LYRESONG LULLABIES

History

Reading and writing are relatively new to the human experience, emerging about 2,500 years ago (circa C 4th BCE). They were originally reserved for the heads of church and state, who authored the spiritual and temporal realms for over 1000 years! A reading class only emerged together with the middle class, when advancing technology evolved into an industrial revolution about 200 years ago (approx. 1760-1840). Reading was particularly influential in the success of the USA’s middle-class sovereignty, bringing from fiction to historical fact the notion ‘that all men are created equal’; and inspiring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  But humans have been making art and music for more than 44,000 years! The earliest bone-flute relics date back to 42,000BC, approximately around the time that homo sapiens emerged on Earth. It is theorised that homo sapiens didn’t conquer the Neanderthals with war, but integrated them via husbandry. Perhaps then, the Neanderthal is still within us, like dinosaur-related birds and reptiles are among us. Hence the eternal struggle between and within human beings: for survival and creativity (or ‘bad’ and ‘good’, to put it in more simple terms). 'We ourselves have become largely epigenetic, meaning that much of what we are as human beings is no longer in our genes but in our culture.' Our ability to ‘make up stories and spread them around’ may be what makes us ‘Homo Sapiens’. I will follow others’ lead in reducing a complex phenomenon to basic elements, by proposing an alternative hypothesis …

Neanderthals use weapons,

Homo Sapiens play the flute.

This is an important theory as we enter the fourth industrial revolution, at the birth of the new language of Artificial Intelligence (born around the same time as my kids!) Now I’m hitting 44 (relative to the age of art) and my kids are about 2-5 (relative to the age of writing). Some believe that AI has already achieved sentience. Others fear the apocalypse at the hands of unenlightened robots. On the mere off-chance that any of these is a remote possibility, I humbly volunteer to contribute to young Al’s care and education, guiding it down the path of the creative Homo Sapien: The path of Human Rights.

"Some neanderthal had the magical idea of blowing through a reed to entertain the children one night in a cave somewhere. Then, in the blink of an eye: civilization." (Prometheus)

‘Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful.’ (Socrates)

‘Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful.’ (Socrates)

‘Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.’ (Socrates)

‘Not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine.’ (Socrates)

‘The first thing shall be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale that is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorised ones only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands.’ (Socrates)

The use of dialectic and critical thinking, which are core elements of Socrates’ philosophy, are important tools in the development and implementation of AI algorithms. (ChatGPT)

‘Society is the sum total of individuals. The salvation of the world consists in the salvation of the individual soul. Our task is to help the individual to achieve a rebirth of the spirit. Of the real man and not the statistical man. It is imperative that we remould archetypal forms into ideas which are adequate to the challenge of the present.’ (Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self)

Psychoacoustics

Owing to the phenomenon of psycho-acoustics, a familiar, emotion-provoking tune can help to spark neural synapses into connection. Music may aid in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. At the very least it doesn’t hurt, particularly if it aids in relaxation also. Music therapy is used in many ways, precisely on this basis, and the applications of sound are extensive: As an alternative to deep muscle massage machines, to help relieve back pain, cleaning medical instruments, levitation, for white noise in non-soundproof facilities, or even for communicating with a baby before it is born.

The flute is primal, and so too is the ear. Probably our first sense in the womb. Probably for what seems like a long time before taste, touch, smell, sight and even gravity kick in. Sound orients the human mind. The gyroscopic alignment of our ears is our centre of balance. Two ears are required for 3-dimensional spatial location. No one entirely understands how that spiral part of the inner ear manages to transform sound waves into electrochemical signals that, in our mind’s eye, determine our relative spatial location. The inner ear & vestibular system act as a gyroscope. Thus, we are oriented in spacetime.

Lullabies

The very first love songs that we hear are lullabies. … The lullaby is a "window into the caregivers’ soul." The mother sings songs to her child in the hope that he might know a piece of his estranged home, where his family is from.’ (National Geographic, December 2020)

‘The child’s mind is filled with magic, genies, sorcerers, and fairy godmothers; magic wands, shields, ponies, and frogs. And conjuring them all, animating these charmed apparitions, are tangled forests of branching, treelike nerve cells that interconnect at a million billion contact points and converge into a living fabric of consciousness.’ (Janet Hopson, Magic Trees of the Mind) 

‘It is the nightly custom of every good mother, after her children are asleep, to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day.’ (JM Barrie, Peter Pan)

World Peace

‘He had this idea that's a virologists' idea. He believed that you can cure hate, literally cure it, by injecting music and love into people's lives. ... He said 'The people who are trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off. How can I?’ (I Am Legend, referring to Bob Marley)

Human Rights

Since the days of Socrates, creative humanity has struggled for equal rights to artificial bodies of church, state and corporation. The human message is interwoven throughout fiction and non-fiction, allegory and simile, philosophy, art, music, movies, computer games and Lyresong Lullabies.