2023.10.17 - 09:32
A mentor described “Cognitive Dissonance” to me as the feeling our brains get when something in our environment doesn’t fit in with our model of how the world usually operates. In other words, this is an opportunity to learn something.
Putting difficult information in front of you in order to become more capable is mostly done (I would guess) with things like literature or math, but I don’t suspect people view listening to music in the same way. It’s often viewed as something to be done for relaxation and something unoffensive and predictable-ish is looked for.
As a musician, this is much less normal and then only way to become a better musician is to push past what you currently know and willing seek out that which doesn’t make sense to you. (I’d argue that this has benefits past being a better musician, but also a more empathetic human and able to understand greater complexities, but that’s a different article.)
This is an example that I think is quite perfect and the instructions go as follows:
What this reminds me of is looking at a math equation and thinking “this is an absolute mess” until you look at it long enough and everything fits into place and specifically, it’s odd to you that it didn’t make sense in the first place.
For me, when I see a pattern like this and make sense of it, I can’t stop raving about it it’s so exciting. That one simple pattern being adjusted in simple simple ways created such a complex piece of work (at least, it appears as so). To me, this is the joy of cognitive dissonance; where you are hit with tension, but when the release hits….it’s a beautiful thing.
(Post note for nerds, this band is way into Gödel, Escher, Bach according to their Wikipedia)