Pink Floyd and Philosophy, (Chapters 11-15)

Reading this collection of essays reminds me of reading a collection of short stories.  You generally have to slog through some not-so-interesting stories to get to the really good ones.  In this section of the book (actually two short sections) we begin with some rather long-winded explorations of how to define the band in terms of its members.  Is Pink Floyd without Roger Waters still Pink Floyd?  It’s more than just semantics, the writers seem a little too eager to show, and so it is.  But it’s not a point that bears dwelling on for more than a few pages. 

When I came to the chapter written by Randall E. Auxier, I recognized his name as one that had been attached to chapters that I had found especially interesting in other books from this series.  Sure enough, his “It’s All Dark: The Eclipse of the Damaged Brain” is one of the highlights of this book.  He is one of the writers who use humor to punctuate his ideas, a proven method of getting people to listen and get your points across.  Ask anyone who their favorite teacher is or was, and I can almost guarantee you they liked them at least partly because of their use of humor. 

“Here’s something fun to do with your brain that your math teacher never taught you.  First, take some drugs.”  Okay, this is a college professor; don’t try this at Home-Ec… “Now, imagine a point.  Now make it move in one direction.  It becomes a line.  Now make the whole line move in one direction.  It becomes a plane.  Now make the whole plane move.  It becomes a solid (it has three dimensions.)  You are using your imagination to multiply dimensions.  You can go beyond three dimensions if you really, really work at it, or if the drugs are good enough.”  Some teachers have to work hard at developing this kind of witty representation.  To others it comes naturally.  In my own experience, I have always had to be careful to keep the humor reigned in – my own brand of humor runs to the bizarre and “inappropriate.”  I also have had a tendency to overdo it when I’m on a roll, laughing trumping learning.  

Auxier has a lot of really good stuff to share about how musicians perceive music differently than most people.  He presents this as a non-musician himself, but his observations are generally right on target: “…it’s difficult to make music well, and those who do learn to make it well are themselves even more susceptible to its power than those who simply listen. Waters and Gilmore may have you in their control, but they are more had by what they are doing than you are.”  And: “…music is probably the single most powerful way to penetrate a person’s regular ‘defenses’ against, well, mind control [being influenced], and take him where he didn’t quite intend to go.” For a book containing superb observations about music psychology on just about every page, I highly recommend “This is Your Brain on Music,” by Daniel J. Levitin. 

A lot of the writing in this section falls more in the category of Psychology than Philosophy, but the “Philosophy of Art” subdivision is mostly concerned with the “Why” of Art, and that is largely tied in with the effects that Art has on mind, culture and history.  Some philosophers have more to say on Art than any other topic, being known for their influence in that area.  As an admirer of Ayn Rand, I can’t help but compare all that is written in this book to works of hers I have read, predominantly in her collection of essays on Art, “The Romantic Manifesto.”  She wasn’t big on so-called “abstract art,” preferring the works from the Romantic Era of classical music for very practical reasons.  But I have to think she would have appreciated the efforts of Pink Floyd on their albums from 1973-79, beginning with “The Dark Side of the Moon.”

 

 

 

 

Next week's chapters: 16-19.