[MD] Knowledge as MOQ's intellect

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Steve to Platt]
I think we are stuck saying that music is intellectual within 
Pirsig's framework. It doesn't feel quite right though.

It is manipulation of symbols (notes) that stand for patterns of 
experience (sounds).

[Arlo]
I agree, and I don't see this as a problem. I think its easiest when 
you don't conflate the "music" with the "aesthetic experience". That 
is, "music" is a collection of symbols (intellect) which when done 
masterfully point "out" of the picture, provide a metaphor by which 
the interactants (those viewing, listening, etc.) are able to, for a 
brief moment, see "outside" the structure of intellect and gaze into the abyss.

What Pirsig tried to do in ZMM was point out that ALL our endeavors 
can be done artfully, and as such even in simple things like 
repairing a motorcycle can produce art-metaphor in which the object 
becomes a conduit for escaping "intellection" (as some call it).

It may help to liken music to mathematics in this particular 
instance. Both are the arrangement of symbols toward the expression 
of some symbolic representation. And both, when done properly, open 
up the door to an aesthetic experience that transcends the particular 
symbols. The construction of a motorcycle is the same.

So my caution is to be weary of even unintended snobbery (but 
especially deliberate snobbery) that elevates "music" above other 
activity, be it literature or mechanics.

In other words, the "art" that derives from "music, as from all 
activity, occurs when the symbols therein are arranged or ordered in 
such a way as to produce a metaphor powerful enough to shatter the 
boundaries and foundations of our intellectual description of reality.

The "music" is the ordered arrangement of the symbols. Intellectual 
activity. The resultant "aesthetic experience" is neither contained 
in, nor part of, the "music". It is a moment of Zen, when our windows 
on the world are cast wide open, that may just as easily be triggered 
by a collection of sounds or a collection of gears.