The Blue Key

 

 Extremely rare events such as the 2020 conjunction are generative of conspiracy theories.

One of my favorite films by David Lynch is Mulholland Drive. One of the scenes involves the mysterious appearance of a Blue Key. Ever since its release there has been lots of speculation about the meaning of this object. 

One of the most interesting things in art is ambiguity; One of the most interesting things in science is empiricism and certainty. When we don't have all the facts, we ascribe possible meanings. 

Back in the 1990s, I experimented with random systems. It was called Atmosphere Generation, and consisted of playing a set of ~40 audio files in three separate systems set on random play. For example, I would start player 1 on track 3, player 2 on track 27, player 3 on track 10.  As they ran on shuffle play, the triple-stereo surround-sound environment with six speakers would create a swirling atmosphere in the room. I designed the sound “universe”  by composing segments which I knew would create mostly consonance, with perhaps 5% probability of some dissonant element emerging randomly. 

One day when I walked in the studio while it was running, each CD player was on the same track. It was quite an experience when I thought about the probability of that happening. What did it mean? What was I supposed to do or not do because I was given this “sign”? If I saw it as an omen of some kind, the probability would be 50% of something good or bad happening. What would it have meant if the dissonant parts were playing?

Film editing as a suggestion of meaning

You can non-linearly arrange cuts in a film and contextualize them in such a way that they suggest meaning. I did this recently by contextualizing a pipe organ part from one of my songs, with edits from a film which had scenes of seances. 

 

 

This is essentially a cut-up, and meaning emerges between the film edits and specific cues in the music. The lyrics are left out from the music and the dialogue is left out from the film, and a new meaning emerges in the shuffling of elements. If I didn't tell you the sources that I used, you would have had to make up your own meaning. This is what we all do when we don't fully understand something or have all the information. Both the film and the music share certain characteristics (the paranormal): My song is about the cult popularity of apparitions--the film about the notion that collective meditation can affect physical reality. Perhaps they do but it can’t be empirical--which is the beauty in them. They essentially give power to the world beyond our ken, or where technology hasn’t broadened our world view, as the telescope did.

As Ray Kurzweil once said, "our brain create our thoughts but our thoughts create our brain."

 "The complexity of [brain] connections actually comes from the complexity of our own experience. Because not only does our brain create our thoughts but our thoughts create our brain. This hierarchy which starts with very simple visual and auditory features and goes all the way up to humor and beauty and irony, we create those connections from the moment we are born or even earlier. It’s true you are what you eat, but it’s even more true that you are what you think.” https://www.marketplace.org/2013/04/05/ray-kurzweil-surprising-simplicity-human-brain/