On the same plane.

On the Same Plane.

One of my favorite concepts from my inorganic chemistry classes in college is the energy diagram. It maps the level of energy present in a system before, during, and after a chemical reaction takes place. The most basic model looks like this:

The reactants – basically a bunch of molecules, have an intrinsic energy level that is held inside their bonds. Given the right set of conditions, and an infusion of energy (often heat), the molecules will trade bonds with each other to form new, more stable molecules (products), releasing energy as they go. The energy diagram shows the energy state of the reaction at each phase: beginning, transition, and product. The most exciting point on the diagram, the transition state, is also the fastest and most difficult to pin down. I don’t know that we still exactly know what the nature of the molecules are in the transition state – whether they are partially bonded to each other, or just in one big heap of matter and energy.

On to the life analogy…

Airports are transition states for humans: they’re not places people stop (at least willingly) for very long, and they are not stable places in and of themselves: they are meant as places that move us from one place to another: forward to a new home, back to an old home, to a work meeting, a vacation, conference, wherever we are going. But the inevitable truth is that we are going somewhere: otherwise we wouldn’t be there. That’s part of the rush of being in an airport: people walk with purpose, eat with purpose, even sit with purpose.

The best thing about commercial flying is that all of the passengers share a common denominator: even if it’s for a few hours, everyone on that flight is quite literally on the same plane. Everyone is stuck in an enclosed space, where no conversation, newspaper read, or nap taken is truly a private experience. Nobody can escape from the humanity around them with text messages, telephone calls, or chats. Nobody can cut in front to get to their destination faster, or, at least in their individual cabins, assert their class distinctions in any sort of way that actually benefits them. In fact, everyone is affected by what the others do. And, quite frankly, people might as well cooperate to make the experience as pleasant for everyone as possible.

In the best cases, this common purpose allows people to be more human: we can converse more freely with people whose lives we may never cross paths with again – once I sat next to a senior officer at GM, the next time I sat next to a sewer-pipe layer, and had equally interesting conversations with both. Another time a mother with an infant actually let me—a perfect stranger—hold her baby while she rummaged for a bottle in her carry-on bag, and let her arms rest for a while. People reach over to hand complimentary drinks that I can’t reach, let me out when I need to stretch my legs, smile knowingly as I pace the aisles waiting for a bathroom.

Things obviously change once we’ve arrived at our destinations, out of the transition state, and on with our lives, but the memory of those moments of transition, where all we can do is sit, relax, and anticipate, we remember that for those moments of transition, we were all equal, all on the same plane.

on polyphony, individualism, and community.

A few years ago I read an article about the Said Business School at the University of Oxford hosting a conference on music and business models. (A prize to anyone who can track down this article, by the way...) The major point of the demonstration was one that seems clear enough to most ensemble musicians: that when we work together in a community, we work differently than we do on our own, that the sum is bigger/better than the component parts, that dynamic unity is a result of a group that has some things in common and others not, and so on. I gave a bit of a laugh reading the articles the first time around: as if somehow a group of HR reps were calling upon the muses to breath human life into their Frankensteinian corporate behemoth... but if their corporate environments were so sterile as to need musicians to remind them that people like to work with other people, that bouncing ideas off other people can garner new ideas, or that people have personalities outside of their job descriptions, then I suppose the conference needed to be had.

All of that said, it's a message we all need to hear on occasion. And so, here are a few metaphors I've picked up lately from music.

I was reminded of the article today whilst working with BYU Singers on a setting of Psalm 116 for double choir, set by Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548-1611). The concept of the piece is reasonably clear: one choir usually splits itself in two and alternate phrases of the text and music, then sing together at the climax points. The musical effect is something like live stereo (which doesn't usually come off well in recordings, unfortunately). The technical requirements for the choir are a little more complicated: the singers divide into eight separate parts, rather than the more traditional four, which means each singer has double the responsibility to execute the notes, rhythms, phrasing, etc., and also how to align that part with seven others, all of which are moving at different times and in different directions. In some ways, this type of music is the poster-metaphor for an (ahem) harmonious confluence of individualism and collectivism - all the moving parts have individual integrity and creativity, and are all the while being mediated and bounded by - and mediating and binding - the other parts in the musical environment. The sonic effect is as interesting for its linear qualities - each lines presents its own melodies - as it is for its striking vertical sonorities - created by the multiple notes being presented simultaneously.

But of course it's not just musicians who are constantly expected to be doing many things at once: listening, thinking, producing sounds, matching those to the sounds around them. The situation is even greater with solo performers: an organist playing a Bach fugue, for example, has three or four or five lines to produce all at once, all through the control of ten fingers and two feet. and it seems that all of those notes need constant attention... how do they do it?

On the one hand, performing polyphonic music sounds a lot like multitasking: paying attention to multiple things happening at the same time. (We'll not mention the plethora of subconscious things that people do on a regular basis: breathing, maintaining a physical equilibrium, internal pH and body temperature, etc.)

But there's a fundamental difference in the mental/physical sensation of playing an instrument and, say reading text messages whilst watching a movie, or applying make-up whilst driving and eating breakfast. The sensation of playing a piece well is one of intense concentration, and even if I am concentrating on one line over the others, which is often the case, my concentration on that one element enhances the performance of the others. But effect of other 'multitasking' operations I perform has quite the opposite effect: my oatmeal is decidedly less tasty when I eat it while driving to school. And I'm pretty sure my driving isn't any better, either.

The headline Stanford research on media multitasking observes that the latter effect is more common: people who multitask aren't actually better at anything, especially on concentrating or remembering things. Here's the short review of their research that hit the news in 2009:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html

And the longer one:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/08/21/0903620106.full.pdf+html

Here's my long post-short conclusion: our brains do not necessarily function in a linear fashion, we aren't doing ourselves any favors by toggling between information sources in an attempt to take more in. The better way to take in more information, fire more synapses, and draw more conclusions, is to focus on one task for a longer period of time, and let our brains do the rest of the remembering and processing in the background whilst we direct our attentions to the one at hand.