The Beauty of Non-Sense

[Razard86]

There are people you will come into contact in life, who call things non-sense or a waste of time. Bless their hearts!!! They do not realize that Non-Sense is crucial, vital, that you cannot have EVERYTHING, without nonsense. Nonsense is the unknown, nonsense is exploration, nonsense is creation, nonsense is the moment to moment unfolding!

Sense-making, logic, is a subset of nonsense, it is that which seeks to arrange, or organize, to provide utility of some kind. A mind that is wired in this fashion will get stuck, it will run in circles, and then eventually it will carve out a path, a structure, and it will house itself inside and tell itself it got everything figured out. This creates a division, a perspective, and it deems anything outside of this path, this structure to be that which doesn't make sense and only that within its own paradigm as sensible.

Be wary of this habit of your mind, as it can bar you from many different perspectives. The more perspectives you can emotionally understand, the more of reality you can connect too.

Understanding the totality of Reality is not just deep dives into the Absolute, it's also a deep dive into the relative as well. Obviously at your own pace, seek to open your mind to nonsensicality of reality. A logical mind is actually a limitation into the Deep Dives, as it can get very wacky the deeper you go into Infinity. One of my core issues is my natural tendency to hold onto logic, learning to let go more and more even when it doesn't make sense is a key theme I have been exploring. Just because something doesn't fit my model, my paradigm, doesn't mean it has too. Sometimes, I need to realize Reality is just going to unfold and I don't have to understand every nook and cranny. But I can observe it, and marvel at it even when it doesn't make sense.

Reality the Beautiful Non-Sense!!

[SamC]

When you accept nonsense, you will transcend your need to understand. 

 

Edited April 21, 2023 by SamC

[Carl-Richard]

When I think of non-sense, I think of failed thinking, like a copying error. Things like the unknown go beyond current thinking, but there are certainly parts of the unknown that will be thought about in the future, and those thoughts don't have to be non-sense, unless of course there is a copying error. There are certainly things we can never make sense of, but we have a word for that: "trans-rational" (or "trans-sense").

Edited April 22, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Yimpa]

AI ‘bout to reveal all of human nonsense at ever deeper levels 

[Razard86]

21 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

When I think of non-sense, I think of failed thinking, like a copying error. Things like the unknown go beyond current thinking, but there are certainly parts of the unknown that will be thought about in the future, and those thoughts don't have to be non-sense, unless of course there is a copying error. There are certainly things we can never make sense of, but we have a word for that: "trans-rational" (or "trans-sense").

There isn't a copying error, all sense-making is just a story. The mind looks for patterns, it then schemes on how to use those patterns to control for some type of use. Nothing wrong with that, but all sense-making is just in relation to a goal. For example unless a substance can be found to have a "use" it's considered irrelevant, and will even get a bad rap if it can some how hinder survival. 

All thoughts are actually non-sense in the guise of sense-making. If it were not so, arguments wouldn't happen. Contemplate on anything hard enough, and you realize it can be dissected and looked at an infinite number of ways. This means it doesn't have a true form, so whatever perspective you take of that particular thing is just your individual distortion, or projection. 

This is what it means that reality is absolutely relative. Reality is always filtered through your relative perspective, which makes your perspective both the relative and the absolute in one fell swoop. 

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Razard86 said:

There isn't a copying error, all sense-making is just a story.

If you tell me a story, and I fail recount the sequence of events in the story, that would be the copying error I'm talking about. It has to do with reproducing the logical reasoning, and like a story, you have a start, some middle parts and an end. If you fail to do the logic, you fail to tell the story, and you end up not making sense.

Edited April 23, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Yimpa]

It’s amazing how many times we spend so much effort trying to make sense of a story, only to realize that dropping it might be the best solution.

[Razard86]

4 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

If you tell me a story, and I fail recount the sequence of events in the story, that would be the copying error I'm talking about. It has to do with reproducing the logical reasoning, and like a story, you have a start, some middle parts and an end. If you fail to do the logic, you fail to tell the story, and you end up not making sense.

This is true, but failing to reproduce the story is how creativity works. What do you think poetry, music, and comedy is? Also not being able to reproduce everything allows there to be suspense, you always need an unknown to have something to work towards, to be able to explore. But yes a story is important if you want to have a life as social animal that uses stories to make sense of things like humans do. 

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, Razard86 said:

This is true, but failing to reproduce the story is how creativity works. What do you think poetry, music, and comedy is? Also not being able to reproduce everything allows there to be suspense, you always need an unknown to have something to work towards, to be able to explore. But yes a story is important if you want to have a life as social animal that uses stories to make sense of things like humans do. 

It's interesting that you mention music. Many people when they hear something like highly technical improvised jazz, just perceive it as non-sense or "noise". They aren't able to copy the intended message and represent it in their mind (understand it). On the other hand, if you're able to pay attention and actually hear all the sounds, and if you're familiar with the musical concepts that are being used, you would think it makes a lot of sense. Music, like stories, like logical arguments, have a kind of narrative structure to them (sequences of information in a particular order). It's just that the more complex the narrative, the harder it is to follow. So in that case, highly creative endeavors (like improvised music) can make a lot of sense.

I think the point you're getting at is that creativity exists on a razor's edge, and that it can easily turn into non-sense. For example, great improvisers will tell you that to truly play something great, you have to risk making mistakes. You have to push yourself to the limits of your abilities and exist at that edge, and when you do play something incredible, it's when you've temporarily extended yourself past that edge into God territory (Steve Vai calls it "connecting", also referred to as "flow" or "channeling"). There is a great clip of him talking about it when remembering Allan Holdsworth (legendary fusion guitarist):

0:57

 

Edited April 23, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Yimpa]

@Carl-Richard Nice share! I love music and can play the piano (intermediate level). I definitely relate to that “connecting” state Steve Vai mentions. The best music ideas come seemingly out of nowhere. All the theory drops and all that’s left are chords, melody, lyrics, etc being created from a superhuman realm.

Even Paul McCartney came up with a song in his dreams:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/paul-mccartney-beatles-song-in-a-dream-let-it-be/

[Carl-Richard]

43 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

@Carl-Richard Nice share! I love music and can play the piano (intermediate level). I definitely relate to that “connecting” state Steve Vai mentions. The best music ideas come seemingly out of nowhere. All the theory drops and all that’s left are chords, melody, lyrics, etc being created from a superhuman realm.

Even Paul McCartney came up with a song in his dreams:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/paul-mccartney-beatles-song-in-a-dream-let-it-be/

I play guitar and improvise a lot and have wanted to see what I sound like when I'm "connected", but every time I press the record button, I play like shit  Like Gavin Harrison puts it, it's hard to "mentally undress" when there is pressure to perform 

38:32

 

And he goes on to talk about getting into Meshuggah in that clip too lol (the threads are connecting in my mind!). I was going to say this in the previous post, but I didn't find a way to make it fit (it's a concrete example of complexity in music), but anyway: the reason Meshuggah is often kind of hard to listen to, is because of the general lack of short and catchy repeating phrases. They often either use very long phrases, or they use similar phrases with slight modifications, and it can throw you off if you're not used to it (in other words, it can seem like it doesn't "make sense" ). But when you do get it, it's absolutely genius.

Edited April 23, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Yimpa]

2 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

every time I press the record button, I play like shit  Like Gavin Harrison puts it, it's hard to "mentally undress" when there is pressure to perform 

Me too, haha. That’s a fear I want to work on.

2 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

They often either use very long phrases, or they use similar phrases with slight modifications, and it can throw you off if you're not used to it (in other words, it can seem that it doesn't "make sense" ). But when you do get it, it's absolutely genius.

What are some good examples of Meshuggah songs that are like that?

[Carl-Richard]

45 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

Me too, haha. That’s a fear I want to work on.

What are some good examples of Meshuggah songs that are like that?

Well, the most extreme example would be the song "I". Fredrik Thordendahl said that he basically just sat down in the studio, pressed record and played some random stuff, and then the band built the rest of the song around that. For all intents and purposes, the song consists entirely of non-repeating patterns, like an irrational number. That would be their most experimental album though (and not just for that reason lol). 

Other than that, even some of their most well-known songs are very much like that: the intro riff to "In Death - Is Life" and especially "In Death - Is Death" are good examples (I swear to God, I've spent probably 4 hours trying to learn the first section of "Is Death", and I'm only halfway through lol). It's also so god damn heavy and weird-sounding, I'm afraid of traumatizing my roommates 

What I just noticed is that the intro riff to "Is Life" is non-repeating in terms of rhythm but not melody (uses almost only the same two notes), while "Is Death" is non-repeating in terms of melody but not rhythm (but it's still a really wonky polyrhythm, so combined with the non-repeating melody, it mindfucks you really bad when trying to figure out where in the song you are when trying to learn it, hence why it takes forever to learn ?).

Edited April 23, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Yimpa]

15 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Well, the most extreme example would be the song "I". Fredrik Thordendahl said that he basically just sat down in the studio, pressed record and played some random stuff, and then the band built the rest of the song around that. For all intents and purposes, the song consists entirely of non-repeating patterns, like an irrational number. That would be their most experimental album though (and not just for that reason lol). 

Jesus, a 21 minute song? Non-sense… that’s as long as an EP!

[Carl-Richard]

Just now, Yimpa said:

Jesus, a 21 minute song? Non-sense… that’s as long as an EP!

It's a thorough ear cleanser