Surprise in the Music of Life
The beauty of life may come from a balance of order and chaos. Last week I talked about predictive coding, which essentially frames our brains as prediction machines – always guessing at reality. When that guess is wrong, we sense chaos. When that guess is right, we sense order. The Taoist approach is to understand how these two sides of the same coin play amongst each other and find your balanced place within it. The timeless dance of order against chaos and structure against entropy appears so deeply rooted in life on earth that some researchers have begun to use it as life’s very definition (but more on that in a future post). Before we get too deep, let’s explore the balance of order and chaos in music.
Music is a simplified collection of auditory information which archetypally represents the poetic trajectories of life. While the wavelets in your brain rise and fall in arcs of heroic strivings and failures, you are left trying to track them down in the flimsy attempt to maintain sense of your own life. The characters you meet, the challenges you take on, and the losses you process all overlap in unscheduled dissonance. Occasionally, each wave appears to ride together in a perfect harmony of notes, drums, and tones that tells you “Yes, you’re on your way”. This delicious flavor is often only enjoyed for a moment before dismantling again into syncopations of outrageous conflict. This is life, and this is music.
Different people have different preferences for the level of chaos in their lives, and likewise the level of chaos in their music. I’m a fan of Jacob Collier (a huge fan – go check him out to witness a modern genius. Imagine if Mozart got a hold of modern music production software – that’s Jacob Collier). Jacob’s music is often felt (including by me) as a chaotic confusion of overwhelming complexity to the point of absolute distaste. However, he also finds moments within that chaos of joyful melodies where superposition finally clicks for each of the countless wandering arcs. This produces the most beautiful expression of high energy stillness, relief in a world of always moving parts. I recommend listening to his song Home Is as a simplified example of his dance with dissonance and resonance.
While I love him, I don’t have the energy to listen to Jacob Collier in a casual setting. For that I might choose something more repetitive to throw on in the background. More simplified and predictable genres leave me with space and energy for adding my own conversation within it. The point is that we all find our balance between order and chaos in each moment of our life, and significant mental resources must be committed to reconciling life’s surprises. In music, this is something we can all find familiarity in, but some researchers have taken it deeper.
In 2018, a research study in London measured brain activity of jazz performers as well as an audience of listeners. After performing an improvisation and a scripted piece, they found that entropy of brain activity was higher in the improvised condition. This was true for both performers and audience members. “Entropy” was measured using Lempel-Ziv Complexity, a compression algorithm which measures how repetitive the signal is. This means the signal was less predictable, more surprising, and therefore more chaotic during improvisational listening and performing.
Without knowing which was which (or even that there would be an improv vs scripted performance), the audience reported higher enjoyment and emotional content from the improvisation. Perhaps the scripted music was too predictable, leaving the audience bored relative to the stimulation of failed predictions. These findings held up even in conditions where the audience could not see the performers, highlighting the connection to the balance of chaos and order in the music itself.
At a recent conference in Boston, I was chatting with Dr. David Rosen, a researcher from John’s Hopkins University studying the relationship between psychedelics and musical flow. In a recent publication studying the brain during improvisational jazz performances, he found that flow is associated with greater left-hemisphere activity and reduced frontal and default-mode activity. Simplified, this means the control networks of the brain had reduced activity, allowing for focused attention without “top-down” effort.
Both of these examples found that the tilt towards chaos – away from control – was related to better musical performance. When a jazz musician is in flow, they are perhaps relaxing their predictions at just the right amount, finding for themselves the balance of order and chaos that produces lively music. For some of us, and in some professions, it’s the increase in structure which may be required to produce flow. While coding the other day, found myself in an incredible state of concentration and flow. This followed about an hour of undisciplined confusion and mobile device distractions where I slowly forced myself to focus on the task at hand. I eventually pushed myself through the gate of distraction, initially exerting control, after which I was able to experience hours of productive work which felt like only a few minutes.
While everyone is in a different place, and every moment is a different moment, I encourage the acknowledgement of this perspective of chaos and order. Ask yourself which it is that may be out of balance, and don’t be afraid to simplify life, finding comfort in prediction, nor be afraid of leaving the comforts which you feel anxiously bound to. We can only find our way if we listen, so do your best to enjoy the music.
With Love,
Michael
