Phatic communion

Britain may be suffering its most extreme wintry conditions for 20 years but here in Japan Spring is well on its way, the daffs and plum blossoms are out, the days are full of bright mabushi-i sunshine and it's really quite warm. Yesterday we sat on the terrace of the best Denny's in Japan, overlooking the sea, with snow-clad Fuji-san looming in the far distance, and while we brunched enjoyed the spectacle of people seaweeding along the shore below. Must be seaweed season as there is lots of it hanging up to dry, wakame I suppose.

Later we wandered around Enoshima and enjoyed the Sun set behind the Hakone hills.

I have been lent an interesting looking book: The Singing Neanderthals, by Steven Mithen, with the somewhat ambitious sub-title The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body, which seems rather a lot for one small paperback. His thesis is that just as language is instinctive/innate and universal, to a large extent, so is music; the proof being that everyone appreciates music, every culture on Earth produces and has produced music, and mothers everywhere instinctively lullaby their newborns, etc. (That's in the introduction). He claims that while a lot of thought has gone into the origins and development of language, very little research has gone into the same regarding music, and points out that for the renowned Chomksyian linguist and 'Darwinist' Steven Pinker "music is derivative from other evolved propensities, something that humans have invented merely as entertainment: 'As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless ... music is quite different from language ... it is a technology, not an adaptation', which he describes as 'the making of plinking noises', (in How the Mind Works, 1997).

Having read three of Pinker's books (The Language Instinct, Blank Slate, and Words and Rules) I feel he exemplifies the old fable of the six blind men and the elephant. None of whom have seen an elephant before and all touch a different part of its anatomy, all getting a different sense of what an elephant is, although all have touched the truth. He's clearly phenomenally intelligent and erudite, but, like a pugnacious prosecution lawyer, seems to find arguing to win his point the prime objective, and will demolish and ridicule what he sees as the opponents' points of view, rather than seek the whole truth - something that we all find ourselves doing every now and then, especially on a Saturday night after a couple of beers.

Anyhow, the Dekoboko point of view is that quite clearly language, poetry, music, dance, the visual arts and so on, all overlap and intermingle and are all part of the same goal: to communicate with each other about our shared existence, and this urge is innate. Furthermore, 'language' in the simple linguistic sense is not just about transfering information, but largely about sharing, communing, feeling part of a whole - like bird song in the morning: "I'm alive! I'm alive! I made it through the night"; or the evening chorus: "Dark is coming - but we will be OK". The point being that it doesn't matter what we say, as long as we say something, or at least communicate in some way - take the jazz the other night: a huge amount of communication going on between the audience and the band, and among the band, but very few words said all night. Seems to me that most banter is in fact phatic communion:

http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/phaticterm.htm

Perhaps Prof. Onians of UEA will throw some light on the matter - he's written a book on Neuroarthistory, which seeks to find out what goes on in artists' brains, a concept of which I am more than a little sceptical, as I believe we are all 'artists', innately - perhaps finding out what goes on in people's brains while they are being artistic? Hmmm...

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300126778


Anyway, I have to go - live jazz and friends are calling me down the road...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krb2OdQksMc