Sartre and Linguistics

Sartre and Linguistics. I always expected a connection between these two. As Sartre claims in his paper-cutter example, there is an odd discomfort in freedom, so we take refuge in establishing identities for ourselves.  I play horn, and I call myself a horn player. However, consider the word play. The form of the word itself tells several possibilities from the first clause: 1) I am producing a sound with a horn at this very moment 2) I intend to produce sound on horn right now 3) I regard producing sound on horn as a profession or a hobby in which I more than often spend my time doing 4) I act a role in an ensemble as the hornist. However, at what point does that make me a player? Like learning a language, when can I proudly say I can speak Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic, or Russian? The 1^st and 4^th definitions particularly cover the objectivity of the matter. The 2^nd and 3^rd are subjective, something to be argued perhaps by more experienced horn players, their ideas of proficiency differing. So, who decides whether I am proficient enough to be regarded as a horn player and not just someone who is playing horn? Primarily, as one, I fall assumedly under the 4^th definition, since I’ve found my niche there over time. Few would argue I am not a horn player at this point, unless there was a person of considerable pride in his or her experience or expertise to call me otherwise.

A shared subject of concern young adults hold in development is Identity. Who am I? What am I? A common novel type: coming of age. Everyone who approaches developing age and realizations undergoes this. From what seems evident, everybody explores who they really are at some point in their lives—or at several points even.

Millennials were introduced into the world at a unique time, defined as an age of information. The world is more connected than ever before. Marriages are increasingly multicultural. Ideas of art, science, and ethics are expanding rapidly from internet forums and social media. College is the most fertile environment for such ideas and concepts to grow and be examined by individuals. The freedom of being broken off from familiar environments—like the company and ideals of your family—demonstrates a core principle of geographical development: isolation producing diversity. In addition, especially for those attending college far away from home, there is a curious mode of interaction with other students suddenly taken on. This is the point where you are removed from your own culture.

Something about that apparent isolation tends to bother individuals, thus causes them to explore. This is where social media and the internet comes into play. This is also arguably the most knowledgeable age in human history, where everything seems to have a trail of explanation and diagnosis. The one that most often is turned to is in the area of psychology.

‘Am I homosexual?’, for instance, can be looked at with complete freedom at the college age. No matter what one was brought up to accept as common knowledge, one can now push this knowledge aside and consider other sources. This is advantageous for coming to the most logical, naked conclusion. What do I believe? This is such a pressing question for many young people, looked at as a pursuit for a conclusion or inference for a sense of stability and direction. Like discovering what sexuality you are, there is certain security in knowing what you are. So, Sartre notes correctly that we have some anxiety in freedom. Now, this is from an existentialist’s point of view. From a deterministic one, anxiety results from the illusion of freedom. Come to think of it—that either we are in complete control of how we interact with our environment or that we are predetermined to interact in a certain way—both possibilities are frightening.

In either case, we find comfort in a definition.

Let’s start with the basics—what we know for sure.

I am.

Everything is. Just look at the world around you without thinking of words to define it. What do you see? It simply is. It exists. We exist. I exist. You exist.

What am I? There are a number of ways you could define me. A writer, a blogger, a philosopher, an idiot, a genius. But I cannot be any of these without the evaluation and examination of the person who perceives my existence. So, in every word, there is an opinion—a level of subjectivism.

For a longtime, I thought of myself as a hetero-romantic asexual. A mouthful isn’t it? My roommate didn’t seem convinced even though I openly regarded myself as one. In fact, I probably don’t fit in the conventional label. I like to think of myself as one. But still hasn’t answered whether I am or not. What does it mean to be a hetero-romantic asexual?

For me, it meant I did not want to have sex, but I still wanted a romantic relationship. At least that’s what I would tell myself. I didn’t like the idea of sex, even though I physically enjoy it. But I don’t like the idea of it to the point I distance myself from association with it, deliberately cringing at the mention of it, or suddenly becoming Spock-like in reaction. I was hoping if I act like an asexual, I would become one. But soon I learned, just like how a homosexual has difficulty being attracted to the opposite sex, I am indeed straight.

There’s a curiosity to this case, and that is, I feel like I should know what my orientation is; however, the expected traits of each orientation seems to have control over me. Can I be gay and act straight? Can I be a nerd and be interested in sports? Can I be an artist and be socially healthy? There seems to be a dissonance in these pairings. If I call myself a writer, will I start acting like one? Personally, whenever I entertain the idea, I have a stronger affection for cats, a habit to talk in an intelligent-sounding accent, an increased taste in dark-roasted coffee.

So, where is self in these pictures if I’m ironically taking on a socially-established identity?

If determinists are correct, and we are merely complex chemicals conditioned from impressions of our various experiences, then are labels essentially a list of results? Or are they experiential influences themselves?

Imagine a world without words. We would act differently, I’d expect. Words are loaded with links to inferences; what if those inferences didn’t exist? The association would still be present, but the absence of sound or written symbols to represent it would allow for more uncertainty. Everything would simply be.

And that’s all we can say for sure about anything, including ourselves.

I am.

This essay essentially is about the influence of labels on our behavior. I just labeled this essay. What did it mean before I defined it? What is it about now?

You are.

Oi! 

I made this blog ages ago, but I've had a recent influx of spontaneous essays in the past few weeks, and I think it's about time I jump back into this! Otherwise, those works will never have the practical opportunity to be read. But really, these are progressive thoughts, rather journalistic, so they'd probably be prone to error--something I'll someday look back on and say "eh . . ." But hey! Everyone is constantly developing, so I don't really think it'll be any different when I'm seventy and I'm looking back on essays I wrote when I was sixty-five. Anyway, this blog is about philosophy, some theoretical, some practical. And I might be talking to myself in some of these . . . 

So, feel free to comment--I love feedback and hate it at the same time and it should be entertaining to live with and muse about all day!

Your's truly,

The Traveling Extra

Worlds

"I said once that it was not enough to hear the music; you must see it as well . . ."

-Igor Stravinsky

I was always a fan of this man's ground-breaking compositions and ideas. Most know him from The Rite of Spring, The Firebird, and Petrouchka, each of its own unique mood and movement. I've been on much search for a nearby performance of any of these, but haven't had much luck so far. But wouldn't it be ultimate to not only hear the orchestral suites, but also the ballets each one was put to? Those are even harder to come by.

During 1910s Paris, in which Stravinsky premiered these pieces, the audience would traditionally receive a show both audibly and visually intriguing. But even when I listen to the pieces by themselves, they are alone intriguing; a certain array of colors and patterns appear in my mind's eye in a way most difficult to explain—somewhat like a replacement for the winding wings and infernal dancing in The Firebird, or the jolting frenzy and primitive hunt of The Rite of Spring, or the playful waltz and delightful festivals of Petrouchka.

Take, for another example a wider audience may remember, the first song played on Disney's Fantasia—Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor—where the Maestro, Leopold Stokowski, describes to the viewers what the listener may imagine when the orchestra plays: "from vague shapes and colors to the instruments themselves that play their parts".

Consider where these images come from, and how we can see them even with our eyes open. I am going to attempt to explain it (notice the word 'attempt'). This is a phenomenon I call a World.

By a World, I mean to say that each work of art its own.

This is not only limited to music, but also consider poetry. Petrarch's Sonnet 90:

She used to let her golden hair fly free.
For the wind to toy and tangle and molest;
Her eyes were brighter than the radiant west.
(Seldom they shine so now.)  I used to see
Pity look out of those deep eyes on me.
("It was false pity," you would now protest.)
I had love's tinder heaped within my breast;
What wonder that the flame burnt furiously?
She did not walk in any mortal way,
But with angelic progress; when she spoke,
Unearthly voices sang in unison.
She seemed divine among the dreary folk
Of earth.  You say she is not so today?
Well, though the bow's unbent, the wound bleeds on

A fair analyst would naturally notice the author's prevalent use of figurative imagery, "[hair] For the wind to toy and tangle and molest" (2), "She did not walk in any mortal way/But with angelic progress" (9-10), and "the bow's unbent, the wound bleeds on" (14). This is all with a certain purpose.

Take something solid, something most people have probably seen: wind blowing in someone's hair. Everyone has observed it before, but individuals will often have a picture of distinguished detail in his or her mind's eye upon reading the phrase—colors of the background, the length of her hair, and sometimes even the face and eyes and the age and height and complexion of that lady—all of this unspecified in the poem, but rooted in the reader's mix of memory, familiarity, and perception. Or take something with a more vague root: an angel to describe how the damsel walks. In some minds, a blinding light may add to the color—even though this is centered on the manner of her walking (and that is the beauty of Petrarch's adeptness with metaphors). But as for the action, some may think of her floating, even though, in reality, she likely isn't. Lastly, the metaphor of Cupid's arrow is thrown in to illustrate a specific analogy for the encounter's resilient effect on the narrator. Even though the arrow and wound are not physically present, the reader may visualize it anyway.

Implications seem to compose part of the picture made in the mind of this lady Petrarch sees, but isn't there something missing, taking into account that we might add our own details that are unspecified and sometimes even visualize the scene as literally described?

Why use these certain tones and images and not just write the poem with only facts? Surely it will give a more accurate picture. What I am thinking is that the author deliberately intends for an appeal to imagination. Sure, by using facts, a scene would indeed be visualized, but it would lose its subjectivity—it would lose its texture.

Furthermore, consider why legal documents would not use poetic devices—they aim to be absolute. As for art, the very opposite is intended. It allows room for indefinence; by use of poetic imagery, a seed is planted in the unique soil of each individual reader’s mind as to grow into a similar world, not quite exactly as Petrarch's, but of the same essence and understanding. Poetry is written to be flexible with an individual's imagination. Thus, with that sapling, the audience takes part in a wider conscience.

Switch over to painting for a moment. Art museums are the quietest sanctuaries; nothing above a whisper seems appropriate; distractions are frowned upon. Time suddenly loses its infinity when you realize the number of paintings to view, ideally to take in every pigment, which cannot be crammed into the tiny clock you carry on your wrist. A single ripple of disturbance, then, becomes a nuisance.

To view a painting is to view a portal.

Consider Soleil Levant by Monet

Where is it? You might give an objective answer—a body of water before a red dawn. But where is it? Physically, it can't be other than in the second dimension. If it's not matter of dimension, then where does it exist?—canvas, indeed, but consider if this was a photograph. A picture didn't only exist on a developed film; the scene happened and it once existed. 'Where was this picture taken?' would be the best question to ask. And what would be more exciting than to say that the scene still exists! It does, but outlasted the one's whose imagination it originated from. So, this is essentially a preservation and a record, just as a photograph would be.

Preserving it: that is the trick.

There takes a certain type of person to put an abstract idea onto paper. Having a steady hand to paint or write or compose is a discipline depending solely on the author. The objective: to bring the eyes, ears, and senses of others into a new universe.

With that in mind, it would distinguish an actor from the playwright and the musician from the composer. There is a reliance in performance that defines the relationship, and is known to be even more tricky, whereas the painter and the writer depend on their own ability to illustrate their worlds. The composer and playwright have the further difficulty to relate his or her world to the musicians or actors so they might channel it for the audience to view.

Relating this back to the abstract atria these worlds occupy, how colors and textures come to mind when listening to music, or how sounds and music echo in the skull when viewing a painting, or how both images and sounds find their sometimes far-fetched relevance while reading a book, going back to the slightest of stimulation would bring softer and more profound sensations. Especially when the cloud of drowsiness confides one in the comfort of a dream, even slightness would effect the senses all the more seepingly.

This is when we enter a different world—isolation from this one. However, the immersion will seize upon realizing where your mind had floated to. Curious isn't it? Much like daydreaming . . .

Harry: "Professor, is this real or is it all in my head?'

Dumbledore: "Of course it's in your head! But why would you think it's not real?"