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Negative Space
Apr. 23rd, 2008 10:56 amI'm reading a book called In War Times by Kathleen Ann Goonan. It links be-bop to science, especially nuclear physics, and, while I'm uncertain about the science, the lady is definitely sound on the jazz.
As happens with her books, I've had a little internal revelation which may be blatantly obvious to everyone else, but seemed new to me. Be-bop is aural negative space.
This means something to me from the funeral of my step-grandmother when I was in high school. My uncle Jim, who's a professor of mathematics and specialized in number theory, couldn't understand why Ora had embroidered so many weird modernist book marks. I looked at the bookmarks and read the phrases that were on them. The one I remember is "Jesus Saves."
Jim couldn't read the negative space. His wife could read the phrases when they were pointed out to her as could my sister. I don't remember Dad's reaction, but Mom had also read them from the beginning and, like me, had a hard time understanding how anyone saw anything else.
The faces in the vase image that is used so often has always puzzled me. I see both. I always have seen both and I pretty much see them both at the same time. I know some people say they flip between one and the other, but, while I can force myself to see one or the other exclusively, I either don't or I cycle so quickly that my mind doesn't register it.
What about the rest of you? Is this one of the oddities of my bifurcated brain (one ear hears high, the other low -- one eye sees distance, the other reads)?
As happens with her books, I've had a little internal revelation which may be blatantly obvious to everyone else, but seemed new to me. Be-bop is aural negative space.
This means something to me from the funeral of my step-grandmother when I was in high school. My uncle Jim, who's a professor of mathematics and specialized in number theory, couldn't understand why Ora had embroidered so many weird modernist book marks. I looked at the bookmarks and read the phrases that were on them. The one I remember is "Jesus Saves."
Jim couldn't read the negative space. His wife could read the phrases when they were pointed out to her as could my sister. I don't remember Dad's reaction, but Mom had also read them from the beginning and, like me, had a hard time understanding how anyone saw anything else.
The faces in the vase image that is used so often has always puzzled me. I see both. I always have seen both and I pretty much see them both at the same time. I know some people say they flip between one and the other, but, while I can force myself to see one or the other exclusively, I either don't or I cycle so quickly that my mind doesn't register it.
What about the rest of you? Is this one of the oddities of my bifurcated brain (one ear hears high, the other low -- one eye sees distance, the other reads)?
