Mythopoetics

       To understand and give meaning is to limit infinity. Whether in a model of physics or in an old myth, we limit reality (whatever it is) and only then claim to understand it. To understand is to verbalize, to make Logos, speech, and communication. And to do so, our limitation needs some rules and procedures. That apparent taming of the indomitable Universe is its conversion into a game. Kant said that we understand the universe insofar as we consider it the creation of an unknown creator. This amounts to saying that we understand the universe insofar as we consider it a work of art, or what is equivalent, we understand the universe when we see it as a game. Every explanation has to be made from outside of the explained system if it aspires to more than being mere gibberish. However, this simplistic distinction must be clarified: the game we are talking about, the Cosmic Game, is not a dual-action, there is not a game and a non-game (there is nothi...

The concept of mimesis allows us to access the deepest nature of music, especially when we compose it with the concept of "Will." I am going to approach this concept from the point of view of Schopenhauer, as the best and probably the first Western representative of Advaita Vedanta, the knowledge of non-duality. Musical mimesis occupies a key place in Schopenhauer's philosophical system. From the analogy of music with the other arts - says Schopenhauer - we can infer that music must be in relation to the world as the representation to the thing represented 1 . Its imitative reference to the world must be very deep, infinitely true, and really surprising, because it is instantly understood by the whole world, and presents a certain infallibility by the fact that its form can be reduced to fairly definite rules expressible in numbers, out of which cannot move away without ceasing to be completely music 2 . In this passage our attention is first drawn to t...