In class we talked about a professor putting up a homework assignment with a few authors for his students to read. Immediately following the end of the class the professor decided to do an experiment on his religious poetry class saying that the authors names were, in fact,a poem and asked his students to analyze it. Of course the students came up with some greater meaning of the "poem" other than the 6 authors names written down on the board as a list. Two things caught my attention about this experiment. The first being that meaning in poetry and writing is completely relative and subjective to whom is reading the work. Secondly if a person is looking for meaning in something they will usually find it. I thought about another instance similar to this poem experiment and that is the coincidence of the famous Pink Floyd album "The Dark Side of the Moon" syncing up with the Classic motion picture "The Wizard of Oz." People have claimed for years that the two sync up "perfectly" and that the band did this syncing on purpose. If you watch it yourself without the bias of "knowing" that the two sync up you will see that they actually dont sync up very well at all BUT in certain places it seems as if the two go hand in hand. This is simply due to the fact that you are looking and wanting the two to sync up.
"Some guy with too much time on his hands had this idea of combining Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon."
-David Gilmour, Lead guitarist, Pink Floyd
I think the idea of people looking for meaning in things usually finding it has a lot of credit. With enough scrutiny or blind faith anything can me conceived. The context of the situation (as the looker perceives it) can completely change something's meaning as in the case of the "religious" poem. They had a background in religious poetry and were in class so they just assumed it had religious merit. But if it were you or I in that situation we would probably deny its meaning as a poem and not look into it at all.
ReplyDelete"In 2004, the late night show Saturday Night Live featured a parody of the Wizard of Oz. At the end, Darrell Hammond stepped on stage and said, "Now, if you want a truly awesome experience, rewind this sketch to the beginning, light up a fatty, and put on Dark Side of the Moon. Trust me, it's mind-blowing." At this point, "Money" began to play in the background"
(Wikipedia)
Also, the last sentence of this quote kind of sums up the idea of finding just what you're looking for...
ReplyDelete"In a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone, Dark Side of the Moon engineer Alan Parsons said of the supposed effect:
"It was an American radio guy who pointed it out to me. It's such a non-starter, a complete load of eyewash. I tried it for the first time about two years ago. One of my fiancee's kids had a copy of the video, and I thought I had see what it was all about. I was very disappointed. The only thing I noticed was that the line "balanced on the biggest wave" came up when Dorothy was kind of tightrope walking along a fence. One of the things any audio professional will tell you is that the scope for the drift between the video and the record is enormous; it could be anything up to twenty seconds by the time the record's finished. And anyway, if you play any record with the sound turned down on the TV, you will find things that work."
(Wikipedia)
You truly can get pretty much whatever you want out of anything, can't you? Personally, I don't understand why anyone would want to ruin a perfectly good Pink Floyd listening experience by trying to watch at movie at the same time! I say you should just lay back and crank the volume.
ReplyDelete