは、決して今の現実ではない。

Maybe I do somewhat remember. But what I must have had in mind back then, cannot be the reality that I am living in today.

世界はインターネットやテレビ放送など通信の発展により根本的に変わり、社会の価値の核心となる世界観もそれにつれて変化する。

The world has changed so much since... and its values has been radically altered by progress in communications technologies.

こんな世界に、今の設定だと、悔しいけど、もう設定済みだから、もうどうしようもない。
だけど、時々、考える。自分の顔のポイントをもっともっとアップしといたら、と。

It makes it painful to think about how i am left to live with settings that no longer match this reality. It makes me wish i could have gone back and edited my settings and gave myself more points for looks.

でもさ、人間は満足できないものだ。人を見たら、すぐそいつの何かがほしくなる。

but then again, humans are simply insatiable.

だけど、何でもあるほど完璧に見える頭がよくて、金持ちで、体質もよくて、格好いい人を見たら、知りたくなるではないか・・・そいつが選択した設定を。

still, when one sees someone incredibly perfect - having the brains, the body, the money, everything, one cannot help but wonder, what he had selected for his character before it all started.

test everything. trust only as much as you are willing to lose. hold dear the things that matter, but also be ready to lose everything, including yourself, because somewhere down the road, we all lose ourselves sometimes. when you can no longer see the things that used to define the person you are, reinvent. "redo from start" is an error message, but also good advice. it is sad, when people decide to kill themselves when they can no longer face the world without the things around them that used to remind them who they are. if there's a "true" you inside, then you cannot find yourself better than when you have lost everything that you can lose, and are left with that which you cannot. move on. life and time are a couple, and time does not look back. if something wasted your life, spending any more time on it would further be a waste of your life. let go. let go of the past, then you will be able to take hold of the future as it becomes the present. life is always in the present moment. lose it and lose everything. but remember, don't panic. DON'T PANIC. panic is your worst enemy that is always seeking to eat up every present moment you were born to enjoy. enjoying life is not a right. nobody will give it to you, and you can't fight for it. don't complain to the waiter that you didn't enjoy your soup. you just have to learn to do it. and to do it well, in any situation. and when you have mastered that, life would seem easy. some might see you as a loser, some a winner, but why bother, when you have enjoyed every bit of it?

色即空：空即色。

the abstraction gives birth to the instance, and the instance is exactly like the abstraction. you cannot see the instance, but you can know it is alive. you can see the form of the abstraction, but it is not alive. so which has more form, the instance or the abstraction?

just like the runtime is the program, the source code is the program, the binary is the program, but the source code is not the binary, and the binary is not the runtime.

that's why computing to me is both philosophy and engineering.

万物の
リズム読めれば
壁はなし

eddie is not a collection of habits;
   more like a philosophy.
but eddie is not a philosophy;
   more like a framework of thought that can hold philosophy.
but eddie is then again not just one framework;
   but more like a collection of frameworks holding together thoughts that almost disagree and thoughts that disagree.
but eddie is not really, a framework;
   but also all the varied bits of thoughts scattered all over that give form to this framework.
but eddie cannot be just a collection of thoughts;
   but the invisible laws that make sense of all their apparant randomness.
but eddie is not just a set of laws;
   but a set of laws so much part of being that it's almost habit.

But eddie is not a collection of habits. oops.
Let's try this again.