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Song of the Day: Dream - John Cage

Quote of the Day: "How can you tell if your own logic is 'peculiar' or not, given that you have only your own logic to judge itself?" --Douglas R. Hofstadter, from Godel, Escher, Bach

Thought of the Day:

My thoughts these last couple of days have been with the people of Santa Barbara, CA as the wildfires continue to blaze. Fortunately there have been no deaths but some firefighters have been injured and there has been substantial loss of property. May the blaze be contained soon with minimal further damage.

Of late have been continuing reading Godel, Escher and Bach, and am on the final chapter. This has been an extremely rewarding, though quite challenging, read. The quote of the day is a really interesting one from Hofstadter. Love this loop of questioning. The Song of the Day is from John Cage, whose work is frequently mentioned also in the book. The pic at the top is from Magritte, who challenges viewers of his works to question the reality of representations or symbols. In this piece he highlights that the reality seen through the window is represented on the painting, and the viewer takes another step back to see that this representation is itself a painting on a canvas. Which is itself also a further two-dimensional reality-representing symbol, the one the viewer is witnessing. Take it back a step further by interpreting the whole visual concept a la the philosophy of Descartes . . . Here is a quote from Magritte on this work:

"I placed in front of a window, seen from a room, a painting representing exactly that part of the landscape which was hidden from view by the painting. Therefore, the tree represented in the painting hid from view the tree situated behind it, outside the room. It existed for the spectator, as it were, simultaneously in his mind, as both inside the room in the painting, and outside in the real landscape. Which is how we see the world: we see it as being outside ourselves even though it is only a mental representation of it that we experience inside ourselves."