Skip a Rope

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Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, show your shoe,

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, that will do!

Children’s rope skipping rhyme.

New Scientist tells us that another step has been taken in understanding dreams. In the July 21st issue they report that our most powerful dreams, theta wave/REM partnerships, appear to be linked with recent life experiences. From there they hypothesize that those dreams have a semi-therapeutic function, allowing us to “process” those experiences. And, in a bit of “blue-sky” theorizing, they wonder if these findings bring us a step closer to using hyper-lucid dreaming to ease our deeper anxieties.

I love it when they do stuff like that - leap to frolicsome assertions out at the very edges of the data - as I consider that tacit permission for me to do the same.

I don’t know if it is an age thing, or a retirement adjustment thing, but my dreams seem increasingly strange these days, particularly after my afternoon nap. In contrast to New Scientist’s assertions that our dreams help us work through our recent issues, my dreams have a tendency to call up a cast of characters from long ago and far away. As a matter of fact, sometimes from so far away that both the characters and the plot line are total mysteries. I awake shaking my head, muttering, “Where did that come from!?”

Here’s a possible answer. Think about the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. In this view of reality every possible version of our life exists, branching out into an infinite number of universes. The implications for dreaming seem obvious - well, maybe not. But the clue is in the title of this post. Here’s the idea.

Dreams are glimpses between the seams of those various universes. In dreams the alternative realities seep together, asserting themselves and reflecting the others. Sometimes the dominant reality of the dream is the same one to which we awake. There is enough similarity to the past we had experienced only a few hours ago that we simply sigh “Weird!” and get on with waking life. Other times the dream reality was so firmly anchored in one of our other “could-have-been, might-have-been, was-in-a-different-time-and-place” realities that you need to just sit for awhile, take a few deep breaths, look around and gradually recognize that yes, this is the reality in which I spend most of my time.

I have come to think of dreams as raising and lowering a curtain on these various realities. We stand inside the jump rope of our existence. The rope passes over our heads, pulling a version of reality along in its arc. We jump and the rope passes beneath our feet. We land. We wake up. Maybe we have returned to the reality we left when dozing off. But maybe we moved a bit forward, or perhaps a shade backward, forward or sideways, up or down into a different version of our infinite number of possible worlds and their associated realities. There really is no way of knowing in which “where-when” we are, and it wouldn’t matter anyway.

That may seem a little disconcerting but it need not be. It is not as if the rope turns and suddenly we find ourself in a reality we do not recognize, gazing at some alien landscape. Our “here and now” will always feel like the correct  “here and now.”  Also we would do well to remember that no matter where we go, we take ourselves along, and we simply need to remain true to that self.  Another source of comfort for me is that no matter where or when the rope may send me skipping, it is most likely that the tenets of Distilled Harmony - and the behaviors they mandate - Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm - like the laws of physics, remain constant throughout our many possible realities.

Sleep tight, sweet dreams.

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The Provenance of Genius, or They Broke the Mold When They Made That One!

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It is an old expression that has hung around because it captures a feeling so nicely. Yet the precise feeling remains illusive, along the lines of “I don’t know what  “it” means (supply your own ‘it’), but I know it when I see it!”

I found myself thinking about the idea of an undefinable “it” the other day while reading an amusing story about a lovely snafu at the US Postal service. Seems that the recently released “forever” stamp bears the likeness not of the iconic lady who welcomes, hopefully not sarcastically, the tired, poor and huddled masses to America, but rather of her imitation who welcomes tourists to the Las Vegas strip. A little “oops” that cost the USPS 3.5 million in royalties to the creator of the Vegas version.

But it did get me thinking about the seemingly shrinking distance between the “real thing” and imitations. It is a distance that has all but disappeared in the spooky land of the digital - where there is, in theory, no difference at all between a digital “original” and the millionth “copy” derived from the same digital code.

I wonder, and indeed hope, that we have gotten this one wrong.  I choose to believe, that even in the creepy valley of the digital clones there is still an original “mold” created by a genius that, when broken, leaves behind an “original,” ineffably different from all the seemingly identical copies that may follow.

I remember being face-to-face with our old friend Michelangelo’s David in Florence. Well, not literally. He is much taller than I, and his face - and everything else - is much bigger. But it was definitely one of those “I can’t define art, but I know it when I see it!” moments. There is a presence in his presence that is able to transcend even the prattle of parents who somehow feel it is important that their infant child see the David. And who knows, maybe the baby brain is somehow attuned to that mysterious presence.

But then, eventually, you find your way to the gift shop, and there row after row of Davids greet you in varying sizes and finishes. And that is when I wonder about the relationship between those mini-Davids and the big guy down the hall. I mean, in this instance the difference is obvious - in size and the medium if nothing else. But what about the difference between any two of the seemingly identical Davids on the shelves? Those made from the same mold and shipped to shops all over Florence? Around the world? Would there be a difference between a poster made from a photo of the real David, and a seemingly identical poster made from a photo of one of the mini-Davids? Especially if both posters were digital prints?

I choose to believe that there is a difference. And, no, I have no data to support my belief, other than my firm conviction that every element in existence is reducible to its essential chord composed of an absolutely unique cluster of strings - those indivisible units from which all other matter is constructed. I do not deny that digital and genetic clones appear identical - but the reality is “not really real.” 

Consider the simple examples of the “corrupted” computer files that need to be downloaded repeatedly before they will perform in a manner “identical” to the original. Or consider the uncertain relationships that exist between the “same” image on your smartphone, laptop, desktop, or printer output. One can argue that the “source code” for all those images is identical and the variation in the images is the result of improper calibration in the presenting technology - laptop, printer, whatever. But does not the notion of “identical copy” imply an ability to present to an audience of one - you or me, or someone else, or more - all your “friends” - multiple identical copies?

As usual, I need to approach my discomfort with this assertion with an analogy, or more accurately, a story - true story. When my younger daughter was little, two realities clashed. The first was that she was subject to rather serious allergies and related attacks of asthma. The second was that she, like many kiddos that age, had a special stuffed animal. Her’s was a white bunny, big floppy ears, pink satin inserts - AKA Bunny.

One day her allergies and asthma sent her to the hospital. I remember pulling night duty in her room, faux sleeping in her room, while actually anxiously listening to her every breath as various machines whirred and the chaos of a hospital made any real sleep a fantasy. Morning brought a return to normalcy for us all, and our preparations to return home. It was then that we discovered that Bunny was missing. We never found Bunny. To this day I have no idea what happened to Bunny. My inclination was to blame the hospital staff. Bunny tangled in hundreds of sheets sent to the laundry. Or Bunny snatched by a psychotic stuffed-animal thief who roamed the pediatrics ward. I still do not know where Bunny went. But I do know some things about Bunny.

First, I know that at that time nowhere on the Internet or in brick and mortar stores was there a stuffed animal that duplicated Bunny.  Maybe now, some twenty years later, search engines and social media might have evolved to the point where I could find a Bunny clone.  But not then.  Second, I know that despite the fact that my daughter eventually moved beyond Bunny, initially, none of the seemingly similar Bunny substitutes ever approached the original.

We have, of course, moved far beyond my search for Bunny. Today folks seem willing to go to truly incomprehensible lengths to replace the irreplaceable. If we are willing to try to clone our pets - google it, truly  creepy - can trying to clone our children, partners - ourselves, be far behind? It would remain a sci-fi fantasy if we could just realize that the essential chord that truly defines all existence - from Michelangelo to Rover to the original David - is absolutely unique; lies beyond duplication.

As I point out in The God Chord, our chord, built of the vibrating strings replicated in their billions throughout every cell in our body, evolves constantly. I suppose our hubris and technology might one day simultaneously evolve to the point that would allow us to “grab a chord of the instant.” But, as in the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, it seems highly likely that any entity associated with that captured chord would evolve in its own unique path, unassociated with the entity from whom the chord had been snatched.

Let me try to summarize the assumptions contained within this strange ramble, which was even longer and more tortured in its creation, than in your reading of it.

First, the “originality" of creations of genius resides more in process than in product. The original is deeply imbued with the chord of its creator, at a level we still cannot measure or observe. Hence we cannot begin to replicate that original - digitally or otherwise. So after that original creative marriage of process and product, the mold is broken, never to be truly duplicated.

Second, the further from the creation of original - time, medium, method -  the unique chord of the copy becomes an ever fainter version of the original chord. Consider numbered prints— say 1/50. Why is 1 of 50 still seen as “better” than 25 of 50?  Here the notion of the digital clone does challenge the common production assertions that as the plates wear out the edges of the etching become less distinct, hence making the lower numbered prints “better.” However, Distilled Harmony would assert that later copies of the original - even digital copies - are further removed from the creation of the original work and hence contain ever fainter versions of the original chord. And that assertion reaffirms the greater the harmonic value of earlier, lower numbered, copies.

Finally, somehow we would know the difference. Maybe we need to think about the idea of a diminished chord, as implied above. A friend of mine used to write the classical music reviews for the local paper. In the last few years of her life CDs were just coming into prominence. She refused to use them to inform her reviews. I do not know if she knew that the process of digital recording deletes some of the auditory signal present in analog recording. After all the amount of signal lost in a digital recording is supposed to be “undetectable” to the human ear. But she could tell that something was missing.  And in this instance what she was hearing was that increased distance from the original performance that caused the original chord to grow fainter, to diminish.

In that instance the fading of the chord was literal in a musical sense. But Distilled Harmony asserts that whether it is David, or Mozart, or perhaps even Bunny, there is a difference between the original work popped out of that first mold, and the copies that follow. The process of genius creates the chord captured in the original work; subsequent copies attempt to replicate the original. It is an effort doomed to a certain degree of failure. But we should remember the value of those failures, for without them we would be denied even the echo of the original.

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When the Arrow of Time Flies Backwards

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If you got Einstein and Aristotle together for a little time traveling tête-à-tête the one thing they probably would agree on would be time. They would both assert that the arrow of time flies forward. Aristotle would be on solid ground given the state of theoretical physics circa 300 BCE. Einstein, not so much so. After all he was the guy who turned time into a variable in an equation that could be flipped back and forth over the equal sign like a spirited rally at Wimbledon. But when push came to shove, match point, and all that, Albert might be forced to admit that there was nothing that would, mathematically, prevent time from running backwards. The fly in that intriguing ointment is that we have never been able to catch time pulling off that, theoretically possible, maneuver. In the wild, in the lab, despite the best efforts of the men in black and women in white, time seems to continue to trudge doggedly down its oneway street.

Until this past week. Now, before I share this seemingly remarkable event with you, I do need to clarify some definitions. "Ah, yes, what is ‘time' Grasshopper?’" No, but seriously, if we want to look for something frolicking forward and backward, we ought to have some sort of operational definition of what this critter “time” looks like. We have moved from “sand through the hour glass,” and shifting shadows on a sun dial, to marks on a candle, to springs unwinding, pendulums swinging, and now to, I believe, the decay of ytterbium atoms to mark the passage of time. The the problem I see here is that all these gizmos are one way devices. It is like plotting traffic in a town with only oneway streets and in cars with no reverse gears. In such an exercise it would be easy to come to the conclusion that traffic could only move forward.  We seem to have put our trust in measurement devices that can only measure “time as we know it” and then declared that time can only follow the path those devices have been designed to measure - flee forward you arrow of time! Seems a little pointed-headed to me.

So let us take a slightly different approach to the definition of time. And here I am going to engage in one of my favorite activities - making stuff up.  We are all familiar with DNA  - deoxyribonucleic acid, and RNA - ribonucleic acid - those miraculous strings of acids that code our physical characteristics. I would like to suggest a new member of the team, ENA - Exceptional Neurological Activity. ENA occurs as we experience life.

Think about it for a moment. Experience occurs in the brain. Everything else that we “experience” is the result of the transmission of information to the brain. Eyes -  directly hard wired to the brain via the optic nerve, ears, same thing for sound.  Smell, taste, pressure, pain, pleasure, everything gets picked up by the billions of little “radio telescopes” of our nervous system and is beamed back to the brain that codes it into the specific events that we experience in our lives. I would posit that these events get laid down in the brain as bits of ENA, most likely as unique electrical clusters part of which includes the duration of the experience. OK, now hold that thought as I jump way out into the outfield.

As I have mentioned before, after having spent every month of the last 51 years of my life either being a college student or teaching college students, I am entering phased-retirement.  This has directly or indirectly triggered several activities. First, the on-going effort to organize the last 20 years or so of this blog into a quasi-book form. Another shout out to sister Margaret who kept all the emails. Second, gathering and categorizing the various drawings, sketches, photographs and doodles created over those previous 50 or so years. Yeah, I kept those old class notebooks. Third, as I move out of the big office I garnered over the years, I am again laying hands on the images and sculptures I have created, and lived with, for the last few decades.

What I am now encountering in those essays, images and sculptures is refined ENA. I have written elsewhere that a work of art is a repository for the artist’s chord.  Hand me a huge block of marble and an array of hammers and chisels and, no matter how many Red Bulls you pour down my throat, David is not going to leap out. That iconic work is the result of a bit of refined Michelangelo ENA - Exceptional Neurological Activity;  a unique synthesis of Michelangelo’s chord, including his skills and intuition and the marble itself infused in that unique harmonic “Michelangelo creative construction.” 

So here is the interesting part. As I encounter my earlier works - the product of my chord and the moment in which the drawing, doodle, poem, whatever, was created - the original refined ENA fires up again. Through my current interaction with these artifacts, I am there again, in that moment. This is different from memory, or recall. This is a duplication of the original ENA, and as such, I would hazard to assert, is the arrow of time flying backward. Obviously, I am not physically transported back to the moment in which those works were created. But to make that a deal breaker is to give into the corporeally dominated oneway street mandate of previous definitions of time - time as we know it. I am becoming increasingly fascinated by the idea of “time as we don’t know it.”

If we mark time not as the decay of atoms or the other physical devices from the past, but rather as the unfolding of experience, then to “re-experience” an event is to literally move to a different point in time. I am intentionally trying to avoid the phase “go back in time” as that will give unintended credence to the “oneway street” notion of time. It might be more accurate to think of time as all possible routes through experience.  Hence time only becomes oneway when we choose a particular experiential route, and remains oneway only as long as we choose to remain on that route, to engage with experience on that route.

I do need to admit that we probably cannot “unchoose” a route we have already traveled. We cannot unbreak the glass, we cannot unspill the wine, we cannot call back the unfortunate words. But what has occurred on a route we have already traveled need not pre-ordain the route we next choose.  The “many worlds” version of quantum mechanics, which purports that part of the weirdness of quantum mechanics is that there is not just the world of our here-and-now, but countless alternative worlds in which some versions of our self explores the “roads not taken,” is very much like the notion of time I am suggesting.  After all quantum mechanics does live in the space-time continuum, and who is to say that our ENAs cannot slip along that highway? So when I pick up a drawing from 2006, touch a sculpture from 2000, I’m not saying I return to those points on the calendar, rather I am saying that I experience again that particular, unique, perhaps folded, place in time.  Which, now that I think about it, implies that we just might be able to learn how to unbreak the glass and unspill the wine - just in time for dinner.

An analogy. Deep breath - here we go. 

The Velcro Sphere:  Imagine each Exceptional Neurological Activity - ENA - event as a snippet of velcro. Both sides, the side with all the tiny hooks and the side with all the tiny loops that the hooks attach to.  One side of the velcro is the historic moment when the ENA was completed. The other side is the artifact that was created as a result of the ENA.  OK, so once the ENA is completed, the two sides of the velcro separate and get tossed into a universe-sized snow globe - you know those glass things with a scene inside, you shake it and little flakes of fake snow swirl around so it looks like it is snowing inside? The two halves of the ENA are now out there in existence. Swirling around. Could be they hook up with another harmonic snippet out there and become a new insight or inspiration for someone else in another place and time - interesting - but I don’t want to go there right now.

Rather I am intrigued with what happens when I encounter the artifact that I created at an earlier point in time - a drawing, a piece of broken sculpture, a poem, anything that was the product of an earlier ENA.  I would like to hypothesize that at that moment those separated snippets of velcro reconnect. I do not “remember” that previous ENA - I live it again.  The historic moment and the artifact reconnect, generating a new ENA in which that which we have learned to call “the past” becomes a part of "the present," with a continued potential to become part of "the future.”

And, yes, I am aware of how truly strange that sounds.  My intention is not to assert that there are other limited particular paths for the fabled “arrow of time.” My intent is the opposite. I would posit that like the “many worlds” theory in quantum mechanics, time is an entity of many paths for many arrows; forward, backward, right, left, up, down, and off into all those dimensions we have yet to discover. And so why haven’t we discovered them? Consider blinders. Driving those forward-only cars down oneway streets.  I see only that which I expect to see. Alternative visions of time and experience - rather common in non-traditional, non-western, views of the world, time and existence - are often written off as “mythology" or “primitive epistemologies." 

Maybe. Maybe not. But certainly worth our consideration and our “time.” Or to quote a proverb from someone, somewhere in a somehow different time - “There are none so blind as those who will not see."

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Note:  [New Scientist just posted in its June 30, 2018 issue has a neat article on how to think about time.]

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