Klarinet Archive - Posting 000932.txt from 2000/09

From: Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: Re: [kl] Smiling and feelings (vs. music)
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 21:15:09 -0400

I'm hoping to keep music as the focus of this thread, but I need to
take a brief excursion here.

The author that I cited makes a distinction between 'emotion' and
'feelings' -- even though these words get tangled up in casual
conversation. "To emote" is an output process, and "to feel" is an
input process. These processes are interconnected because we can 'feel'
some of our own 'emoted' actions, and so there is a feedback loop.
Kissing and playing music both use the lips (and often the tongue),
but music uses the lips and tongue mostly for output. True, there is
feedback from the lips and tongue about embouchure and articulation; but
as far as the lips and tongue are concerned (not considering the
response of our ears for a moment), playing music is mostly a process of
emoting, not of receiving sensations.
Without trying to be graphic, kissing uses the lips and tongue on
the order of equally for input and output. In this respect, playing
music is much closer to smiling than it is to kissing.
It's reasonable to assume that "emotive" activities (as in 'emote',
not as in 'feel') use different neural pathways because they are talking
to different areas of the brain.

What does this prove? I don't know, except to illustrate my
earlier observation that the lack of feedback connections between
diaphragm and brain, which you described in your "magic diminuendo"
post, has (perhaps limited) similarity to the lack of connections
between our embouchure muscles and whatever part of the brain that
drives a smile.
So I'm not really arguing against anything. I'm just making an
observation. Obviously the more that a person understands how his or
her nervous system works, the more likely the person is to reach
appropriate decisions.

Cheers,
Bill

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