Sight is instantaneous, illusory and easily confused. Ask any magician.
Our eyes connect directly to our brain. Our visual processing occurs at incomprehensible speeds, passing through various parts of our brain electric speed, and most of those internal mental processors are developed to cut down the incoming information into manageable bites. Or bytes if you prefer.
We see things using a reference library of images we begin at birth and we match what we see to what we expect to see, as much as use our eyes. Sight is easily confused.
When we look at art, it can inspire, dazzle, fill us with voluptuous colour, but rarely move us to emotion, especially tears. Those who cry at the sight of a painting are tremendously delicate.
Hearing is visceral and moves through our body at a speed we experience. Its sensation occurs at the rate of our internal clock. We feel sound as well as hear it. It’s tactile.
Singers often cup their ears or plug their ears to hear want they’re singing. The note resonates within. Hearing and creating sound simultaneously is the essence of live music, especially singing.
Our processing of sound is mechanistic, as opposed to the mega-throughput of our optic fibre. Our brain processes sound as the signal passes through the wet bag we live within. We don’t {think=hear} sound, we ring like a bell with it.
When we sing, we know through our body if we’re in tune or not. When I sing in a choir, everyone in the choir knows if anyone was off tune as the bodies don’t resonate correctly. And the alternate, when the choir is in tune, is one of the most glorious feelings humans can experience. The sense of self, spirit rises on a wave of shared sound and feeling that both magnifies and grounds our humanity, listeners and singers alike.
It’s this attribute that allows music and song to easily move and inspire us. I don’t know anyone who can listen to Delibes’ Lakmé — Duo des fleurs without experiencing intense feelings, whether of beauty, joy, sorrow, it’s difficult to isolate or predict.
That is the power of great music. It creates within us the temporality of experience, resonates with our feelings and reinforces our experience of being — the wordless and powerful parts of ourselves.