Meaning and Music

I have been having some thoughts lately about the things that I find so meaningful in my day to day life. There are just some things that seem to stand out above the others and I would like to question why I feel as much.

I begin with a story. A couple of years ago a girl by the name of Gemma moved from Scotland to my home town of Yorba Linda to intern at my church. She is a great girl and we always had a lot of fun together hanging out. A few months into her stay one of her best friends came out to visit from the UK. His name was Marcus Mumford and I spent a little bit of time hanging out with him during the time he was here. The one thing that really stuck out in my memory pertaining to Marcus was that he rolled his own cigarettes. He carried around with him a bag of tobacco, papers, a cigarette roller, and a bag of filters. Now it wasn't all that special in my mind, I had seen people roll their own tobacco before, but the funny thing was that I had never seen anyone roll their own filters into their smokes. Also, whenever Marcus had downtime he would pull out his tobacco and just roll a number of cigarettes to save for later. I remember specifically sitting outside the In-n-Out down the street from my church and he was just rolling away. Placing each cigarette into a case he had with him.

Now all of this was interesting to me, but not especially memorable until a couple of weeks ago when I found out something interesting about Marcus. Gemma, after returning home to Scotland, got herself a work visa allowing her to stay out here and work for the church. She came back out here a year or so ago but due to my schooling we haven't been able to hang out as much. A couple of weeks ago however news of Marcus being in a new band came to my attention. They are called Mumford & Sons and as it turned out they were playing a sold out show at the Troubadour in LA the next day. I immediately downloaded all of the available music that they had out and began to listen. It was something special. I proceeded to find out that during Marcus's stay here in the states one of my friends had introduced him to blue grass music and to the banjo. When he had returned home he picked up the instrument and began the band. I tried to get tickets for his show the next day but sadly was unable to. Yet I have continued to listen to the his music non-stop since first getting a hold of it.

Now that I have told my story it is time for some more serious questioning. The music that Mumford & Sons released is definitely very good, but I am really wondering lately why I find it to be so meaningful. I am certain that it has to do with the fact that I met Marcus but his visit didn't make much of an impression on me or provide me with any special kind of life-good. My memory of him is especially vivid now but I don't think I made any kind of impression on him and don't feel that I have any special relation to the guy. No more so than anyone that brushed against him on a street corner or took his order in a coffee shop. Yet still, I feel a sort of special connection to his music and find it a meaningful part of my life these days.

I feel that this tends to happen a lot for me, and I really wonder why I am this way. Why I feel the need to find and acquire these meaningful little vignettes in my life. Another such example is the band Local Natives. I have been following this local band since I was in High School and they were named Cavil at Rest. I once got them connected up with AS at Biola and they played an show on campus a couple years back. They recently released their first full length album Gorilla Manor, and have come into some appeal and acclaim on Pitchfork as well as getting air time on KCRW. When ever I hear one of their songs on the radio, or hear that they are playing in town it gives me a special feeling that I only know how to describe as some sort of meaning theft.
Watch them here on Blogotheque


There is a kind of desire in me to find out why it is that I find these interesting little things so meaningful. I guess you could say I am finding meaning in writing this blog right now and in my questioning of myself. But why is it that I find so much personal life meaning in the music that I listen to? And how is it that this good feeling is exponentially increased by my knowing the people in the band. My friend Joel Walker is an amazing songwriter and I think that one of these days he will be discovered and his band will get big, but even now when I listen to his music I can feel it and read it so much more simply because I know him.

Sorry to leave it at that. I have no definitive answer to these questions yet, and not even a real theory that may kind of explain these things.

One thing I do know for certain though. Playing records is much more meaningful than listening to an Ipod or cd.

Coherentism: My Senior Thesis and my thoughts so far.

Note to any readers: This has to do with my senior thesis in Philosophy and if you aren't a fan of philosophy or interested in Epistemology this may seem extremely boring and not make much sense. So don't worry about reading it. But if you are interested in Philosophy and Epistemology in specific, please read it and give any insight you might have.

And thanks,
Kyle

10 hours down, 110 more to go

My thoughts so far on coherentism.

It seems that from what I have read so far coherentism will ultimately be an untenable position. From the people I have read so far holding to an entirely coherentist account of justification is impossible or highly improbable because it can't adequately deal with Empirical, sensory experiences and evidence. But it also seems to be a huge problem accommodating for how sensory experience can justify propositional beliefs, making it difficult to see how a foundationalist account of experientialism can adequately be based on these experiences. Maybe some sort of cognitive faculty needs to be appealed to in order to makes such a leap. Something that takes in empirical experiences and somehow turns them into propositional phrases to be believed or not.
I would like to know if anyone has written much on this idea.
I also wonder if this really is how it works. I wonder if I really take in my perceptions and somehow come to believe propositions out of and about them. It seems strange to have perceptions causing beliefs about propositions or sentences. But it doesn't seem that strange to say that my perceptions lend some justification to any propositional beliefs that I may have. Experience and memory seem to be very non-propositionally based. I may 'think' using words and language, but I don't experience these things in words or language, unless reading or listening to someone talk. And even then its just sound or color/shapes that I have recognition of. It does seem that to formulate a propositional belief in my mind I have to apply some sort of linguistic mental faculty that sorts through my concepts and applies them to the sense-data that I have received. Thus, proposition-izing my sense experience and making it possible for me to talk about it/make and hold beliefs about it. It seems that this process is a very complicated one that the depth which of goes far beyond coherentism and foundationalism and delves into how language and real objects relate, as well as how I know what an object is propositionally/conceptually.
It seems to me maybe that cognitive processes sorting through sensory experience are much more complicated than their propositional counterparts. I feel that having sensations, memories of sensations and beliefs about them are much more complex than the simple propositional ascriptions of these beliefs and sensations. Maybe the only way we can communicate about these things is though language, but internally I see so much more involved in my pool of sense-data and belief structures than propositional logical inferences. (Such as the steady flow of experiences I have, the sheer amount of data taken in but not conceptualized or proposition-ized, etc.)

If anyone has any insight into this or suggestions on what might be helpful for me to read, I would much appreciate them.

One Word Poetry

I recently had an idea and I would like to see what people might think.

Poetry is an art form that I thoroughly enjoy and don't quite understand (if its possible to). I have always had a fondness for words, semantics, and clever linguistic ingenuity, thus I have come up with this idea.
One word poetry.
Think of it. One word, and all of the things that it reminds you of. One extremely interesting word, claimed to be a poem in and of itself, displayed by itself, and thats it.

My girlfriend has an interesting condition called synesthesia. Basically what it entails is that she experiences her senses in a kind of confused manner. As she sees, feels, hears, smells, or tastes other senses are activated. In other words the way something sounds has a distinct visual color, taste, feel, and smell. Thus, in the context of one word poetry, one word can set off an entire slew of sensual and emotional reactions.
An example might be the word 'Carnival'. Such a word might instigate thoughts of children, rides, performance, candy, etc. And for her it exudes a number of sensual experiences just in the way it looks on a page or the way it sounds when said out loud.

In addition to this idea I would like to expand from real words to fabricated ones. Imagine a word that maybe sounds like other words, or brings to mind a certain situation, experience, sense, etc. I have been experimenting with this a little on my facebook updates by simply putting up these made-up words and checking if I get any reaction. If you read this and are friends with me on facebook I would love to get any feedback you may have or any feelings/thoughts you have on the words I come up with.

Examples of Fabricates:

Gondoff

Brugner

Rance


More to come if i get any feedback or response.

English: Subjective Standards

Tell me if this bothers you.

I am taking a class called Iris during this inter-term. The class is mainly a dive into Literature and Film and how they interact. It is a co-taught class between seven teachers and the main teacher, administratively speaking, is the English professor. The work load for this class is very heavy. We have reading or a paper due each day of the eleven day class and we watch a movie every day. Thus, after nine hours of intense thought and discussion, the students are expected to take time outside of class to read or write. The third day of class we had a paper due on the subjects of The Murder of Roger Akroyd by Agatha Christie and Suspicion a film by Hitchcock. I wrote this paper not knowing exactly what to expect and recieved a 78%, C+. I was enraged. I don't often (or ever) receive bad grades on papers and this grade caused me to seriously question myself and my abilities. The English professor proceeded to get up in front of class after discovering that almost the entire class was displeased with their grades and give a speech. He said that as an English teacher he was really trying to make us students better writers, and by giving us appropriate grades he might cause us to improve on our skills. Then he also talked about the possibility that it might be in his best interest to give all the students less than adequate grades at the beginning of the class that we might improve in our writing skills. Thus, if we were disturbed or angry with our grades, to adjust accordingly, and expect improvement from ourselves and the grades we recieved.
Bullshit!
I was appalled at this speech. I raised my hand and asked the professor if there was any kind of objective grading scale which was being used to give such grades. He admitted that there wasn't so and trailed off as he gave some allusion to trying to improve our writing capabilities.

Two days later we had another paper due. This one was on the book and film Big Fish. I wrote about the ways in which the film and book departed from each other in their essential narrative structure. I worked hard on this paper from the point we got out of class until I was happy with what seemed to be an excellent argument and paper before me. I marveled at my own use of language in my late night delirious editorial proofreading. I thought, this will surely earn me a better grade, and show the professor what I am capable of.

I received the paper on the following Monday getting an 80%. Two points higher than my previous paper. Also, a very similar lecture was given about this educational idea of improving student morale by giving better grades as the class progressed. I was aghast.

The next paper I was coerced to write pertained to Shakespeare's Macbeth and Kurosawa's film Throne of Blood. After an entire nine hour session of class, devoted entirely to the picking apart of this play I was exhausted. Additionally, I was expected to write this paper and make it better than my last. I decided not to comply. I wrote the paper in about an hour. I didn't make interesting or thought provoking connections, nor did I follow any of the comments I had received on earlier papers. I wrote as simplistically as I could. Bereft of good language, words, or ideas I thought surely this paper would land me an even worse grade than my initial one. Yet I had a theory. I was not writing and planning on turning in this paper to 'stick it to the man' or be a 'rebel without a cause.' I thought about what my professor had said after receiving each of my previous papers. His long authoritarian speeches about improving the grades as the class progressed, and I took them to heart. I wrote my paper as poorly as I could in order to divulge whether this professor was being truthful in his statements.

He was.
I received a 90% on this paper and laughed my way out of his class room.

I still have two more papers to write for this class. I am truly excited to see what grades I will receive.

Meaning Thief

To begin this blog I would like to write some kind of an explanational rant of why I have named this blog Meaning Theft. It started when I was in conversation with a friend of mine. We were discussing odds and ends of our differing thoughts and beliefs and how intersted we were in interesting things. It became evident that the things we were interested in specifically had some form of meaning to our lives. What we found meaningful happened to be what we found interesting. Yet, when pushed further we found that we were extremely interested in the things that we felt were meaningful. Thus, being that we find meaning in interesting things we found that it was meaningful to us that we found meaning in interesting things.
In the end it seemed to us that we were interested in finding meaning in that we liked finding meaning in interesting things. And so it seems that we enjoyed collecting facts, or stealing them, in order to feel meaning in our lives and thus fulfill our urge to find meaning in our act of finding meaning. Thus Meaning Theft was born.

This is the

beginning