A few years ago, I wrote a novel, Remission, about multiple layers of reality that could be entered from our own reality -and with the proper knowledge, the natural laws of these other realities could be brought back to bear on our own, creating actual "miracles" or "magic." I had first come across that idea in my youth, and have since come to understand it better, and to believe it. However, this is still only a kind of map of a more complex greater reality. I have never been able to use the idea practically, and more, cannot fully explain how it could work. This is because the science, the explanation for it in verbal and logical terms, does not exist for me. Thus the book, as much as I like it overall, remains an unpublished problem. In the many attempts to bring that reality to the reader, I still was not able to do so. And so, the major work of rewriting remains. Perhaps I bit off more than I could chew.
The same could be said of an off-the-wall movie we saw this weekend, Frequencies. Here, we have a special school for gifted youth (placed in London) which operates on the principle of natural resonances - that is, that each of us is born with a certain vibration that makes us either more or less in tune with the universe. Those of high resonance always have things go their way; those of low-resonance are always obstructed. With this, in the movie we start with two characters, a high-resonance female and a low-resonance male who somehow still resonate with each other. The male comes to greatly desire the female as they grow; she, on the other hand, can feel no emotions, although she is brilliant and, as understood, gets anything she wants (as they say, "the universe is working hard for her.") As a grown man, the low-frequency guy finds a way to alter one's wave-lengths with the help of a genius son of a composer. Certain words, they find, have vibrational influence. Those words can be found using the algorithms of the genius son.
The man uses them to alter the woman, who wants the one thing the universe is unwilling to give her - emotions. They fall in love. But then the government finds out about the experiment and freaks - use of "magic" words have been used throughout time to enslave people. Those involved now are forbidden to speak outside a quarantined setting. They must find an antidote.
The antidote is music, which brings everyone into an equal resonance - it is the one common human bond that surpasses hierarchy and power. But wait! The genius son believes that even music is mechanical - that, indeed, all life is mechanical and can thus be understood and foreseen as easily as any natural process, such as the fall of an object through space. In the end, he believes he has found the perfect algorithm, and can predict EVERYthing. At the same time, the loving couple discuss this possibility - that the man was only made for the woman's use by the universe - and as such is only, in a way, an object. But they laugh it off - so what? They are in love!
Too many threads were left untied, as can be imagined, precisely because the science was not there for the writers. Still, the questions remaining are haunting. The composer Dad insists to his son that music is not a precise mechanical work - that it has to be played with feeling to be effective, and that this feeling was propelled by free will. But what do the young lovers say of this? And, is the universe primarily mechanical? If so, then why should humans not be, when so much of everything else seems to be? But what of "seems?" Is that mechanical vision of the universe true, or only a shallow map of a much greater potential? We could know if the genius's son's work was tested for us. If he could predict everything, then we are indeed determined. But we never are let to know.
These are questions of real importance, and here's how I see it: that our daily lives, and what we normally believe to be ourselves, are highly mechanical, run by impulses that are effected by the environment in near stimulus-response fashion. That we have different body chemistry, or better, resonances, is true - some will be "luckier" or more adapted to this environment than others, but will still be no more free. On the other hand, the stimulus-response model is highly reductionistic. We are potentially so much more than that. It shows in music, and in the other arts, that we are somehow, nearly inarticulately, something else. LIke the model in my own novel, we can have access to other worlds. And this access is determined by our will - unless, of course, there is some "uber world" where our will is formed. Still, It is a fathomless "onion" of reality, where logically, everything eventually has to be based on free will - on the very act of creation.
And to this we are tied. But the strands are long and tenuous. For the lovers in the movie, they decide to forget the problem and live with their affection for one another. And that's what the writers had to do - and eventually, what I had to do in my own novel: to just leave it to viewer or reader. For one cannot convince anyone of anything that cannot be reasoned by that person, unless he desires it. Understanding, then, is itself an act of magic and an act of will. And where the imagined reality and the will to embrace them come from is problematic and mysterious at the very roots. It is here where the rubber hits the road, and what makes life so much more than a chemical, vibrational, or mechanical action.
The same could be said of an off-the-wall movie we saw this weekend, Frequencies. Here, we have a special school for gifted youth (placed in London) which operates on the principle of natural resonances - that is, that each of us is born with a certain vibration that makes us either more or less in tune with the universe. Those of high resonance always have things go their way; those of low-resonance are always obstructed. With this, in the movie we start with two characters, a high-resonance female and a low-resonance male who somehow still resonate with each other. The male comes to greatly desire the female as they grow; she, on the other hand, can feel no emotions, although she is brilliant and, as understood, gets anything she wants (as they say, "the universe is working hard for her.") As a grown man, the low-frequency guy finds a way to alter one's wave-lengths with the help of a genius son of a composer. Certain words, they find, have vibrational influence. Those words can be found using the algorithms of the genius son.
The man uses them to alter the woman, who wants the one thing the universe is unwilling to give her - emotions. They fall in love. But then the government finds out about the experiment and freaks - use of "magic" words have been used throughout time to enslave people. Those involved now are forbidden to speak outside a quarantined setting. They must find an antidote.
The antidote is music, which brings everyone into an equal resonance - it is the one common human bond that surpasses hierarchy and power. But wait! The genius son believes that even music is mechanical - that, indeed, all life is mechanical and can thus be understood and foreseen as easily as any natural process, such as the fall of an object through space. In the end, he believes he has found the perfect algorithm, and can predict EVERYthing. At the same time, the loving couple discuss this possibility - that the man was only made for the woman's use by the universe - and as such is only, in a way, an object. But they laugh it off - so what? They are in love!
Too many threads were left untied, as can be imagined, precisely because the science was not there for the writers. Still, the questions remaining are haunting. The composer Dad insists to his son that music is not a precise mechanical work - that it has to be played with feeling to be effective, and that this feeling was propelled by free will. But what do the young lovers say of this? And, is the universe primarily mechanical? If so, then why should humans not be, when so much of everything else seems to be? But what of "seems?" Is that mechanical vision of the universe true, or only a shallow map of a much greater potential? We could know if the genius's son's work was tested for us. If he could predict everything, then we are indeed determined. But we never are let to know.
These are questions of real importance, and here's how I see it: that our daily lives, and what we normally believe to be ourselves, are highly mechanical, run by impulses that are effected by the environment in near stimulus-response fashion. That we have different body chemistry, or better, resonances, is true - some will be "luckier" or more adapted to this environment than others, but will still be no more free. On the other hand, the stimulus-response model is highly reductionistic. We are potentially so much more than that. It shows in music, and in the other arts, that we are somehow, nearly inarticulately, something else. LIke the model in my own novel, we can have access to other worlds. And this access is determined by our will - unless, of course, there is some "uber world" where our will is formed. Still, It is a fathomless "onion" of reality, where logically, everything eventually has to be based on free will - on the very act of creation.
And to this we are tied. But the strands are long and tenuous. For the lovers in the movie, they decide to forget the problem and live with their affection for one another. And that's what the writers had to do - and eventually, what I had to do in my own novel: to just leave it to viewer or reader. For one cannot convince anyone of anything that cannot be reasoned by that person, unless he desires it. Understanding, then, is itself an act of magic and an act of will. And where the imagined reality and the will to embrace them come from is problematic and mysterious at the very roots. It is here where the rubber hits the road, and what makes life so much more than a chemical, vibrational, or mechanical action.
RSS Feed