Simulacra

I recently bought new ear buds. I wasn't sure I even wanted them, but they would be small and good for traveling. The ones I had came with my media player and were cheap, too big, and the felt covers were coming apart. The earphones I use at work I like, but the wire is a bit too short, and anyway I wanted some for traveling. So I bought some mid-level ear buds and jesus, they feel nice and have some sweet bass!

And it got me thinking... the difference between the music I was listening to then and what I'm listening to now is purely due to the little tiny speakers in my ears (which I still find pretty annoying and weird). So which one is right? Obviously neither is the right way for the music to sound... it's not like my new ear buds are some how tapping into what the musicians thought the music should sound like. What they created with their instruments (synthesized or acoustic or whatever) is lost forever... it was captured by certain equipment, and what is played back is only a cheap copy. Then the sound people do what they do and change the levels and it becomes a different thing altogether. The musicians and the sound people decide on what the copied and played-back music is supposed to sound like, and they produce it.

And the journey has only begun! The music is consumed in various ways... on the radio, as CDs, or, and I say this with some disgust, bought as mp3s. Neither is what the musicians actually created, but at least the CDs represent what they think the music should sound like, instead of castrated and decapitated mutant-clones that contain a tenth of the original information. But then these digested forms of music are played with some kind of speaker and finally make it to your ear according to what the speakers can do; how do we believe that the speakers' interpretation of your music-playing software's reconstruction of whatever mutilated audio file that was torn from the original digital copy of music that was captured out of the air in some box where the actual music was created... how do we believe it represents that actual music?

It is actually a simulacrum; a "likeness" or "similarity." It is not the actual music, but we are used to taking symbols to mean the thing that they symbolize. I will admit that I only know the word "simulacrum" (plural: simulacra) because Jean Baudrillard's philosophical book "Simulacra and Simulation" was discussed in the behind the scenes DVD of The Matrix and referred to when Morpheus tells Neo, "Welcome to the desert of the real." The music that we listen to is a simulacrum of the music that it represents, and I don't mean to suggest that there is anything actually wrong with this way of listening to music, but it is interesting to think of it as it is and not what it appears to be. The journey from music creation to music appreciation, unless it takes place at a concert (and even then to some degree...), occurs through the degradation of meaning. The true form of the music (maybe Platonic, but maybe it's too late for me to be speculating on Platonic forms) exists in the act of music creation. Once the music is played, everything else is a copy, a likeness. (A shadow on the cave?)

I think the deep thing I'm going for here is that the creation of music is a process, and so it can't be captured, not by any audio equipment, and it certainly can't be sliced-and-diced until it's finally regurgitated into your ears. It exists only in the moment of its creation and is gone outside of that moment. BUT, listening to music is itself a process. All of my violent imagery aside, most of the true essence of the music survives this degradation of meaning, so that when you listen to some sweet beats it is an experience! Maybe the bass isn't all there and so some of the power of the moment is lost. Maybe it's an mp3 so it lacks complexity and fullness of sound... the complexity and fullness of the moment. But maybe listening to that combination of rhythym and melody is enough to bring you out of yourself and into your moment. Your attention is captured and you are fully aware of the music.

Even though the music may be a simulacrum, your experience of the music never is.