Found the groupblog
Whirled View via a good peak oil discussion
on Searching for the Truth, then found this post on
music and mirroring that really RESONATED:
Brain scan studies are beginning to show that when two primates interact, the same sets of brain cells (mirror neurons) become active in both. Monkeys watching other monkeys reach for food go through similar mental motions. Further, areas involved with emotions light up when people perceive other people to feel pain or disgust. Playing in an orchestra must involve mirroring on a grand scale. Rehearsal intensifies the mirroring. And the audience must be mirroring as well...
Music and rhythm have been used by humans to come together, for religion, for war, for sex, for entertainment. The mirroring of brain activity must have something to do with it. Other aspects of music and rhythm probably amplify that activity.
Yeah, right? This feeds into my oft-repeated (in real life, anyway), semi-coherent, and more or less completely speculative
THEORY OF FEELING (MUSIC) - in order to really FEEL music, physically, so much so that you are compelled to rock out or dance or whatever in public, you need to see other human(s) physically feeling it in a way that you can relate to. You need a human mirror, live in front of you or at least in the muscle memories of your arms and legs.
It's easier to explain with examples - for instance, while most normal people find
Orthrelm guitarist Mick Barr's solo project OCTIS a kind of boring and hard-to-follow blur of noise, it's a transcendant experience for math rockers and musos and others accustomed to playing/listening to extremely fast and complicated music, especially guitar gymnasts - they know, almost literally 'in their bones', what it's like to play/follow along with music that is almost-but-not-quite too fast to follow.
Better example: live music with electronic/pre-recorded beats is almost impossible to FEEL unless you're in a roomful of other people dancing, other feelers to mirror - conversely, anybody that has ever hit anything with a stick can really FEEL and identify with a live drummer.
The pleasure is all in, or intimately related to, the mirroring, in that sublime connection by which you can feel yourself in someone else's body, and someone else in yours
(sex is like this, actually, if you do it right). The real magic is when the room gets real packed and the beats are all over you and everyone's
really into it and you get to be part of EVERYBODY's body, and EVERYBODY's body fills up yours. I wish I went to more raves! And I wish I still played team sports, which
can work the same way.
I feel so alone, we need to schedule a show ASAP so I can get a quick hit of y'all...