Listening with the Body

When I watch a dance performance, I follow the dancer’s movement by twitching my muscles to mimick the dancer but without moving my limbs so as not to  disturb my fellow viewers.  In other words, I watch not just with my eyes but with my whole body.  

Similarly, when I attend a live music performance, I also work my muscles and thus listen to the music with my whole body, not just with my ears, as the performing musicians obviously do, too; I follow them in their bodily movements as I do when I watch dancers. 

It is not uncommon today among those who claim to love music to listen to the recorded or broadcast music while being engaged in a task of one sort of another — writing, reading, painting, cooking, doing whatever chores being done.  I do, too, sometimes when I have the radio on and music happens to be playing.  But when I put on a CD, I have to sit and follow the music with full attention, for only then I can say that the music was listened to, not just heard.  It should not be surprisingly, then, that I consider attending a live performance with its visual componens the only valid way of listening to music; recorded music is a partial realization, as a photographic reproduction of a painting is to the painting itself.  Once we learn to listen to music fully with our whole body, it becomes hard to just let it be heard aurally.  It always amazes me at concerts that the audience almost invariably sit tight with their head fixed straight as though in a church. I cannot help moving my head slightly to focus on the changing sources of the sound, strings here, winds here, and percussion over there, and discreetly move my right hand with the bowing hand of string players as I once played violin as a child and cello later.   As I listen, I become partially a participant in the performance.  Participatory listening is more natural to jazz than to classic music; and yet, even at jazz clubs, I notice in amazement that the audience for the most part sit perfectly still.  Yes, there are some who get up and dance in total participation. 

It is well to remember that until the rise of radio broadcasting at the end of the 19th century, music was exclusively live.  It could be heard in a concert hall or in private homes, customarily chamber music literally.  Live broadcast, incidentally, a curious contradiction in terms; isn’t it more accurate to say simultaneous broadcast?

I think we can say the same thing to some extent with talks, lectures, and discussions; when we listen, totally absorbed in what is being said, as we watch the speaker and her/his gesticulations, we also respond with our whole body and the substance of the talk registers more firmly in our mind.  This argues strongly for the value of live classroom learning. 

This argues strongly for the value of live classroom learning.  From the teaching side of the fence, I argue that professors who read from their notes fail to understand the significance of the bodily communication with the students by which the importance of bodily listening can only be taught and understood.

08.25.19

Not Knowing - 無知

Not to be in the know is a loss, whether just not to be informed or not to be knowledgeable, a loss and never a gain, so  I am convinced.  It is true that there are some things in this world that are hardly worth knowing and it would be squandering our precious time, when life’s time, if not necessarily short, is nonetheless fixed.  Still, we can ration our time accordingly, and discovering something was trivial or even worthless to know is itself worth knowing than not knowing so as not to spend more time on it.  So, anything is always good to know, I claim, than not to know, as conversely knowing is always a gain and knowing more only makes life more fulfilling and happier. 

知らないうことは損、それが情報を得ていない、又は博識がない、とのいずれの解釈にしろ、損失ばかりで利益はない、というのがあたしの確信するところです。勿論この世には知る価値の殆どないものはありますし、人生に与えられた時間が、短くはなくても決められたものである以上、貴重な時間を浪費するには及びません。でも、時間は適当に割り当てて、あるものが知るに足りないなり当たらないことを知る事自身、知っていれば、更に時間を費やす事なく、やはり知らずにいるより知っている方がそれだけ価値があります。ですから、なんでも知らざるより知るが良しと主張するわけです。そして、逆に、知るは常に益、すべて知れば知るほど満足感が得られ、人生もより幸福になるでしょう。

Learning to Learn

There is no better way to learn anything than to teach, whatever the subject matter, one’s specialization or out of it.  I say this often and hold it as my credo.  I also believe that there is nothing under the sun that is not worth learning.  So, it follows that this passion for learning, learning for learning’s sake, is a prerequisite for a good teaching.  It is a kind of teaching which also instils in the students a passionate desire to learn and then they learn how to learn.

Quadrivium

Liberal Arts, codified as the basis of intellectual education in the Middle Ages, brought together two groups of subjects for learning: the Quadrivium and the Trivium.  These became the basis of the Liberal Arts education.

The Trivium had to do with verbal proficiency: Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric. Logic taught how to process ideas clearly. Grammar taught how to combine words precisely; Rhetoric taught how to communicate persuasively.  The Trivium was necessary for effective communication; these subjects taught how to talk well. They educate Sophists, as Plato said.  Significantly, trivium evolved the word trivia. The Swarthmore education excels in this, more talkers than thinkers.

The Trivium does not teach to cultivate the intellectual substance that makes communication worth the effort. This was the realm of the Quadrivium.

The Quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.  They all have to do with mathematics.  The names are misleading.  Arithmetic must be understood as the study of number, geometry of number in space, music of number in time, and astronomy of number in space and time.  The Quadrivium, in short, had to do with metaphysical thinking, and was thought to form the basis of philosophy.

Mathematical thinking is the core of the Liberal Arts Education and belongs more in the realm of humanities than in that of science.  We all know that but forget it too easily in the modern world, especially in modern college educatiion, in which verbal skill is overemphasized and too often mistaken for intellectual learning.

Learning to Like - 好きになる努力

Whatever it is that I have no taste for or even actively dislike in art, music, theater, literature, food, sciences, technology, or whatever -- setting aside those things which are reasonably dismissible and not worth bothering to dislike - I am inclined to try and like what I don’t like, even sports, and investigate what it is that makes me dislike it.  This is, in part, to satisfy my rampant curiosity; but, more importantly, I consider it my gain if I can come to like whatever I previously did not and thereby enlarge the realm of my likes and reduce that of dislikes.  I firmly believe that life is richer and better with more things to like and fewer to dislike, though admittedly there are always things I will never come to like.

美術、音楽、演劇，文学，食べ物、科学、技術、なんであろうと、 明らかに考慮に足らず嫌う価値もないものは別としても、好かないもの嫌いなものはあるものですが、あたしは性質として，何でも，スポーツでさえも、好きになろうと努め，何故好かないものが嫌いなのか追求して見たいのです。これは、ひとつには溢れる好奇心を満たす為ですが，それと別に，今まで嫌いだったものが好きになれれば、好きな分野を広げ，嫌いな領域を減らせるという結果で、それだけあたしの得です。勿論，何でもかんでも好きになるのは不可能な事は解ってますけど，好きなものが多い程，そして嫌いなものが少ない程、豊かないい人生が過ごせるの云うのが，あたしの信じる所です。

Knowledge - 知識

知っているものと知らないものを区別するのが知識。知らないものを知ろうと努力するのが学問。知らない事を知らず知らず、知っているごとくに云々するのは無知。知らない事を自身知りながら知ったかぶりするのは無恥。

Making a clear distinction between what one knows and does not know is knowledge.  Making an effort to know what one does not know is learning. Making a statement unknowingly about what one does not know as if one does is ignorance. Making a statement knowingly about what one does not know as if one knows is shamelessness.

Older and wiser

When we are older and wiser, we get to know more; but, as we know more, we also realize how much more there is that we don't know, and therein lies the true wisdom.  Frustrating as this realization may be, it also opens up an endless opportunity for learning.

Immigrant's Semiotics

An immigrant is by default a student of semiotics because, lacking a full command of the new language, she or he is compelled to rely on semiotic signals in glances, facial expressions, gestural motions, and bodily behaviors to aid in the linguistic understanding as well as progressive learning, granted we all do that, much more than the “natives."

Knowing What You Know

I can say that things I don’t know are precisely what I know better than the things I claim to know because I know for sure what I don’t know but what I think I know is open to doubt and rethinking.

知らないものは、知っている筈のものより良く知っていると云えるのは、知らないものの知識は確かでも、知っていると思っている知識には疑い、再考の余地がある。

Or, more briefly, I know for sure, not what I know, but what I don’t know, that is to say, I am absolutely sure what it is that I don’t know.

Hard Work, Not Always

Work is a matter of resistance, not simply of the amount of effort . Work cannot be quantified except in economic terms, such as the extent the input outweighs the output. Hard work is hard because it gives displeasure instead of pleasure. Hard work, in short, is drudgery. Work, when enjoyed, ceases to be work; it is then a creative effort. Artists, in all fields, know it. Labor of Love, we say.

What We Can Not Know

We can say that we don’t know, speaking about whatever subject it is that we don’t know. But what exactly it is that we don’t know, we simply don’t know, and we cannot know it until we get to know something about it. That is why I say we don't know what we don't know. See below Knowing What One Does Not Know.

Learning

Some things are harder to learn than others but everything is hard to learn, especially if we are intent on learning well. Yet nothing is too difficult to learn, and the reward of learning is on one level getting to know or be able to do something you didn’t know or couldn’t do before learning. But it is the triumph of overcoming difficulty that is most rewarding of all. Learning anything at an old age is all the more rewarding since it is often more difficult and therefore more challenging. On the other hand, what has been learned is more quickly forgotten than what one had acquired at a younger age. The consolation is, however, that what has been forgotten can be recovered more or less by relearning but of what has never been learned there is nothing to recall. Good life is a continuous process of learning and relearning. Live and learn, as we say.

Seeing/Naming

“Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees” is the title Lawrence Weschler gave his book on the contemporary California artist Robert Irwin, who, manipulating light and space on a scrim, created works that defied being verbally described. Irwin once said: We know the sky’s blueness even before we know it as ‘blue’. let alone as “sky’. Weschler’s title happily encapsulates in one sentence the most fundamental tenet in my teaching about art. You gotta see first to know whatever it is you see; before saying anything, you gotta really see it -- intensely and systematically. In reverse, I also say that naming something is the most efficient way of knowing what it is in relation to other things and phenomena in the universe of named things and phenomena; it is a taxonomical act. But naming generalizes, and is as such less efficient way of understanding what a thing or phenomenon really is. A familiar face, unfailingly recognized, often resists description, and a face fully described veils the visual reality of that face. Description is no substitute for experience. Life fully lived is experienced intensely; it is only approximately recollected in writing.

Knowing What One Does Not Know

To be able to say "I don't know" with confidence, when we don't know, shows that the speaker knows exactly what she knows and what she doesn't. It is the most valuable knowledge one should acquire early and adhere to continuously. It promotes learning to the extent that it presses one to fill the gap in a hurry in order to avoid saying it too often and looking foolish. I owe this advice to Mother, who insisted that I say "I don't know" unless I know for sure that I know what I know.

Understanding

Knowledge does not promise understanding. I lived abiding by this dictum; I adapted it from the quotation attributed to Heraclitus: Much learning does not teach understanding. In my mind, knowledge is totally intellectual -- useful but incomplete. Understanding is experiential and all-encompassing; it mobilizes intellect, senses, and emotion. This is what art is all about; this is its raison-être.

習得 − Acquisition

一度身に付けた事は、忘れても思い出せる。
知らないことは、何時迄も知らぬが仏。

What's been acquired and lost
can be remembered.
What's never been learned
ever remains unknown.