[MD] Ham on Esthesia

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Steve --



> Once a piece is recorded, that recording never changes in the way it
> sounds (barring any weird technical effects).  If you keep listening
> to the same recording, you get more static quality.  Any different
> recording or performance gives you dynamic quality, that's why
> concerts and plays still exist in spite of CDs and movies.  No two
> concerts are ever the same, neither are any two performances of a
> play.  By the way, most of my violin teachers I've had tell me that
> most professional violinists can distinguish between different
> violinists on different recordings of the same piece.

Hmmn.  Interesting.  I'm not a performer, but I can be stirred by a
Tchaikovsky symphony after numerous hearings.  I have collected all six on
disc, plus the so-called "7th" which is a reconstruction of his 2nd & 3rd
Piano Concertos and some lesser known works.  I must have heard the last
three 50 times or more since I was 12 -- some in live performances.  My love
for this composer never diminishes.  According to your theory, though, this
is high-grade "static" quality, not DQ.

I wonder, too, about how this works in the creative process.  When does the
composer, for example, experience the "DQ event", if at all, and does it
occur before a note is set to paper?  Often, I'll struggle to write an essay
on a difficult subject, getting a "high" only while reviewing the final
result (if I see it as worthy).  In other words, the work of writing -- 
which should be DQ because it's the act of creating -- seems to have less
pleasure for me than the finished piece -- which should be sq because it's
"dead" and done.  How do you explain that anomaly in  Pirsigian
epistemology?

I get the idea from reading Pirsig that Isaac Newton was "struck" by the
laws of gravity in almost the same way that he was struck by a falling apple
at the time.  Either or both incidents might be described as a DQ
experience, based on Pirsig's theory of a collective Intellect.  Personally,
I believe that ("high quality") creative ideas, while borrowed in part from
the body of existing knowledge, are principally the result of an
individual's obsession with a phenomenon (or its value to him) and his
persistence working out a solution.  Value is the driving force here.  I
also believe that Value is a proprietary (subjective) psycho-emotional
response to a perceived (objective) phenomenon, but this goes beyond the
issue at hand.

Thanks for your observations on the enjoyment of music, Steve.

Best regards,
Ham