Diary

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Stability, Instability

"A stable tone combination is a consonance; consonances are points of arrival, rest, and resolution."
"An unstable tone combination is a dissonance; its tension demands an onward motion to a stable chord. Thus dissonant chords are 'active'; traditionally they have been considered harsh and have expressed pain, grief, and conflict."

—Roger Kamien

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Fence

^{“That backpack’s like your symbol of freedom,” he says.}

^{“Guess so”}

^{“Having an object that symbolises freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.}

^{“Sometimes”}

^{“Sometimes,” he repeats. “ You know, if they had a contest for the world’s shortest replies, you’d win hands down."}

"Perhaps.”

^{“Perhaps,” Oshima says, as if fed up. “Perhaps most people in the world}^aren’t^{trying to be free, Kafka. They just}^think^{they are. It’s all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You’d better remember that. People actually prefer}^not^{being free.}

"Including you?"

^{“Yeah. I prefer being unfree, too. Up to a point. Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it’s true—all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. The Australian Aborigines are the exception, though. They managed to maintain a fenceless civilization until the seventeenth century. They’re dyed-in-the-wool-free. They go where the want, when they want, doing what they want. Their lives are a literal journey. Walkabout is a prefect metaphor for their lives. When the English came and built fences to pen in their cattle, the Aborigines couldn’t fathom it. And, ignorant to the end of the principle at work, they were classified as dangerous and antisocial and were driven away, to the outback. So I want you to be careful. The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.}”

- Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the shore

Chekhov's gun

"What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist"

"What necessity requires does need to exist"

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Henri and Hegel

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouing the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory."

— Henri Bergson

"At the same time that 'I' am the content of a relation, 'I' am also that which does the relating.

-Hegel