Coincidence...Or?
My dear readers, y'know how you'll turn on the TV and (just for example) the one episode you've ever seen of the Beverly Hillbillies is playing (the same one where Ellie May is getting courted & sparked by some wildly inappropriate suitor & she's pretending to be ten years younger, since 26 is over the hill in the Clampett world view). Or it could be the same Sex in the City, or Simpsons, or South Park, or Petticoat Junction--the point is you never see any other episode--just that one. Yours. (Robert Geller--a fab songwriter-- has a great tune about this phenomenon, it's called "Episode").
There are other common types o' coincidences... you'll read a book about, say, Henry VIII and then suddenly there are 3 miniseries about him and/ or other Tudors popping up like so many Elizabethan pastries rising in the oven. And before you can say "Renn Faire", everyone is writing or reading a book about Anne Boleyn. Is it a zeitgeist thing? Or what?
It happens in your very own brain and circumstances...is it significant? Or not?
I was talking with Chris McGrew from GRIDDLE yesterday about modal harmony, which made me think of my one term of jazz piano with Jerry Coker back at University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The very next day, my mom told me how her piano student is starting jazz piano instruction with Jerry Coker... whoa...is there a pattern to all this, a future in the tea leaves, a face in the clouds, a glowing causeway of destiny that leads to... well, other cities of sychronicities? Should we be more Elizabethan and take astrology REALLY seriously? Should we utilize the ancients' modes of divination for our post modern purposes--we could sacrifice livestock for stock tips. Is there a message in the bones in my plate after I gnaw my chicken wing? & Why have I dated so many Geminis? There are seven letters in both my names which adds up to 14 proving that I better not eat turnips on Sundays.
Not to make light of numerology, of course. Some of my best friends are numerically sensitive. I am more alphabetical myself.
But the point is, we look for patterns and then see them everywhere--which tells us more about the human brain that's doing the looking than anything we are actually looking at. Perhaps a fundamental need to create a form, a rhythm, a shape is being expressed. Tolkien called humans 'sub creators". Indeed. Go unto your fields and sow, take up a brush & paint a landscape, score a film, write ye some doggerel.
If that's not sufficient, get thee to a taqueria. You're probably peckish.
There are other common types o' coincidences... you'll read a book about, say, Henry VIII and then suddenly there are 3 miniseries about him and/ or other Tudors popping up like so many Elizabethan pastries rising in the oven. And before you can say "Renn Faire", everyone is writing or reading a book about Anne Boleyn. Is it a zeitgeist thing? Or what?
It happens in your very own brain and circumstances...is it significant? Or not?
I was talking with Chris McGrew from GRIDDLE yesterday about modal harmony, which made me think of my one term of jazz piano with Jerry Coker back at University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The very next day, my mom told me how her piano student is starting jazz piano instruction with Jerry Coker... whoa...is there a pattern to all this, a future in the tea leaves, a face in the clouds, a glowing causeway of destiny that leads to... well, other cities of sychronicities? Should we be more Elizabethan and take astrology REALLY seriously? Should we utilize the ancients' modes of divination for our post modern purposes--we could sacrifice livestock for stock tips. Is there a message in the bones in my plate after I gnaw my chicken wing? & Why have I dated so many Geminis? There are seven letters in both my names which adds up to 14 proving that I better not eat turnips on Sundays.
Not to make light of numerology, of course. Some of my best friends are numerically sensitive. I am more alphabetical myself.
But the point is, we look for patterns and then see them everywhere--which tells us more about the human brain that's doing the looking than anything we are actually looking at. Perhaps a fundamental need to create a form, a rhythm, a shape is being expressed. Tolkien called humans 'sub creators". Indeed. Go unto your fields and sow, take up a brush & paint a landscape, score a film, write ye some doggerel.
If that's not sufficient, get thee to a taqueria. You're probably peckish.
posted by Margrit | 12:41 AM
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