Composition Of Meaning

While listening to Dr.Ford on loop, the most amazing thing happened. Just when the symphony swelled to its crescendo with a chorus of cymbals to kick off the final bar of high intensity, a flock of egrets perfectly synced their flight across Venus where I was of course staring intently in worship of the lord Satan. It was all so perfect. The music, the lord, the birds. I suppose the right word for the experience was ‘meaningful’. I’ve always found the concept of instructive personal meaning veering between the vaporous (religion) and the vapid (new-age). But until now I’ve never noticed how industrial the new-age prescription for meaning is. The fluffy new age variety starts with the issue of our endless and fruitless pursuit for purpose and meaning in a universe that offers neither. Then its piece de resistance is to say meaning is whatever we choose, that we must ourselves construct meaning in our lives and out of our lives. It’s a strange choice of word, construct. Less Lothlorien more Isengard.

It’s perhaps less surprising when you take into account that the Abrahamic god is a master builder, a technician, a potter who takes a lump of clay and breathes life into it to create the race of man. It is no coincidence then that Jesus, the son of god, is the son of a carpenter. So we start building out from the time we are born, forever upwards. We create and construct our meaning by creating and constructing ourselves. Meaning is the pyramidion at the apex of Maslow’s hierarchy. The keystone without which the arch collapses under its own weight. Oriental religions on the other hand have a more participatory god, where the universe is a performing art. The universe is variously described as Leela (drama), or as the divine dance of Shiva (Tandavam).

Maybe in that case a more Lothlorien metaphor is that we compose meaning. It isn’t that music is high art and architecture isn’t, or that melodies and harmonies are better than rock and stone. It’s about the creative process, not the ingredients. Construct is from latin con+struo (heap, pile) while compose is con+pono (put, place). You construct upwards in a linear fashion, brick by brick with a definite plan in mind for your finished product, but you compose all at once, no piece more than the other, and the emergent harmony has a quality you couldn’t even have predicted before you placed them all together.

We don’t construct meaning out of the raw material of experiences, thoughts and feelings. We weave it in, as a layer of harmony atop the experiences, thoughts, and feelings. Some are remarkably consonant, like my satanic egrets, and they get weaved in easily and seamlessly, they are so attention-grabbing and obvious that they whack us in the face hard enough so even someone like me could appreciate the harmony of meaning. Some are more subtle, and it takes effort to recognize where the layer is. Some are dissonant in places but consonant in others, if only you identify the right bar to place them in. Some are actively dissonant everywhere, and you only appreciate the layer of meaning once that tension is resolved with the next bar.

Like a song, a poem, or a photograph, we compose the elements of meaning all at once. We frame events in a certain light. We choose the best contrast between foreground and background. We fill the frame and dominate our surroundings or zoom out until we feel majestically insignificant. We connect memories and create patterns, we break patterns to create a striking counterpoint. We seek symmetry. We use perspective to imply movement and dynamism. Natural selection has constructed us to be creative pattern recognition machines, not purposeful constructivist creators. Yet all popular wisdom asks us to look ahead, plan ahead, and see the future. If you’re looking for success and inspiration, by all means, gaze into the horizon. But if you’re looking for meaning, the view is much clearer behind you. After all, hindsight is 20/20.

I’ll let myself out now. What in the actual hell just happened.