[floridaorange]

This got a lot of "likes" when I shared the transcription recently in the quotes thread. Since I keep coming back to it and sharing it and reading it, I thought it deserved its own thread. Particularly since there are so many music lovers (not likers, there's a difference) on this board, like myself.

"So let's think about what music is. First of all, it’s a pattern, but it isn’t one pattern it’s multiple patterns layered on top of one another in a harmonious manner and in a pattern that indicates in some sense communication
within all the patterned layers because in some sense they have to go together…and so, what’s the world? Well the world’s made of objects, not it’s not, it’s made of patterns. SO music is just like the world, because the world’s made of patterns…and music has layered patterns that are all moving together in a harmonious manner and so what do you do when you hear that, especially when its got a beat? You move your body and you want to, the music calls you to move your body. So now you’re moving your body in sync with the patterned layers of the world. That’s meaning. Music is an analog of the structure of existence itself, and it calls to you to take part in that. Maybe you dance by yourself, or maybe even better you dance with someone else, and you both bring your bodies into a patterned relationship with this multi-layer harmony together in a spontaneous way, indicating that you can both play and are both there for potentially future trustworthy mates — that’s unbelievably cool. Birds dance, it’s not just human beings, you know, so this is a deep thing… and then music does something else too. It puts you on the border of chaos and order, because a boring song does exactly what you expect it to do, and it gets dull very quickly…and an unlistenable song is so random you can’t follow it. And so what you want is, predicability, with a leaven of unpredictability and then that puts you right on the edge. That’s the zone of proximal development."


-Jordan Peterson