Welcome back, everyone. It is September, which means back-to-school for those of you who are still enrolled in K12 or attending a post-secondary educational institution. It is also going to be a month with Friday the 13th in it, so if you are supersticious, brace yourselves! I will quickly go over some interesting things I found this week. I won’t take long, though, because I want to concentrate on a different topic.
In the LGBTQ2SIA community, people in Native American cultures want to decolonise our patriarchal society, so that everyone is treated equally and with respect. There was a conference held at Portland State University, located in in Oregon, that depicted some of these characteristics. Also, do men and women, and those in between, find alpha or beta people attractive? Attraction is a very complicated thing because so many things occur within our heads, and much of it relies on vision. Remember, attraction is not about yourself (that’s identity), but about others. Gay couples tend to get along better and have less conflicts than straight couples. I used to visit this web site, which is no longer existant, but it was called I Love Bacteria. The reason why words are becoming more perjorative is because our founders did not realise how much of a change in our language and culture would occur after our country was born as an independent nation. Sure, they knew technology was going to change. That’s why the courts are flexible. But, freedom of speech and freedom of religion were based on another time and place. So, as more minority and disability groups formed, they started to set rules for THEMSELVES only, and not for others, so as to screen them out, call them freaks, you name it. Remember that, just like the rest of society, they are diverse, so we might consider finding a balance so we can better live in harmony. REMEMBER, WE ARE NOT ROBOTS!
And with that, let’s get started.
So, I would like to start out by describing one of my most memorable events in which I experienced euphoria and Déjà vu. But first, I am going to describe what I believe happens in the most common type of synaesthesia found in blind people, light and sound, touch and sound, smell and sound, sound and taste, musical keys and events, or voices and shapes and texture, and much more! If you were born deaf-blind, you may not be able to perceive some of these, especially those that involve sound.
As far as we know, synaesthesia is either caused by genes, or an unusual chemical reaction, or both. If it were through a gene, the knowledge of being able to transceive something would be there, but you would need to learn how to use it and have language to be able to express it. It is just like rolling your tongue. You have to learn how to do it before you know for sure that you have that gene. Some people, like me, have listened to music when we were still inside, but it all has run together. So, whenever we look at the sky, we automatically hear hums, drones, jingles, etc that fall in a cadence that resolves into an emotional key. Later, when the person develops absolute pitch and learns how to label each note, they can recall those memories and start putting labels to the things they remembered hearing. I found out, based on a YouTube video I recently found in which the drones and the notes were exactly the same whenever I was out in the rain, looking up at the sky during daylight hours.
Here are some more relaxing sounds for your listening pleasures. This one is one of my favourites because I tried to simulate what a typical day might look like.
You will find four items that you might find very useful to you. I was also very surprised to learn that the Moonlight Sonata was named so because of the moonlight shining effect in the first movement, and I could relate to it, even though I don’t remember seeing the moonlight! In another instance, I was listening to a radio show, and the host asked us to imagine darkness as we listened to Chopin’s Nocturn in E-flat major. Again, I could relate to this very well! So, I am including a link to an article so you can learn about this in greater detail.
This happened as early as I can remember, and when I came across it, I experienced that familiar feeling that I heard the drones before, and it reminds me of blue, now that I used the scientific mapping to find that out. So, I think this is a tendency to pass through some subconscious memory, which may also be called the collective memory. A person does not necessarily need to know all the music theory terms to make artistic music. Some people just do it and not realise it has meaning. This is just like when a writer is able to write fluently by observing others and mimicking other people’s writing styles and never learn the technical background behind it.
If we teach our children how to label colours by pointing out that each frequency of light is a name that red is red, blue is blue, and so on, who says this is so? Why can red not be green and blue be purple? Same thing with music. Who says A-440 is a? Why can it not be A-320 or A-415.3? The thing is that animals primarily use vision as their main source of information, including humans. What if we taught future children to establish a multisensory experience, like the colour-music notation? Currently, children are being taught to name colours, name animal and vocal sounds, and some of them get dragged into the arts of music. I know I was, when my mother enrolled me in a children’s church choir. But,what if we taught them the rainbow piano association to listen to all the different types of colours? It would not only be beneficial for blind people, but it would also benefit everyone else, as well. They can learn how to walk in the dark, feel for objects, read and write in Braille, and much more. An inverse I noticed was that children tend to be afraid of certain noises, and they would be afraid of seeing distorted shapes. The same thing can apply to darkkness and silence. Some children are afraid of the silence because silence is a noise, as well as darkness, though it may not be immediately obvious.
One thing I noticed that was quite interesting is how hearing works in several situations. I have two differing levels of hearin loss (one in each ear) so I use amplification devices that increases the sound intensity of things around me. What is more fascinating is how humans talk above loud noise. I discovered that I could sometimes hear people without the need for amplification because to them, the background noise is so loud that they need to be overheard, but for me, the background noise is of no problem, so this makes it easy for me to hear the other human. Another thing some blind people also tend to do is precisely record how tall or short something is. Like, how to locate a light switch. I remember waiting for someone. I was sitting on a bench, and the person left to get me something. After a few minutes, I felt the ground give and a slight disturbance of air, so I immediately put up my hands at the position I estimated the person’s hands were going to be. They asked me how I knew they were coming. Truth is, I used my tactile senses to detect changes in air flow and vibration. Plus the fact that I was expecting their return, I set my senses on high alert without realising that I have done it!
Whenever I imagine myself in windy weather conditions
with a light drizzle in the air, it is during the dusk and dawn hours when some or no light is present. I would like my future generation to experience what I went through. Maybe it will. Maybe, because I wired my brain in such a way that I rewrote the genes that will be passed down to my descendants, they too, might have the chance. I put together some pieces of art called “Meditative Brain Wave Entrainment Session” and “Experience Various Weather Conditions”. It shows my observation on the light and sound phenomenon. You see, sound and light have a lot in common, in terms of frequencies in wavelengths. This concept is very abstract that it can only be thought of in one’s mind. But if we take time away from the latest fashions and start to really get yourself into it, you would be surprised that this process is referred to as meditation because it will sync your brain waves. Get all the thoughts that are unimportant out of your mind and imagine nature. By imagining this way, it is a helpful sleep tool, in my opinion.
My observation started to take into focus back in 2002. This sudden thought occurred to me that if I heard music, I could imagine some basic forms of light, such as darkness, semidarkness, and brightness. These three I could do by humming the music I really had in mind. Then, as I delved into this idea further throughout my life, I realised it had a stupefying, hypnotic effect that would leave one transfixed for awhile! My readers may agree or disagree with this idea, but either way, this is why I enjoy working with music. I considered looking into therapy because it does soothe the soul and body.
I ran into several conflicts with this observation. I did not want to reveal this idea to anybody because people would think I was being strange or nuts. On the contrary, it is a good thing I have this idea. It turned out that I was not alone, for one day, I was reading a twitter post that shared a similar perspective, and when I asked the poster about it, the latter replied that they were putting together the northern light phenomenon, an observation that is based on light-to-sound conversion! You have to picture the northern light, and then try to picture how sound would fit the seeing of the light in one’s head. Unfortunately, for people who have never seen light, it will be nearly impossible to describe what light looks like. How do we know when we see light if we never seen it? Same with sound. How do we know what sound actually feels like? Sound is the only form that requires a medium, and it is felt by the body’s senses. Smell and taste have their own chemoreceptors and cannot be felt or heard. Smell does require aroma particles that buoy in space. However, you have to breathe the air in order to smell it. These two last interact together: sound and feel.
There is just so much that I believe. Life to me has purpose. If I waste my time on tomsooleries, then I would not have accomplished what I wanted to do on this planet. Some of you may have a different view on life, but to me, life goes on. Our universe will never stop existing, although the matter will re-construct. Nature made ways to make cells into various shapes and substances to form creatures. How this happened we know not, but it is certain that after this happened, we started to evolve into many characteristics. It is believed that humans will some day have the option to become immortal.
Enough lecture and enough on my philosophy. I would like to propose a new experiment in which a brain’s visual processing nerves are surgically moved into the auditory region to see if the signals from the visual cortex end up being interpreted by the auditory cortex, and vice versa.