Episode 3: Your Deficiencies Complete You
In the last episode of Adventure into Sound we focused on the importance of falling for resilience. Here, we’ll carry on a similar theme:
How our deficiencies make us complete!
Shortly after arriving onto the Balearic Island of Ibiza, my Arts-and-Crafts piano joined me. I’m not a pianist. But I play the piano. One difference is the audience. I rarely let others listen. I play instead for my state of mind. And my state of mind is created from how I play. It’s an emergent relationship, which - when possible - happens only in the dark.
The sound that emerges between me and my piano - like the rest of my life - is deficient. Never quite right (often far from it). I don’t mean this in a “poor me” kind of way. I mean it literally and honestly. What is inside my head is rarely realised in its outward expression. I trust you have felt this way too. Maybe … like me … most of the time.
There’s a lovely, brief book written by a poet whose thesis is that all poems … and by extension all expressions … are failures! The reason he suggests for this is that a poem fails to capture what is truly felt and/or understood by its creator. I find beauty in this truth, as I believe it is our deficiencies that move us.
But there is a distinction between deficiency and completeness. They are separable, and importantly so. The seed of a Redwood tree is a complete seed in itself. It doesn’t need anything more to be a seed. But part of its completeness as a seed IS its ability to BECOME a ‘not-seed’ … i.e., the Redwood tree. A more formal example is Geometry. A line is, geometrically, complete. It’s a complete description of what it is to be 1D. But, inherent in its 1D-ness is the potential to become part of something more complex: A high-dimensional form called a 2D Surface. Hence, when the one line is integrated with 3 others, they become a surface that is both complete, but also deficient, as the surface lacks 3D volume.
You were complete as a baby. You were complete as an adolescent. You are complete now. But, like the line and the seed, inherent in you (i.e., in your brain and body) is the ability to expand yourself to a higher dimension. Your completeness includes this deficiency, which is what moves you to become a new, higher-dimensional, complex, complete form, that has within it new inherent possibilities of becoming … i.e., new deficiencies. We move because we have a desire to expand beyond the who, the how, the where and the why we are. Without this sense of deficiency, there would be no movement. Equally, without completeness, there is no internal sandbar from which to engage our deficiencies. (Please go this this episode to learn more about the idea of the Sandbar.)
You see, during evolution, it would have been useful to complexify yourself, since more complex systems are more likely to survive than less complex ones. The reason is that inherent in complexity is robustness, resilience and adaptability. Complicated systems are different. They, like complicated people, are fragile and require lots of energy to be maintained. You might know many complicated, ‘high maintenance’ people. Exciting but exhausting.
How does evolution motivate your brain to complexify? By giving it an intrinsic reward, much like the intrinsic reward of an orgasm. An orgasm is an evolved perception that motivates you to have sex to propigate your genes (and … no ... I don’t talk like this in bed, at least I hope not!). Similarly, evolution gave us, not only the intrinsic stick of deficiency to motivate us to complexify, but also the intrinsic carrot of closure when that deficiency is resolved. This inherent need for closure, and the pleasure your brain perceives when realised, is an essential part of creating and/or listening to music.
If you have one, go to the piano (or to any other instrument that you might happen to play), and play Middle-C. Then play D, E, F, G, A and B in progression. Listen (or imagine) not to the notes, but to the perceptual relationships between them. To their similarities and differences. Clearly, Middle-C sounds a lot like D and less like F. Whereas F sounds a lot like G and relatively dissimilar to C. If you were to draw a representation of these perceptual relationships, you’d draw a straight line that connected C to D to E to F to G to A to B.
Now play the C that is one octave higher than Middle-C.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
While this Higher-C is many notes away from Middle-C, it sounds a lot like Middle-C, and less like the notes that are physically ‘next’ to it. What’s more, as you progressed up from Middle-C, your brain perceived tension in the sounds, which was resolved when you play the Higher-C. So let’s now incorporate this perceptual relationship between the two Cs into our visual representation with all the other notes of the scale. This is a conceptual and mathematical technique that the Lab of Misfits frequently uses called Multidimensional Scaling. What is the resulting shape?
A Spiral!
Spirals are beautiful structures both literally and metaphorically. They are composed of two tenets.
The first is ‘being cyclical’. Nature is cyclical (e.g., growth > degeneration > re-growth) making the spiral a deeply natural form. Though natural, the concept of cycles can be challenging to us because we typically see the world as being linear-causal: A causes B causes C. The result is that we design processes that consume and pollute our world. Whereas in nature, there is no ultimate consumption nor pollution, because everything is part of a regenerative cycle.
The second is ‘be in progression’. Unlike circles, spiral progress. Each iteration moves to a higher (or lower) place from where it started. As noted by Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” When we return from a journey, both the place we return to, as well as the person returning has changed. Rumination does not have this progression, which is why it’s destructive. It’s recursive without progression … without expansion. As such, it has no ultimate movement.
Musical artists use these two tenets of a spiral all the time. They are what gives music its emotional quality. Listen to a minor note played by itself (hitting play below). Minor notes are ‘minor’ because they evoke a sense of uncertainty. The reason, as discovered by my mentor Dale Purves, is because the tonal quality of a minor note is similar to the tonality of the human voice when it is distressed … which is why you reflexively perceive it as distressing when you hear it.
Now listen to a major note played in isolation (hit play below). Like the minor note, it is ‘complete’ in of itself. But it is also deficient, since it too has the possibility to be part of a more complex musical phrase.
To hear that simple musical phrase, and how it changes the meaning of each note, listen to the same minor note followed by the major note below.
Lab of Misfits · Musical Phrase
This small musical phrase is no more nor less complete than the individual notes that make it up. But notice the sense of closure that your brain perceives from the major note when it follows the minor one, and how the minor note ‘makes sense’ because it proceeds the major one.
This basic principle is what the brilliant DJs (and personal friends) Adam Beyer and Ida Engburg use to move 1,000 brains and bodies in unison across the dance floor at 3am in the massive dance-clubs of Ibiza. As they ‘ramp up’ the music by adding repetition, minor notes and/or asynchronization, they create musical deficiencies. These deficiencies are literally felt by your body as tension. A tension from which your brain needs closure. When closure is anticipated by your brain, dopamine release, which results in your perception of pleasure. Often artists like Adam and Ida will hold you in that state of pleasure by holding you between expectation and resolution. To feel this ‘in the real’, listen to Adam’s recent release below. In the beginning there is simplicity in the repetition of notes, which over time creates tension. Adam then slowly breaks that tension by adding one sonic layer at a time. Each layer complexifies the music while providing a progression of small moments of closure. It also creates new deficiencies. It isn’t until the fifth minute that he finally offers a more complete sense of closure. You feel it.
The same playful creative game is played between you and the makers of the Game of Thrones. They too know that your brain craves the major chord of closure. They also know that if they were to give it to you the show would be over … and you’d not come back. So they don’t. Instead they end of each episode on a metaphorical minor chord in order to hold your brain in a state of uncertainty and expectation of ‘closure’.
It’s a maximally pleasurable experience felt throughout your body that is literally no different from sex (when done well!). The orgasm is the ‘dropping of the beat’, which has little meaning without the tension of the minor chord elements of empathic touch that came before (‘foreplay’). This is the whole point of tantra … which is physical music.
Completeness in music … in sex … in yourself … is not a thing in itself. It’s a spiral process of complexification, of which deficiency is as much a part as is the closure that comes from its momentary resolution. It also has essential parts to it. Here I’ll describe the ‘going out’ (ramping up / foreplay) parts of the spiral, which I call the 3Ds.
1st ... DESIRE. Desire is a wonderful thing since it motivates you to constructively question your completeness. It gives you the energy and courage to engage in the process itself. Counterintuitively, desire also requires Doubt. Indeed, desire celebrates doubt, since doubt creates the possibility of … well … possibility. It was once said that “all revolutions begin with a joke”. To joke is to question what is currently perceived to be true. Questions disrupt, which is why most controlling relationships, whether romantic, religious, governmental and/or cultural (such as the Trump Administration and/or extreme woke culture) are designed to prevent questions … to prevent doubt. As such, they kill the pursuit of truth in favour of control.
2nd ... DEVIATE. To go away from familiarity and into the uncertainty that was always there. How and why we should deviate is explained in my book called Deviate. Turning Left from A to not-A has been the metaphor that I’ve used throughout the Lab of Misfit’s Adventure series. Deviating requires care, courage and compassion to Let Go of what you thought to be true before.
3rd ... DIVERSIFY. For anyone to question the importance of diversity for oneself and/or society is ignorance personified. Such a person simply doesn’t understand nature and biology, since diversity is the engine of evolution itself. Increasing the diversity of one’s personal life ... of one’s work life ... of society and culture in general … is as essential for thriving as are water, air and shelter. Whether manifested in skin pigmentation, gender identity, ways of being and thinking, or environments, diversity increases your Vitality.
For instance, people who live in, and interact with, more diverse communities tend to be more empathetic. They also tend to require less cognitive closure, as they are less distressed by the unfamiliar. Fashion designers who have lived in (not just visited) a wider diversity of locations are more creative and successful than those whose exposures have been more limited. Music too requires diversity. Tango is defined by its diversity of influence. Even at the cellular level, diversity of experience increases the capacity of your muscle cells. It increases the arborisation of your brain cells (as discussed in the previous episode). It enables your immune system to be less fragile and more resilient to future infections.
Without diversity, there is no change. Without change, there is no movement, and thus no life. Hence, the ignorance (and danger) of the concept of cultural appropriation when taken to extreme … as seems to be the want of so many in society right now. It’s in fact the literally opposite: It is in exploring and incorporating the thoughts, ideas, fashions, musics, values of others that actually creates the possibility for your brain to become increasingly compassionate towards difference. Without it, separation, isolation and fragility will increase.
As important as the 3Ds are for complexifying yourself and your creations from music to relationships, engaging in these 3Ds is not enough. When pursued on their own, they can turn the lives of others and of nature into tools for your entertainment. When pursued on their own, they become inauthentic, and instead are driven by your fear of missing out or the fear of the perception of others of you, resulting in your need for more and more and more, and the resulting rushing rushing rushing to the ‘next’ thing ... to the next lover … to the next entertaining experience … to the next next next … that you hope will fill the void.
Which means that essential to the complexification spiral is the ‘return’. What the elements are that make the return … will be the topic of the next episode. I’ll leave you on that minor chord.
Stay tuned.
