Quote:
Originally Posted by Pacman  No, you should be present in the moment making Big Macs too. You're right.
You shouldn't ever "wake up" and not realize where you were. At least IMO. |
You've clearly never driven through the carolinas at night. Or accidentally driven to the store when you meant to go to the highway.
Actually, I'm always aware of where I am. I just don't know what happened to the last 2 seconds. I could have been EXTREMELY conscious of those 2 seconds, I just don't have any MEMORY of being conscious of those 2 seconds. It's a subtle but important difference. You have no way of knowing whether or not I transcended to a higher level of consciousness rather than a lower one.
In order to do anything as complicated as playing an instrument, you have to make a conscious effort to train the unconscious part of your brain how to do things. Every part of our body has adapted & changed with evolution - no part of our body is quite like that of a lizard's. Except for the brain. The brain didn't change, the brain just added new pieces. We have a complete & intact lizard's brain contained within our brain.
It's this lizard brain that we have to train to play music. Without it, we'd never get the motor coordination down and we'd constantly be telling the fingers "okay now move up, now move down, now move left, now move right..."
The same way you can't recall how many steps you took between your front door and your couch or exactly how many strokes you used when you brushed your teeth in the morning or shampooed your hair, the lizard brain is our friend and it operates below the level of consciousness and it allows us to plan our solo four bars from now while it plays a few notes for us (which we may have consciously planned out a few moments ago) now.
You know that awkward & completely automatic movement you make when you trip - arms flailing, legs shooting out? All of that happens without you being consciously aware of it. You can observe it happen, but there's no way the conscious, analytical mind works quickly enough to do all that. All that actually takes place below the lizard brain - it happens in the spine. So does the sudden withdrawal when your hand touches something hot. It never reaches your conscious mind. Sure the conscious mind can override the instincts, but you see how much effort it takes to hold your hand steady over the flame.
I've been incredibly conscious for bits of music that I play - one song that I didn't have a part for & had to record that day I was incredibly conscious for and laid down a perfect track, completely improvised on the spot - but other stuff that's exactly the same day after day - I disappear for a few seconds. I let instinct take over. We're good friends & if he wants to drive for a while, I let him.
One of my professors worked with the famous
H.M., who lost his ability to make long-term memories in the 1950's. Every time he looks in the mirror he's shocked at how old he's gotten. He doesn't recognize his family members at all & when my professor had to drive him somewhere, he said "WOW, are these the new models?" while pointing at the other cars, thinking it had only been a few months since he'd seen a car, not 40-something years.
Is HM present for every moment just because he doesn't remember them?
Maybe I also have some sort of neurological disorder that only comes out when I play music. I remember everything up until the micro blackout & everything after it. I just don't remember anything in between & I'm astonished that I managed to play all the notes in between the two points, including sometimes a few fills that I'm sure I must have played (because I alway play fills in those spots, but not always the same ones). Maybe it's some sort of seizure, some sort of overwhelming of the senses, maybe it's a disconnect of my short-term memory system. Or maybe it's just ghost hands.
