Dynamic Range

(This isn't about music)

Since recovering from my infection/injury in March, I've been struggling to find my footing and get back in the groove creatively. The brain is collection of habits- neurons stimulating neurons in patterns that you you. I'm beginning to realize that the forced-restful state that I was in while I was sick (and recovering) has lead to some bad habits, and undesirable patterns in my head. Some, simply time-wasting- too many games, too much sitting and being comfortably bored. Others, a bit more worrisome...

I've been having night terrors? or anxiety attacks? or something else? Each day when the sun starts to set, I start to feel this terrible feeling creep back into my mind and take over. I worry about lots of spiraling and awful ideas. I feel like I cannot trust my own body to heal anymore (but maybe that's just part of getting older) I worry that I haven't accomplished enough or made enough out of my life so far. I get terrified of the unrelenting nothingness I expect in death, and I remember being sick in a bed for a month, spending every day worrying (or distracting myself from worrying) while doing everything I can to get better. Perhaps that's the worst of it. I start to realize that more than likely I will die like that someday- sick, in a bed, doing everything I can to get better- but instead of getting better, I will not. This will happen, sooner or later- it's a fact as certain as life itself- there can be no life without end. (It is probably one of the earliest, most consistent, and inevitably binary distinctions that a creature can comprehend.)

Each thing in the universe that humans can name must be distinct from something else. We name things in relation to other things- with the intention to call them together, or push them apart.

In music and art, we call this dynamic range. It's the relative distance between the two most extreme points- How dis-similar is brightest color from the darkest, ect...- How loud is the loudest moment compared to the quietest, etc... Some pieces are subtle and lovely, keeping their biggest moments no more than a whisper more intense than their quietest. Hushed secrets, and vague impressions- suggesting ideas without fully committing. Some pieces are loud and busy, constantly ramping between two extremes, forcing together/apart moments of silence and noise and figure and ground. Declarative statements that shout at you across the room and force your attention.

It's easy to say the loudest thing is the better thing because it's simply easier to see. But, in truth, the loudest thing in the universe cannot be defined without referencing the quietest thing. So which thing is more impressive?- The loudest thing certainly requires more energy, but if the world is full of other very loud things, then it doesn't stand out as much as the quiet thing? But just by the nature of perception, how likely are any of us to see the quietest thing? (however lovely it may be...)

How can we measure the qualities of a life? If art is like life, perhaps the dynamic range of life can be found by comparing a moment when you are "most alive" with the moment when you return to the earth.

If all endings are the same grave return to silence, then the loudest, busiest, most chaotic life certainly has the biggest dynamic range. I has many chapters- it is able to enunciate the widest variety of experiences. (The brain is great at categorizing and separating distinct experiences.) You can remember each unusual moment from a chapter of your life much more vividly than a span of time in which mostly similar things happened.

But that distinction, too, relies on personal context. In fact is, the human brain will store chapters and distinctions in a seemingly monochromatic span of time, too. Though the apparent dynamic contrast is less- the brain creates/identifies moments as being distinctive from one another. A quiet thing still has a rich, exquisite pallet of subtle variations.

So which piece is better- One with more dynamic range, or one with less?... It depends entirely on what it means to you. One cannot exist without the other (even in the context of this hypothetical question). The evaluation of a lifetime's work is done by the people who interacted with it, not by the work itself. In art, we generally talk about a piece being more successful if it connects deeply with a sizable portion of its intended audience... Perhaps it's true that a life is ultimately measured in both depth and breadth of relationships with the people in your world.

Maybe the painting dies each time we look away. Our direct experience of it has ceased, yet our feelings about it (whatever ideas it gave you) remain. The piece is given context by you, and your observation of it. It's not up to the piece to decide what it means, it's up to all of us who look at it.

What I think I am doing, and what I am actually doing, and what I think I wish I were doing is irrelevant, to some extent.

When a human life ends, the the capacity for that human to generate new experiences for/ with other people ends. But the experiences they already had are as real as they were when they were alive- and the collective memory of those experiences and actions, are as real as any life can be.