Metadifference: Truth

If you tell the truth it’s going to be funny.
Richard Pryor

One of the more subtle aspects of Macroinformation manifests when sameness, the opposite of difference at the data level, registers as difference at meta-levels. Information is significant difference; macroinformation emerges from interactions among different differences, the more so as the different differences are mutually orthogonal.

I’ve long illustrated this point, long before coining the term macroinformation, with reference to the comic effect of character acting. When we see certain characteristics distilled to perfection we respond to the memesis as humor. Richard Nixon being perfectly himself was comic. A skilled actor imitating Richard Nixon being himself was comic. In the first case identity manifests as metadifference; in the second case the metadifference is more apparent. Sir Anthony Hopkins is not Richard Nixon, neither is the nightclub entertainer. But Nixon’s own behavior sparked metadifferences, his behavior being so complex, so conspicuously saturated with anomaly, discrepancy, double-standards, hypocrisy ...

But that’s just one instance. With an actor playing a pickpocket, acting it just right, the perfection stands out: metadifference.

When liars -- read that as all of us -- tell the truth, it’s funny. When a critic has a perception that leaves his normal medicrity in the dust, it’s funny. When an historian with an obvious agenda is momentarily objective, it’s funny. And humor, always, is proof that macroinformation is present.

Richard Pryor had it exactly right: "If you tell the truth it’s going to be funny."

For years now I’ve kept a folder of Examples of Macroinformation, the folder subdivided into sometimes subdivided categories: poetry, movies, painting ... A parallel attempt to organize illustrations of macroinformation by type -- irony, anomaly, timing, double-binds ... never got done well. I try again though with my new folder Meta, which is now beginning to illustrate metadifferences by type.

Of course many an instance of macroinformation embodies several types simultaneously. A play may employ literature, both prose and verse, music, painting, dance ... acting ... A joke may employ timing and discrepancy and irony ... And I don’t pretend that my own awareness of types is yet efficiently streamlined ... But I do intend to clone this and other similar new illustrations into the Meta folder.

Boobs

Mi.org has employed Captain Renault's corrupt hypocrisy in the movie Casablanca as a touchstone for metadifference which manifests as the macroinformation called "irony" in drama: what we hear on the soundtrack doesn't match what we see on the screen. It of course is one of an endless assortment of instances. Another just marched into my head.

George Carlin had a TV sitcom which took place in a bar. George is a regular. Also regular is a plastic surgeon. George, his father, his cronies, are salt-of-the-earth blue collar guys. The plastic surgeon is held in low esteem because he treats vanities, not diseases.

The plastic surgeon decides he's going to do something about his own image and exits the bar with missionary fervor. He returns with a homeless woman and announces what he'll do for this sorry example of fellow humanity. "Could I have a sandwich?" she asks. The plastic surgeon stands the object of his charity before the group. She's malnourished, she's dirty. She certainly needs some soup to go with the sandwich, a bath, fumigation ... clean, warm lodgings, a solid week's sleep ... Sculpting his imagined improvements with his hands around the sad female form, the surgeon announces his plans: he's going to pump her bust out to here, he's going to puff her bottom out the there, he'll liposuck cellulite from her thighs ... the tab strictly on him.

Information is triggered by difference. Metainformation arises from different differences. Macroinformation emerges where the metadifferences cross some threshold of complexity.

This doctor's sense of human service is as metadifferent from familiar ideals as Captain Renault's pocketing Rick's cash as he closes down Rick's casino is metadifferent from minimal standards for society working.

Simultaneously, if WWII was an example of civilization going rapidly to hell in a hand basket, and absurdity is still accelerating decades later in Carlin's sitcom, how come the world is still such a funny place?

Metadifference in Music

We’re all born to speak. Only severe defects, severe accidents, stop us.
Singing is natural, but not quite all of us take to it. Culture can see that few of us can afford to practice it.
Me, I’d rather belong to a tribe that sang indifferently, but together, than have perpetual seats at the concert hall. (And these days Id’ rather play Bach on my own keyboard, however poorly I perform, than listen to my old collection of Bach played by Helmut Walcha, Wanda Landowska, Richter ...)

When we speak our vocal chords vibrate. When any string vibrates, a tone, a complex tone, variable tones, are generated. As Pythagoras showed, a vibrating string divides along its length into sub-vibrations, producing sub-frequencies: overtones. Complex sound.

With a matched set of strings, as on a lute, as on a piano, the complex tones, selected played, produce complexities that stimulate us pleasurably but that are not so complex as to be beyond comprehension.

We "all" speak, fewer of us sing, fewer still pluck, blow, or beat instruments. But when competent pluckers, blowers, strikers ... singers get together, wow.

Macroinformational potential emanates with such vibrations, whether from one vocal chord or a full orchestra with chorus.

My efforts thus far to talk about music as macroinformation at Macroinformation.org have not developed satisfactorily. When I get an idea it thus far hasn’t developed as clearly or as far as my discussions of jokes, movies, drama ... poetry .. theology or politics. Now I try again:

Macroinformation Generated from Metadifference

Strike middle C on a keyboard. The single note is complex. (Delving the complexity must follow, but not in an introduction.) All the other notes, including notes not in Western music, are implicit in it; some aggressively implicit: the G, for example. Strike the C and the G keys more or less together. The result is more complex, the metadifferences more urgent. The "single" sound of a chord, even only two notes, has more macroinformational potential than the single sound of the C alone.

Play a standard C chord: C, E, G. Music theory tells us that the E is a major third above the C. The G however, already established as a perfect fifth above the C, is a minor third above the E. ! Minor as well as major is implicit in the simplest triad.
(If all notes are implicit in one note, are all chords implicit in one simple triad?) (Are all words implicit in one word? I don’t think so; but I see that all chords are implicit from a single triad, from a single two note chord.)

Had I been given standard music lessons, a teacher would have shown me a C chord: middle C, next E up, next G up. At some point the teacher would have shown me the first inversion of the C chord: E, then G, then C. Around then I would also have been shown the second inversion: G, then C, then E. Before I could play at all well I’d have to be able to play inversions of C all the way up and down the keyboard: with some sureness of hand, and some velocity. Long before that I would have been shown the F chord and the G7: and D major, G major, etc. And C7, and C major 7, and so forth -- diminished, augmented, suspended ... -- all of them invertible.
As it is I’ve picked much of this up from the REAL Book (some of the charts sketched from recordings (and live performances) by friends of mine: though they were my friends long before I ever had an actual copy of the REAL Book or tried a bit at playing myself). Benny Golson’s Killer Joe commences with measures which rock back and forth between the 7 chord of the Root and the 7 chord of the Root’s 7, the rocking quickening to within the measures as the form progresses. Joe Zawinul’s Mercy, Mercy, Mercy commences with measures which rock back and forth, slightly syncopated, between the Root 7 and the 7 of the perfect IV of the Root. As with the Golson piece, the measures increasingly pick up something of the companion chord. In both cases other complexities are soon introduced, but for the moment I focus just on the openings.

The Golson example rocks modally, the Zawinul example rocks right in the heart of standard Western harmony. Modes are very old, but standard harmony is more familiar: or was until Miles Davis.
Both examples start with seventh chords: typical jazz. My source, the Bb REAL Book, is already transposed: D7, C7 (not D, C!) for the Golson tune; C7, F7 for the Zawinul.

When starting, and ending, with seventh chords, what is the Root? Complex, complex, complex. Jazz typically plunges us into the middle of the sea: where some of us are comfortable.
However complex, this is not unreachable by analysis.

Now: a seventh chord, C7, for example, un-inverted, plays: C, E, G, Bb. That is: base note, major third, minor third, minor third.
A standard major triad sounds (ahem) complete to standard Western ears. A seventh chord, in context of nothing, implies something else. A C7 implies F major. Zawinul follows C7 with F7: implying Bb major! (And Bb is the 7 of C minor: and itself implies F major, which implies C7!) In other words jazz of this sort plunges us straight into the middle of ... we don’t know what! (Some people like being at sea; many don’t. But anyone will be stimulated by these complexities.)

Analyzing the metadifferences involved in imbalances subverting balances may prove to be as complex as looking at a pound of lard and talking hyperstring theory, but I hope you see: given enough scut work, it could be done. And should be done: at least once: just to show that it can be.

I’m not going far into the mine here. I’m showing that there is a mine: very deep.

Meantime, imagine for yourself, with just another tiny push from me, how many directions we could go from here: Rhythm complexities: four against one, three against one, two against one, two against three ... one against three, four ... Imbalances subverting balances, all generated from metadifference ... initially, from difference.

PS My examples of macroinformation thus far have primarily involved verbiage. Sure: I’m a speaker, a writer ... was involved in English. But it was music that ravished me before I spent much time as a kid reading Soroyan, or Dickens, or Keats. Ah, but then the culture also encouraged me to talk (and write) about Dickens, Keats ..., and smacked me if I tried to talk about Louie, Kid Ory, Count Basie, Duke Ellington. So: I grew up with my literature more stroked than smacked, my music more smacked than stroked. I was an adult before I acquired -- by myself