Tumbolia

I was listening to the Today programme .. er … Today. Someone – probably the Markets’ guest for the financial news – was asked a question which had a definite answer – Yes or No – and as is common for interviewees since I started watching current affairs, his immediate reply was completely unconnected to the question asked. Eventually, he came out with a few sentences of complexity which probably did give an answer in a way, not that I was able or could be bothered to try and understand it. The question could have had a proper reply, simply stated and understandable to everybody.

This made me think about how this was like an un-resolved piece of music, ending with a key unconnected to that with which it started. There is a chapter in Godel, Escher, Bach which relates a tale of Achilles and the Tortoise (not Zeno’s by the way) where they switch from situation to situation via various levels. The first situation ends in a cliff-hanger which I think was them hanging out of a helicopter about to fall to the ground. Although they went deeper into the levels of the tale, each situation was resolved in a sort of push and pop. All except the first situation. There was no return to this first situation leaving a deep sense of unease about the failed resolution. There is a point and connection to the story of the interviewee above. It struck me that very often the person being asked a question thinks that their complex reply is the right answer. It may actually answer the question but via many levels each resolved correctly after the pop and push. If you keep with it, the final resolution can be satisfying, but only as long as you have kept up with the various levels of the argument. He trouble is, the general listener these days is not up to this maintenance of interest in replies to questions. They want a piece of music in a single key with a nice chord structure and a definite resolution. They have a right to expect it. This desire for complexity is often a way of keeping up appearances. ‘They are paying me for being an expert so I must sound like one’. However, this has a reverse in that so many times you see people on news programmes billed as experts or analysts in some particular discipline who simply talk common sense. They have given the public exactly what I said they desire above. The expert will tell them something they already know which either keeps the viewer/listener happy that someone is in control or that they themselves have more insight into the issue than the average person because they already knew what the expert has said.

Having argued all this, you may well be thinking about why these posts are never resolved. The problem here is that I am doing the literary equivalent of noodling about on the piano, playing rubbish to see if it sounds good, a bit like the continuous tapes running while the group James recorded one of their albums. When the disk was released, the tapes were edited to create random new pieces (this was of course the idea of Brian Eno). The result was a complete second album called Wah Wah which was excellent. This blog is like the edited tapes.

I had another thought along the lines of resolution which was triggered by the mention of Ben Elton returning to Stand-up in the article I pointed you to yesterday. One of his BBC show routines started being about transport and specifically mentioned the M25 and how there was a proposal to build an extra lane. He then diverged via various things as is standard and eventually started talking about the overflowing bin-bags in the kitchens of student flats. This rang true with me and I was nodding sagely between the chuckles when he talked about the extra bag down by the side of the bin to take the overflow. This extra bag always ends up full as well which is why putting an extra lane on the M25 is no solution at all. Resolution – nice satisfying chord.