Spring, Spring Never Changes...

Last time I wrote about the impression Stravinsky's Rite of Spring made on people and how they got to like it. Today it's your turn, I'm sure you were at least a little bit curious how classical music could cause a riot. Well here is a recreation of the original:

And if pagan rituals are just not your thing here is the same music telling the story of the creation of the universe, evolution and extinction of dinosaurs:







Spring is here... it is the mark of new beginnings and each year it is here to teach us that the only constant is change. Spring never changes...

How We Learn to Love Music

Music is the first way we develop to communicate. In fact it happens so early we call this ability of understanding an inborn ability. All over the world parents that speak to their children use the same melodies. Like a rise and fall for approval. Or rising, high pitch to call attention. The words don't matter, it's all in the melodies.
But throughout life we learn and our tastes change. It would appear from the following story that in fact our love and appreciation of music is a learned trait. Give the bit below a listen, but just in case you are in a hurry I am going to sum up for you. In the beginning of the 20th century Stravinsky presented himself in Paris with a new creation: the Rite of Spring. And while the beginning had a very calm and pastoral air to it, it soon changed to develop completely new (at the time) harmonies and a tension-creating repeating background (kind of reminds me of Burzum, if you don't know, you don't even want to know...). What was the result? Did the people herald him as a genius? Nope, they started a riot. Like a regular riot with violence, the likes of which any respectable mob would start on the street, and mind you this was a cultured audience expecting a show of classical music. But, the surprise (to me) is that, just one year afterwards, Stravinsky came back to present the show and this time, with an audience warned they are in for something absolutely special, he was welcome as a hero. And in a way he was, because he challenged human nature, specifically our brain, which loves the familiar and abhors innovation. When presented with something new, like the music of Stravinsky it tries to make sense of the new noise, but eventually releases a large amount of dopamine, which could possibly explain the violent behavior of the audience (in small doses dopamine makes you happy, in large doses it makes you go crazy). This happens when the brain fails to make sense of new sounds and find the patterns. But the brain is also an amazing piece of ingenuity as with time it learns to assimilate the new and integrate it with the all the known information and turn it into something familiar.

Nowadays the music is not that surprising but I still feel it's weird. If you are very curious about the music itself there is a whole book you can read: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft967nb647&brand=ucpress

In case you were looking for more evidence in the same vein, and from the same source incidentally, here is another Radiolab piece.  There is a reiteration from min 23 of the idea from the bit above and then a more relatable example, with something as mundane as radio. And how going from something classic to something modern can create an unpleasant surprise. But then of course we quickly overcome it. In this case the transition from Gregorian chants to the 'modern' Bach makes a point in case (starting from 28:34).



If you don't understand what it is supposed to mean here is how a cello can be used in the modern world. I sincerely hope these will be unexpected for you.



And here you were thinking you would never like death metal :) (not that the above is to be considered that, just read on...) It just takes some repeated listens to get into, and even then it's hard (the thing I noticed about extreme metal is that it remove thoughts, so it's good if you want to focus and your mind keeps straying, in situations like learning or programming, but if you are not intellectually engaged, well I think then it just kills what remains, leaving you dumb).

I don't know about how weird-ass classical music is created but here's how you can do death metal. Opeth explain all the riffs and the construction of The Drapery Falls from their Blackwater Park album. Especially part2 is interesting about tension and creating disharmonies (See minute 10: "A lot of people say that [chord] sounds like shit. And it does")

Here is a full performance so you can pay attention to all the things he mentioned about playing live. And you probably want to hear the original too. So go buy the album. The Drapery Falls:

The Number of the Beast

I recently came upon something that blew my mind. We have the number of the beast wrong. Ahhhhhh, what will save us now?

I'm guessing everyone is used to the classic 666 without which some T-shirts wouldn't be funny at all

The original quote from the Bible is: This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.

But probably this recited version is better:



Ok, so now the revelation: the original sources mentioned a different number and the number is:

616

And it's not just one source. While this version has been known for a long time, from here, it has only been recently accepted as probable original value since it is also mentioned in a papyrus, thought to be the oldest source, and thus with most authority, on the subject.

So, are we going to change the number of the beast? In the end I think we will always remember an awesome Iron Maiden album.

Mărțisor

A new spring is starting today. And Romanians usually celebrate. Here's how the holiday looks officially:

Talking about official, Google is celebrating too, that has to mark it as an important date in the calendar

I think it supposed to stand for new beginnings and cooperation, so here's a kick-off to getting along better with others

Katanagatari

A girl comes to a deserted place where she finds a boy, slightly younger than her who has spent his whole life training in martial arts with his grandfather. The boy knows absolutely nothing about the world but joins the girl in her quest to gather the 7 12 Dragonballs Deviant Blades. Of course, although he loses some fights along the way, the boy turns out to be the strongest warrior possible.

This is the latest and probably one of the last anime I watch. Initially I wanted to lump it together with the Lost post, but they have nothing in common except the fact that the ending is disappointing (and this would be the place I mention that I watch anime because they have endings). But I am getting ahead of myself.

The first impression you get of this anime is the unfamiliar artwork. It's strange and it's crude, so it had better compensate by content. And to some degree it succeeds. The introduction may suggest that I consider it a rip-off of Dragonball, not so. This series is remarkable in that it pretends to be an action series, but is instead a dialog driven journey. The fights are usually less than 5 minutes of the unusually 50 minutes long episodes. Being dialog-driven it reminded me of Bakemonogatari, but the similarity in content and title is no coincidence as they were written and animated by the same people.

While the former excels at what it does, this 'sword story' (rough title translation) could have been better. Not by much as each episode is pretty good in its own right (except the one where we don't even see the fight for the sword; instead it is just summed up by a 2 min. dialog), but they don't seem to be linked in the best way. The pacing is all wrong. I mean he faces of against the strongest enemy, which happens to be his sister, half-way through. What was the logic in that?

Ultimately, it is the ending that stands out. It's appropriate (the feeling that nothing good will come of their quest is pretty much established from the first episodes), but not satisfying in the least. <SPOILER> What is remarkable is how the Japanese don't seem to have any problems killing of main characters, even where there are as little as 2 of them. See Gurren Lagann for a much better example. There, an unexpected death is the only good part I saw in the series. Here, although it is well executed, it prevents the ending from giving a sense of fulfillment </SPOILER> Speaking of lack of fulfillment, although we get to see the Completed Deviant Blade and the power of Kyotouryuu when he is actually unleashed, no longer ordered to protect the swords or himself, it is all for naught. Not even the philosophical twist of Kiki not being a sword smith, but soothsayer which attempted to change history through his Completed Deviant Blade, made any impact as it was offhandedly dismissed as a failure in the epilogue. <SPOILER> And I can't even begin to imagine what they were thinking when they had him end up travelling the country with the wrong princess. I understand to have a non-hollywood happy ending, but this seemed just plain wrong creepy </SPOILER> I guess that's just how the Japanese are... can't understand them, that's what makes their shows special.

So all in all, was it worth the time? Probably.

The Story That Should Have Ended

Last time, I had a short look at Lost which, despite its flaws, still is probably my favorite series of recent times (Just in case you were wondering I would say Twin Peaks and M*A*S*H from the old guard). So now I propose to take a look at the context, and why it sucks less than others. The answer to me seems pretty much straightforward: American TV shows are always a neverending story. You have a story to tell (or not even that) and after you are done you attach a new season, and a new one and a new one, just because it had the misfortune of attracting an audience (Luckily Firefly suffered no such problems, that's why it is pretty much perfect).

So, first category of stories gone bad: the ones with good intentions. They had a story to tell, they told it well, but they just couldn't stop. The most famous examples of this category would be Prison Break and Heroes. Heroes has a pretty light tagline: Save the cheerleader, save the world. It tells a story about impeding doom, while crafting a pretty good apocalyptic atmosphere, and some pretty solid character backgrounds, while leading them to a fulminating conclusion where they all meet and we find out how each of them was relevant to the story. The detonation sort of happens, the good guys sort of win, ok everything is the way it should be. So why did they have to end on what I can only call a fake cliffhanger? To milk the cash cow of course. Not that it was immediately bad. No, season 2 was pretty good, while exploring some more of the character backgrounds and telling the best story of all: Hiro's childhood hero. It also features probably the darkest ending I have seen in a TV series and it would have made an awesome season finale, but no... they had to make more. And now jumping on to the second even more relevant example: Prison Break. The whole pith of the show is that you have a genius who has a brilliant plan covering all the details and craftily disguised as a whole-body tattoo to get into jail and break out with his brother. Because of this idea that everything is planned for ahead it is the best action series I have seen and that's why it attracted such a big following. However at the end of the first season the plan is fulfilled, it is done with and the 'Prison Break' is over with. Why drag on? Again, not that it immediately seems like a bad idea, the plan seems to have been crafted for situations on the outside as well but it quickly crumbles and I had to abandon it after just a few episodes because of how worthless it had gotten. And that's just sad. I think it is way better to leave people thinking 'just a little bit more would have been perfect' than 'this should have died a long time ago'.

On to the next category. About this one I am not really sure what to say. The formula is episodic so it doesn't really feel it drags on, and it has some links between episodes but those are mainly character back-stories, or a background for the action of each episode. For this I will chose as prime example House M. D. Of course every programmer (or other profession that is paid for intellectual work, but it's just speculation to generalize) on the face of the Earth idolizes Doctor House. Because of his brilliance and competence. The personality, although not to be envied we have to admit makes for a great comedy show, and if you put that on top of a serious drama show you got a great winner. Sadly, I got tired of the formula, and the writers seemed to have lost inspiration of great jokes after the first two seasons. When you add to the mix that it pretty much had an ending with season 3 when his team leaves him, you can add it to the list of shows that should have ended. But arguably this is still good (I don't see how they could have messed it up), and watchable ad infinitum.

And we get to the final category: shows that have a story arc spanning one season. This may or may not be combined with each episode having some stand-alone story (e.g. Veronica Mars). My favorite example is America's favorite serial killer Dexter. Like House, this show can pretty much work forever because it is mainly not story driven. It is driven by a very strong lead character, and as long as the actor's performance doesn't disappoint you have a recipe for success. The question is how long should you keep going? I already feel the show's strength has been diluted over too many seasons. 1,2 and 4 were great (it's such a pity, this show comes really close to being genius, but always shys away from the last step) but the other two were pretty much useless. Especially the last one: how can you give such an unsatisfying ending to a story? Man finds the closest thing he can have to a soul-mate (and there is reciprocity) and she leaves because... ah, just no reason. I'm glad it is still going on just because it deserves a better end than this. How would it have been if it had ended after season 4? I think it would have been brilliant, the story would have come full circle and also left and open end. How can they even think they can improve on that? We'll just have to wait and see, and analyze the blood patterns.

The Story That Ended

I was writing about JJ Abrams and Star Wars, but let's take a look at the series that made Mr. Abrams famous: Lost.

As a new entry to the series 'not following your own advice', we have to ask Abrams: are you stupid or something? What do you think? Do people want to see that 'something' (and we are never shown what) rips trees out of the ground, like in season 1, or that that something is some kind of black smoke, like in season 3, or that that black smoke is actually a man who became like that because he was throw in a pool with lighting, like in season 6 ? What's wrong with you? Sure people demanded answers, but people don't know what they want. What they wanted was a sense of meaning to the mysteries not a straight out (stupid) revelation. I mean here you are talking about how the technology allows you to do things you wouldn't even have conceived and the final revelation, the climax of the whole show is some guy pulling up a giant cork? and then putting it back in because what he did was 'bad'? I felt like watching Looney Tunes, and it didn't make me laugh. It made me want to swear.

With a poster like this hopes for season 6 were beyond the roof. It suggest a great work of art, inspired by something holy, but instead it goes down the hill, waaaay down. Instead of resolving the existing problems in an elegant manner, it introduces a new, deeply unneeded one, of Jacob and the Man in Black/ Locke, and it resolves it in a pretty shameful manner. What do you think which is better? The 'island' brought the people together or some immortal idiot who doesn't intervene when the script says so and scribbled their names on a cave (at least self-irony is not lost as Jacob tells Kate: they are just some names in a cave). What is to be appreciated though is that they knew from the very beginning that they would offer an ending and approximately when that will come. Unfortunately it came about one season too late.

With all its flaws, the show was pretty much perfect until the end of season 5, so that's where the show ends for me. It's an open ending, sure, but somehow it's better than a reunion in Purgatory. Season 5 had a pretty much perfect treating of the subject of time travel, it really wasn't necessary to follow up by turning it up a notch with parallel worlds. But instead, to give a sense of accomplishment (even if everyone is to die, like Desmond after Ben shot him, thus ruining the 'greater plan' for which Desmond was so special), of closure. The show is definitely worth watching, even if only to see season 5. It gave a good feeling of rounding up and saved what seemed like a wrong decision to make the Others just normal people (back in season 3) going about their day to day lives and conspiracies without a point and with no mastermind. The blank canvas when the bomb does/doesn't detonate makes for a much better ending to the series. And though the ending with Jack just as the show started was pretty well done, you got the feeling of closing the circle after season 5 too and just by a change in logo (intro vs outro):