Christian is a Philosopher that comes from Belgium. What identifies him the most and above all is simplicity, for everything is better with “vanilla flavour.” Perhaps, for this reason, his intellectual passion is criticism and irony, in the sense of trying to reveal what “hides behind the mask,” and give birth to the true. For him, ignorance and knowledge never “cross paths.” What he likes the most in his leisure time, is to go for a walk with his wife.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Mozart or Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was a prolific composer of music. You love him, or the performances of the music. You mentioned Die Zauberflöte or “The Magic Flute.” Any further commentary on it?
Christian Sorenson: In my opinion, it is a musical composition loaded with “esoteric symbolism,” about which much can be speculated, but can hardly be deciphered.
Jacobsen: Now, there was some Freemasonic influence on the music. Is there any freemasonry background for you? I cannot shake the hand to be sure with the peculiar handshakes.
Sorenson: Depends on who asks…
Jacobsen: Are there any particularly trashy Mozart pieces? He couldn’t have made everything perfect with the music.
Sorenson: I estimate Mozart “did nothing perfect,” and in that sense it is necessary to distinguish between “mediocrity and perfection,” since “not being mediocre,” does not means unconditionally “something less perfect.” In relation to “Requiem,” which is its last composition, and to “Allegro Molto,” I feel there’s “something lacking.” Regarding the former, the reason was evident since it was left unfinished due to his death, but in relation to the last one, in my opinion there’s “a talent lack,” because both, the “musical notes wealth,” and “musical harmony,” are not evident as well as in the rest of the body of its musical work.
Jacobsen: Love and romance go hand-in-hand with music. We’re an auditory species for many emotions. Mozart, in fact, had trouble finding himself a partner, even Constanze was clumsily courted. As Seinfeld would say, “What’s the deal?” Why did he suck at this? It is one of those baffling aspects of highly intelligent people, even geniuses. There can be an attainment of the height of creative productions and the devilish failures in amour. It is as if the gods made a Faustian bargain with most of the great geniuses of ye olde worlde order. I could list a long scroll of names who admit to utter failures in romance while being amongst the most highly intelligent.
Sorenson: Indeed, “love and romanticism” go hand in hand with music, since these “are emotions,” and this last can “ignite and feed” them. Nevertheless, I believe that “romanticism and love” usually “don’t go hand in hand,” as occurred to Mozart and generally happens to geniuses, due to the fact that many times, though they are people “in love with love,” they instead “approach awkwardly” towards “the beloved” one, perhaps because they lack emotional and social skills, and therefore “fail in their attempt.” From my point of view, “romanticism is risky” in reason that “exacerbates love desire,” and this last brings as consequence the “evidence sign” of “love object non-existence.” If I could summarize it in one simple sentence, I would say that “to find love you better not talk about it.”
Jacobsen: Mozart’s music, it is almost a synesthetic experience. Why?
Sorenson: Because Mozart was a genius, and as geniuses we are able “to experience synesthetic experience,” and to produce in others that kind “of experiences,” since “our perceptions” are not always “fixed,” regarding to “perceptual organs” and to “supposed sensible objects” related to these.
Jacobsen: If we take music, live classical music, as a form of art, let’s say of Mozart, it’s a mix of three things. One of them is sound in minute ways in the manipulation of waves in air. Another is the visual presentation of the community of experts who play instruments – almost miraculous a primate species has been adapted to this purpose for the species enjoyment qua species enjoyment. A last is the, if close enough to the stage, the second acoustic resonance; the powerful resonance from the reverberations of the instruments on one’s body – truly remarkable. It is visual. It is auditory, primary and secondary forms. It is triggering for emotions. Emotions triggering certain memories, as keys unlocking feelings for emoting’s sake or for bringing forth, calling forward, buried moments of awareness. What are some other elements of the musical experience? How do the live performance and the recorded experience differ from one another?
Sorenson: The difference between both kinds of music, is similar to what occurs “when sucking a candy with or without its paper,” due to the way of approaching to it, and though it’s the same object, it leads to sensations that rather “oppose each other.” By listening to live music, what is lived is an “experience of real experience,” while doing it with recorded one, what arrives is the “experience of an inexistent experience.” In consequence, strictly speaking within the last “nothing is there” and our conscience is aware of it, meanwhile the former unlike this, possesses the “unpredictable and unexpected,” through which “uncertainty” of outcome is faced, in order to “increase emotionality” and to “trigger a pleasure chain,” associated with the “sensible experience” of “feeling nothingness.”
Jacobsen: For the unmeasurably gifted, such as yourself, what is the importance of intense emotionality to balance out the intense cognitive life?
Sorenson: “Emotional intensity” is an “intrinsic constitutive condition,” of being an “unmeasurable genius,” linked to the fact of possessing a very low “stimulus threshold” that leads in turn to be “hyperreactive” and “emotionally susceptible.” Therefore, this last “is necessary” as part of our life, but it “is not enough,” in itself for allowing us to achieve an adequate personal balance. Indeed, the latter will depend on the consequence fundamentally on the “quality and connotation” that “intensity within emotion” and “nature of emotions” adopt in order to achieve a “harmonic” and “stable balance.” Anyhow, we “are not balanced” precisely because everything “is balanced.”
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Christian.
Sorenson: Thanks to you, and I hope I have “silenced the noise of the stones carried by the river.”
Image Credit: Christian Sorenson.