Your thoughts would be: I want to feel the iron’s heat, I want to feel the pain of the iron, and that will be the truth. When the iron meets your cheek, you will feel a sense of elation, because your desire for pain was met. Rationally, you’re happy because it wasn’t the bullet.
This sounded extremely odd to me, until I reread it and realized that I’d already come close to using it. I did West Side Story my junior year. The whole score to the show is structured around the half-octave (also called the tritone, or the Devil’s Interval—basically the most dissonant interval in all of music). There’d be roaring finishes to songs where we’d be on these incredibly dissonant intervals, and the only way I could find to keep my voice from rounding to the nearest pleasant interval—a major fourth or fifth—was to push myself into a state of sheer bloodymindedness, where I wanted the dissonance, loved it, wanted to put as much of it into the world as I could, absolutely gloried in the ugliness of those notes together.
It was a lot of fun, and I was on pitch, so I can’t help but wonder if the same would work in the iron/bullet scenario. I also can’t help but wonder whether my “find your happy place” method would stand a chance.
I also can’t help but wonder whether my “find your happy place” method would stand a chance.
Definitely, it would be effective. But does handling reality by escaping it count as self-deception? (assuming here we wish to avoid self-deception, if possible)
I think not necessarily. I can think of one set of examples where it seems more truthful to ‘find the happy place’, and this example set suggests some criteria for measuring the integrity of escaping. However, I have a tendency to build too much from the first example I think of, and would like to hear other thoughts on this.
By the way: I loved your vivid description of embracing dissonance in music. I wonder if this is also how/why the audience enjoys the piece.
This sounded extremely odd to me, until I reread it and realized that I’d already come close to using it. I did West Side Story my junior year. The whole score to the show is structured around the half-octave (also called the tritone, or the Devil’s Interval—basically the most dissonant interval in all of music). There’d be roaring finishes to songs where we’d be on these incredibly dissonant intervals, and the only way I could find to keep my voice from rounding to the nearest pleasant interval—a major fourth or fifth—was to push myself into a state of sheer bloodymindedness, where I wanted the dissonance, loved it, wanted to put as much of it into the world as I could, absolutely gloried in the ugliness of those notes together.
It was a lot of fun, and I was on pitch, so I can’t help but wonder if the same would work in the iron/bullet scenario. I also can’t help but wonder whether my “find your happy place” method would stand a chance.
Definitely, it would be effective. But does handling reality by escaping it count as self-deception? (assuming here we wish to avoid self-deception, if possible)
I think not necessarily. I can think of one set of examples where it seems more truthful to ‘find the happy place’, and this example set suggests some criteria for measuring the integrity of escaping. However, I have a tendency to build too much from the first example I think of, and would like to hear other thoughts on this.
By the way: I loved your vivid description of embracing dissonance in music. I wonder if this is also how/why the audience enjoys the piece.