We and the Universe Are Made of Millions of Tiny Little Oscillations All Networked Together

i got this email from my good friend Alex the other day and we had some good correspondence (Alex is currently researching audio/music cognition in Holland - and yes, we do call each other baby):

“hey baby,

i’m reading this crazy neuroscience book right now, which is all about how rhythmic and oscillatory patterns of activity in the brain serve as the main organizing patterns for cognition. the idea being that the earliest organisms with nervous systems (sponges) didn’t even have any senses, just simple neural loops that generated rhythmic activity. through the course of evolution, these simple mechanisms evolved to serve more complex functions, but the same basic oscillatory circuit
was still the basis.

you are a giant set of fancy oscillators!”

To which I responded:

“I had a feeling about that. I’ve also thought that these neurobiological oscillators are in tune with larger cosmic frequencies and cycles of events that happen over time. Before I read anything about Terrence McKenna or Daniel Pinchbeck’s book, I had a sense of this happening - timewave zero:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

A lot of it seemed to come to ahead right around 9/11. My thoughts and cognitions of the world/life and the universe started to ‘peak’ right around my junior year in college too (2002). I think it was simply just me resonating with the universe.

Humans might just be a giant patch of white noise, but I think that there are choruses, in tune, that sometimes emerge from the fabric of our existence - like little temporary autonomous zones ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone )

manadalas I think get at this. ‘ohm’ - the sound of the universe gets at this. and i think this communication happening between us is simply an action potential - a beautiful microcosm of what happens everyday, every moment, visible and not.”

He then wrote back:

“yes exactly, the ohm is a sort of feedback loop! your thoughts entrain themselves to the sound as you begin to relax, and the actual EEG signal you record from someone meditating or toning shows much more synchronous oscillatory activity than that of someone who is in a ‘normal’ alert state.

hehe i also recently ended up on the ‘technological singularity’ wiki page recently… did you send me something or did my own weird internet surfing take me there?

actually, we aren’t white noise, we’re pink noise (i.e. scale-free, fractal noise)! the idea is that out of this type of noise, spontaneous order (choruses/harmonies/resonance) can emerge!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_noise

i wanna make music with cool VJ imagery that gets at these concepts! gotta go start filming old school oscillator displays…”

I love him.