Klarinet Archive - Posting 000362.txt from 2005/07

From: ormo2ndtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: Personal preferences
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 14:09:38 -0400

Austin=A0Hogan wrote:

> I know in my case I analyze my preferences
> until I understand them.

The songwriter on the NPR show --- her name was Oaks or Oats, not sure
which, she's evidently well-known --- gave an interesting example.

Her contract had been passed from one recording company to the next
several times in rapid succession for reasons over which she had no
control. This distressed her sufficiently that she couldn't compose
any longer. She tried various strategies, such as writing chords on
cards and throwing the cards into the air and trying to write a song
based on how the cards landed on the floor, and so forth.

Eventually she told herself: "I'm angry at what they're doing to me....
so I'll write a song about _that_!"

The song was a hit. She played the song during the interview, and I
liked it. But the lyrics.... they didn't sound at all like a personal
protest against bean-counting executives. She explained that, in some
way which she couldn't identify, the lyrics _were_ about such people,
but the song would've lost its power and she couldn't have finished it
_if_ she had understood exactly what the connection or her thought
process was. The mystery had been essential, she said --- not only in
order for her to compose it in the first place, but also to attract the
audience's attention. Afterwards she went on to write (according to
the announcer) many more hits.

During my college days, a professor told us about laboratory experiments
in which the subjects were asked to learn certain science concepts ---
nothing unusually fancy or difficult, just basic ideas of which the
subject was previously unaware, such as (say) which hormone causes a
crayfish to moult and how the hormone works by first absorbing calcium
from the crayfish's skeleton... and so forth.

The subject was interviewed months later to determine if the subject
still remembered the concept accurately.

What the subject didn't know was that, in some cases, the experimenter
had purposefully left a bit of a mystery in the explanation, such as
(say): "The one thing that we don't understand about crayfish moulting
is <...whatever...>."

It turned out that the subjects to whom the unanswered 'mystery' had
been explained and explicitly highlighted remembered the original
explanation more accurately than the subjects who, at the time, felt
that everything was explained and no mystery or unanswered question
remained.

I'm always suspicious of psychological experiments like this because
there are unavoidable opportunities for the experimenter to (say)
deliver a more forceful or clear presentation to some subjects than to
others; but the idea that "mystery" being stimulates or improves a
mental function has always stuck with me.... heh! perhaps because it
_is_ a mystery (to me) why it should work.

In a similar fashion, I have wondered if music appeals more to many
people than reading a book does, because music _is_ more ambiguous and
less analyzable than language. The effort required to learn how to
read is an important factor of course....

Nevertheless, like you, Austin, I do like understanding better.

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