Sight is instantaneous and hence 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 at nerve 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 those images to what we 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 art are tremendously delicate.
Hearing is visceral and moves through our body at a speed we can experience. It’s a sensation that 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 them. Hearing and creating sound simultaneously is characteristic of live music, especially singing.
Our processing of sound begins mechanistically (a simplification of the working of the ear), as opposed to the mega-throughput of our optic fibre. As our brain processes the sound signal, the sound passes through the wet bag we live within. Michael McClure’s ‘meat science’ if you like. We don’t {think=hear} sound, we ring like a bell when we hear it.
When we sing, we know through our body if we’re in tune or not. When I have sung in a choir, everyone in the choir knows if anyone is 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, the spirit (if you wish) rises on a wave of shared sound and feeling that magnifies and grounds our humanity, both listeners and singers.
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 mimics our experience of being — which are often the most wordless and powerful parts of ourselves.