Someone, some time ago, and who and when doesn't spring easily to mind, except it was in a LJ entry (not that that narrows it down much) asked about how people thought: in pictures or words or both. Well, as a thinker in invisible arrangements in space (we're not certain we can describe adequately how our thoughts congeal) we didn't feel we fitted any of the categories. But we're going to try anyway.
A better way of describing how our thoughts and experiences fit together is this: We are standing on a doorway. In front of us--"outside"--is the world we experience, sight, sound, smell.... Behind us is our mental space, a room we never see because we're always on the point of leaving but which we know intimately and therefore have a good impression of what's there (we could walk around there blindfold without too many collisions). The contents of the room are an unseen assortment of masses in space--and that's how we characterise our thoughts. Presumably, that makes dreaming the time when we stand in the room and look out of the window?*
So, what's the point of this? Well, thinking back to when we tried playing a theremin at the weekend**, it's just struck us that there's so much more of a movement in space element to playing an instrument like that than the flute, say (unless you're Ian Anderson, of course)4559495 [Biggle interrupts, rudely], or even something bigger like the piano. This movement somehow feels as if it ought to have similarities with the way things fit together in the mental space--kind of playing thoughts. Don't know whether it could be true****. Anyway, it's definitely the case that waving hands above metal antennae felt a lot less silly than we imagined. We now definitely want one--but we're still tempted to build it ourselves. It's always been a wish of ours to have a musical instrument that we'd made that was more complex than greaseproof paper stretched taut over a drinking chocolate carton (and we've not wielded a soldering iron in anger in quite a while). (It'd make a change from knitting, too.)*****
Y'know, there's part of a con report in here somewhere.
* We had a particularly vivid dream on Saturday night (residual effect of the codeine/paracetamol?), involving our return home and discovery that we'd been burgled. Our standard lamp (we don't have one of those but the missing item oddly resembled one the Aged P has), as was the music stand (filing cabinet for sheet music, not the sort for holding the score you're playing from), and the place was a mess. The room was arranged roughly as it is now rather than in its pre-piano configuration, and it had been thoroughly trashed. "This has to be a dream," we wailed, and woke ourselves up rapidly. Haven't mentioned this until now in a fit of superstition. Hell, we've not had a break in in years--1994 or 1995?
** Yup. We've tried one now. Played a possibly almost recognisable (to other people!) beginning of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" (we thought long and hard about what to play and reckoned that if we could just get that first fifth, the rest would fall into place. We rejected several other possibilities*** due to their difficulty.
*** Cheesy ones: "Annie's Song", "Memory". Tempting but too ambitious: Gossec's "Tambourin". Only suitable as a duet: Bach's "Air on the G String"?
**** Makes the notion of the lost theremin operated by dancing even more intriguing.
***** Got quite a bit done at the weekend, although we didn't ever reach the notional 20 lines a day maximum. It was the first few rows where the pattern is being established and we really have to count. There was also the problem of knitting in 6/8 to music that mainly wasn't in the same time signature--or tempo. Still, knitting takes less attention than most embroidery so we probably paid more attention to the wonderful music we heard.
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