Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!isi.edu!vaxa.isi.edu!smoliar
From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: 2nd rate European Conference
Keywords: segmentation, absolute perceptual unity
Message-ID: <16384@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 15 Jan 91 02:19:48 GMT
References: <5056@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <16244@venera.isi.edu> <15268@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <5121@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: news@isi.edu
Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Distribution: na
Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute
Lines: 42

In article <5121@idunno.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot
Handelman) writes:
> The deeper I go into a piece of music the
>less likely it is that I'm going to discover some "category of listening"
>or "paradigm of perception" sitting there at its core. So, thinking 
>about analysis in that way, of a way of getting one's musical mind
>ever more twisted in the convolutions of musical experience, what
>I'm aiming at is UNDOING various "perceptual" prejudices and rebuilding
>them in a manner expressive of those particularities that I most want 
>to focus on. And a good analysis of a piece of music is something 
>that makes just that undoing possible. In other words, DE-categorization
>seems to me that aspect of listening most worth exploring analytically.

I'm glad you want to debate these matters, Eliot, because I am having about as
much trouble with your texts as you claimed to be having with Chris'.  I
extracted the above passage because I feel it is a good case in point.
The words all go very well together, so that my first impression is that
you really have something there.  However, further reflection as to WHAT
that something is leads to puzzlement, as least on my part.

Now perhaps one of your missions is to get me to chuck that further reflection.
In other words you are encouraging a path of mysticism, perhaps along the sorts
of lines that Cage pursued in his early writings.  However, I find it quite
interesting that, while Cage has certainly not rejected the use of
indeterminacy in his old age, he is beginning to give in to observations
of personal perception of judgment.  Ultimately, my question is whether
or not one car really get away from perception as you seem to advocate.
On the other hand, perhaps it does not matter.  Even if one is ultimately
bound to perception, one can still THINK about trying to escape it (just
as one can think of defying gravity).  However, if the only objective of
such a pursuit is going to be "major cortical damage" (your words, I think),
I may be too much of a coward to follow through on it.

=========================================================================

USPS:	Stephen Smoliar
	5000 Centinela Avenue  #129
	Los Angeles, California  90066

Internet:  smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu

"It's only words . . . unless they're true."--David Mamet