july 9, 2014
it's funny how, the more a piece is practiced, time begins to slow down. i wonder if anybody's really studied this...
it's just perception, of course. but time is weird. relativity theory
suggests (and suggests is the right word. the experiments that
supposedly uphold this part of it are kind of weak. for example, they
sent a plane around the earth a few times and noticed the clocks came
back differently, in a way that sort of verified einstein's predictions.
but, in fact, it was in the margin of error. i don't doubt einstein was
on to something, and it's not like i found an error in the math or
anything, but i'm a little iffy on some of the assumptions. relativity
theory is an axiomatic system, built at the precise moment that
axiomatic systems were being abandoned as unreliable. so, this is a
perilous way to build a theory up. any future corrections to the axioms,
and they're perpetually inevitable, may drastically alter the
conclusions.) that time is not as constant as we perceive it as, but
we're not accelerating to fractions of the speed of light very often,
either, so it's not really wrong to think of it as a constant in
day-to-day non-experimental life. i mean, playing my guitar isn't
anything like synchronizing satellites.
but, there's no question that an ant or a fly must perceive of time as
faster than we do. i mean, flies wouldn't be so hard to catch,
otherwise. i guess it's just simple physics if you think about it:
shorter paths for the electricity to follow. and it's true that insects
are roughly comparable to primitive robots in terms of consciousness,
it's just action/reaction, so that's not a totally useful comparison.
but, if we could somehow be the proverbial fly on the wall, we would
probably have difficulty understanding what was being said, because the
waveforms would come in to us as slowed down, elongated messes. i don't
even know if flies can "hear" or not...well, i guess they get vibrations
of some sort but i don't know if that's actually sound or just noise.
something like that seems to happen when getting locked into the groove
of an instrument. after a while, playing at 360 seems like playing at
250. it's not just a question of getting the mechanics right, it's the
entire computation process. at first, the notes are blurry and it's
difficult to think and play at the same time, but eventually the
separation of the notes is as clear as it is at slower tempos and the
ability to process the whole thing - finger movements, next notes, etc -
slows down as well.
and i'm wondering if it might have something to do with higher aptitude
to do various mental tasks amongst musicians. i mean, i'm not actually
modifying time. my guitar is not a frame of reference. i'm not
increasing my velocity. it must be that i'm thinking faster, getting my
brain to work at a faster speed. physically, that would have to be
synapses being built - that's what it *means* to think faster, right? to
have more synapses, shorter paths, faster electrical responses. maybe
the brain reuses those for math problems...
i'm rambling, just thinking out loud. but it really is remarkable how
we're able to lock in and change that perception of time, whether it's
the result of increasing transmission speed or something else.
there's this unfortunate tendency recently to think of intelligence as
something genetic, but the brain is a highly plastic organ that is
constantly changing with experience.
your current brain is not the brain you were born with. it's a highly
individualized culture of cells that was built solely for you as a
reaction to the experiences you've had in your life.
and it will continue changing for as long as you live.
--
well, somebody's studied it.
i don't currently have the time or interest to review the literature, but this is quick survey.
http://www.demneuropsy.com.br/imageBank/PDF/v4n4a05.pdf