20191008

Ego is the First Form of Synchronicity





"I was very interested in synchronicity in my youth.  That’s sort of what got me started reading Jung.  But the more time I spent reading philosophy and especially philosophy of science related to time, I came to realize that synchronicity as presented by Jung is not an explanation of anything.  It’s the name of a phenomenon, but it is no explanation. In fact, it tells you there is no explanation.  The explanation is there is no explanation, it’s simply synchronicity. 




You have to be able to perceive almost schizophrenically.  What happened to Phillip K. Dick was that the resonance became stronger than the reality, or, it became equal in strength to reality, so that by squinting he could see 2nd Century Rome.  Everybody changed into people wearing togas and people speaking Demotic Greek and everything.  That was the resonance of where he was at.

But when the resonance comes forward with such strength that the foreground is displaced, they have a name for that: buggo. 

You know, you gotta watch that. 

On the other hand, if you can control it, it’s a source of great richness and inner amusement."

Terence McKenna




In this particular scene I was playing the score for Joaquin in the room because, we had Hildur Guðnadóttir who is our composer.  I had her write music before we shot the movie, which isn’t done very often.  She wrote it based on the screenplay, and I wanted that because I wanted the music to really affect and infect this set in a way.  I wanted the camera operators, the set dressers, the wardrobe, everybody to feel this music. 


If I remember correctly, we were playing her score when we were shooting this, and all of a sudden as Joaquin is struggling with Arthur’s smile, and his frown, and figuring out again if his life is a comedy or a tragedy, this little tear appears.  And we just had the scene and we moved on.

Todd Phillips




9 comments:

  1. There’s an audio illusion, if you will, in music called a ‘Shepard tone’ and with my composer David Julyan on The Prestige we explored that, and based a lot of the score around that. It’s an illusion where there’s a continuing ascension of tone. It’s a corkscrew effect. It’s always going up and up and up, but it never goes outside of its range … And I wrote the [Dunkirk] script according to that principle. I interwove the three timelines in such a way that there’s a continual feeling of intensity. Increasing intensity. I wanted to build the music on similar mathematical principals. So there’s a fusion of music and sound effects and picture that we’ve never been able to achieve before. -Christopher Nolan

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  2. Great quote. Makes me think of Kubrick writing 2001 as a novel with Clarke, or Tarantino coming forward with his method of writing his ideas into novels before he adapts them into films. Spooky action at distance seems spookier the more that the interacting forces are mutually exclusive. I say "more" because it is becoming more and more apparent that mutually exclusive is measured in degrees of relative mutual exclusivity.

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  3. Nice vibes for sure. PKD's endless search for meaning for the pink beam is forever. 87

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  4. Marcel Romano recalled, “Louis Malle had prepared a loop of the scenes to which music was to be added, and they were projected continuously." For the recording session, two weeks later, Davis brought the musicians into the studio with no preparation, and they played while watching the scenes. The improvised soundtrack by Miles Davis, and the relationship the film establishes between music, image and emotion, were considered ground-breaking.

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  5. The more I step back from all of this, I keep sensing something extremely important about the coincidental arrangement of mutually exclusive elements and the deliberate arrangement of mutually exclusive elements.

    These arrangements cause a type of mutation that is at first psychological and then physical, which subverts the standard physical mutation that leads to the psychological. The eclipse of the sun and moon had been a regular occurrence for thousands of years before it had an observer. Once observed, it led to an organized and focused behavior, which then impacted the physical environment.

    I don't know if I am talking in circles or getting anywhere, but there is an elegant reversal here that occurs at a very late stage in the game. What is incredible about this reversal is that it can not be abused. The simulation of this process can be abused, but not the real thing. And once the real is discovered, it obliterates the simulation. On some level, in this case, does the simulation come first? I don't know.

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  6. I don't think it's talking in circles as much as being an inherent feedback loop of language itself. What really is a double slit experiment anyways.

    "The problem of objectification and with that of reversing or partially un making it was bequeathed to Western theology from its origin in the mating of the biblical word with the Greek logos.
    The antithesis of seeing and hearing argued by Philo lies as a whole within the realm of seeing, that is to say, it is no real antithesis but a difference of degree relative to the ideal of immediate intuitive presence of the objects. Accordingly, the turn from seeing to hearing here envisaged is merely a progress from a limited knowledge to an adequate knowledge of the same and within the same project of knowledge."

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  7. Yeah, I like that. But every now and then I feel like I am nearing something "new".

    Recently I have been thinking about the role of prayer in miracles, and meditation in satori. Although a physical action, prayer and meditation is mutually exclusive to the physical world when discussing direct impact. But can they still play a role when it they purposefully arranged? Meaning, held to a rigorous discipline. I think it is There would be no "proof", only the situational impact, and the intuitional awareness of the observer.

    It would then be much like many of these experiments in arranging mutually exclusive sounds and visions.

    Great quote, gotta chew on that some more.

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  8. I think what you're saying is akin to the so called power of ritual and performance; lighting candles etc is a considerably banal event in everyday life until it is reenacted in a setting of ritual observance given proper intention and can seemingly influence one's personal psychological and perhaps even physical state.

    "Rituals influence mental states by interrupting previous patterns and inhibiting new rhythms" just as "strong emotional experiences can produce a biochemical shock that neutralizes the preexisting conditioned state" and "synchronization of certain biochemical shocks cause a shift beyond the residual biochemical substrate."
    Given Mcluhan's perspective that "technologies themselves, regardless of content, produce a hemispheric bias in the user", the presence of coherent brainwave during meditation, and even the shift of brainwave activity while watching television, it seems that something is definitely operating in a different fashion which leads to the question as to what changes in the observer to produce said effects. (Possible synchronization of brain hemispheres caused by prolonged states of slow brainwave exposure?)

    "Technological development is the inherent drive to improve sense media to be able to perceive environments more coherently. Coherence is identification with reality, true coherence to the environment would be akin to presence in the eternal now, participation in 'true' time. Growth in the 'vertical' dimension of eternity thus involves the active synchronization of sense medias as these are the ancestral modes of perception subconsciously influencing all perceptive structures in language and nonverbal communication."

    "'How does synchronicity music affect you? What sort of mood does it out you in?' Kevin said, 'A deep theta state, deep sleep. But personally I had visions.'"-Valis

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    Replies
    1. I mean, shit. This is the thing right here: "Technological development is the inherent drive to improve sense media to be able to perceive environments more coherently. Coherence is identification with reality, true coherence to the environment would be akin to presence in the eternal now, participation in 'true' time. Growth in the 'vertical' dimension of eternity thus involves the active synchronization of sense medias as these are the ancestral modes of perception subconsciously influencing all perceptive structures in language and nonverbal communication."

      "True coherence to the environment" = McKenna's "Comprehension as salvation"
      "Participation in 'true' time" = the felt presence of immediate experience
      "Growth in the 'vertical' dimension of eternity" = PKD's orthogonal time
      "Active synchronization of sense medias" = iAhuasca, an explicit ritual of just such a thing
      "Ancestral modes of perception" = the Spanish rose, growing up through the concrete
      "nonverbal communication" = a more perfect Logos
      riverrun

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