Thanks Harry, That was a very generous portion. Let me suggest that rhythm has something to do with it and that the rhythms of life are environmental, come from the earth. Here is a little something about that. I hope you enjoy that as much as I did yours. Afterwards we can talk about how land relates to the value and intentionality of Music and the Arts.
REH THE DANCE OF LIFE Chapter 9 of the book The Dance of Life by Edward T. Hall It can now be said with assurance that individuals are dominated in their behavior by complex hierarchies of interlocking rhythms. Furthermore, these same interlocking rhythms are comparable to fundamental themes in a symphonic score, a keystone in the interpersonal processes between mates, co-workers, and organizations of all types on the interpersonal level within as well as across cultural boundaries. I am convinced that it will ultimately be proved that almost every facet of human behavior is involved in the rhythmic process. Since our topic is quite new, it is not surprising to discover that, unlike astronomers studying the universe or scientists searching for a cure for cancer, there are very few people involved in the study of rhythm.l Rhythm is, of course, the very essence of time, since equal intervals of time define a sequence of events as rhythmic. In the sense that rhythm is used here, it includes much more than the productions of musicians and dancers, al- though they are part of this process too. First, let us begin by thinking small. Almost thirty years ago, when I seriously began studying proxemics ( the use of space and man's spatial behavior),2 it wasn't enough to simply observe that AE Americans did not like to be approached too closely during conversations and were, for the most part, averse to extensive touching or sensory involvement with people whom they did not know well. The fact that many Americans commented on their proxemic relations with Arabs and other Mediterranean peoples was interesting and relevant, but we needed to know more about what was actually happening. For example, how did people know when others were too close? What kind of measuring rods were they using? What was the physiologic-sensory base in which proxemic behavior was rooted? To answer these questions, a wide variety of observations and recording techniques were developed. One of the best, most effective, and reliable methods was cinematography. Film after film of people interacting in nonnal situations was made. I filmed people in public spaces, in parks, on the streets, at festivals and fiestas, and in the laboratory under controlled conditions. Film provided us with not only a wealth of data to study but also a relatively pennanent record to which we could refer time after time. There are many different methods for analyzing human interaction on film, as well as on video tape, but I will not attempt to describe the many techniques, because this is a technical matter for the specialist.3 Three things were apparent from the beginning in kinesic ( the study of body motion) and proxemic research films: 1 ) Conversational distances were maintained with incredible accuracy ( to tolerances as small as a fraction of an inch) ; 2) the process was rhythmic; and 3) human beings were locked together in a dance which functioned almost totally outside awareness. The out-of-awareness character of this behavior was particularly true of AE cultures and somewhat less true of American cultures, where the people are more conscious of the microdetails of human transactions. Not only did we record that regular proxemic dance on film, but small experiments in the living labo!atory had produced similar results. Experimentally I have backed people across a room, maneuvering them into corners by advancing a fraction of an inch at a time while we were conversing. My subjects were oblivious to the fact that they were adjusting their own conversational distance approximately every 3° seconds. To maintain a distance that was comfortable, they had to move. It didn't seem to matter who the individual was, trained observer, scientist, businessman, or a clerk in a store. The sample included people of all descriptions and classes. I discovered a system of behavior going on under our very noses about which virtually nothing was known. It was known, however, that people respond proxemically in all cultures. whenever the proxemic patterns and mores were violated, people reacted in readily observable and predictable ways. If behavior of this sort could be identified through the study of man's use of space, what might we expect to find in the study of time? As a matter of fact, one finds behavior just as remarkable, possibly even more so, which parallels the results obtained from proxemic studies. A person's structuring of his or her own rhythm is an extraordinary process in which only a fraction of the possible implications have yet been gleaned. In 1968 I initiated a program of interethnic research in northern New Mexico,4 where there is a mix of three cultures: the Native American-Pueblo, the Spanish American, and the Anglo American. Each maintains its own identity , but people meet, do business, attend ceremonies and celebrations, make love and fight, as well as mix in various proportions on the streets and in public places like the plaza in Santa Fe. The dances performed by the Pueblo Indians as public exhibitions of what in other circumstances are sacred dramas are ideal for cinematographic research. Everyone photographs everyone else, so one more camera makes no difference. Having grown up in northern New Mexico, I realized that I was already programmed to much of what was being recorded on film. However, I was not prepared for the richness and the detail of those visual records when they were subjected to the frame-by-frame analysis of a time-motion analyzer. Unfolding before my very eyes was a perpetual ballet. Each culture, of course, was choreographed in its own way, with its own beat, tempo, and rhythm. Beyond this there were individual performances, pairs dancing out their own dramas, and beneath all this was the truth of interpersonal encounters- particularly those of the interethnic variety-the specifics of be- havior that may engender misunderstanding, prejudice, and even hate. Life unfolded in that step-by-step, frame-by-frame film analysis. Events that occurred in fractions of seconds ( too fast for people to notice and analyze under normal circumstances ) could be seen and studied for the first time. Facades fell away and dissolved in front of my eyes. This happened when I first began studying the interaction pat- terns of the three groups who inhabit the Southwest United States ( AE whites, Spanish Americans, and Native Americans) . To be certain that I wasn't just "seeing" things, I took the pre- caution of asking John Collier, Jr.--0ne of the most talented and insightful individuals in the field of visual presentation of cross- cultural data-to review my raw footage. Collier grew up in the Southwest and spent part of his childhood in Taos Pueblo. An accident in his youth ( he was run over by a car) destroyed much of the auditory part of his brain, which may have been a blessing in disguise, because it forced him to rely on visual information in a way in which most of us are incapable of perceiving. Collier has produced truly remarkable still photographs of native peoples in North and South America, and he was so talented that I thought he might be permanently wedded to the still-camera format. However, using my time-motion analyzer to review my movies, he saw precisely what I had seen and more. Impressed by what a simple, hand-held, super-8 movie camera could do, Collier soon began to record on moving film the events that he could not capture with stills. Along with his gifted son, Malcolm, he has produced some remarkable books describing the record- ing of what was actually going on in Native American classrooms being taught by AE whites, by Indians trained in white schools, and by Indians and Eskimos who had no formal training. These studies covered a wide range of groups from the Indians of the Southwest to Eskimos in Alaska.5 Again, the Colliers found rhythms. A quite remarkable but not unexpected discovery was that the teacher determined the rhythm of the classroom. Classes taught by Native Americans who had not been trained by white educators had a rhythm close to that of natural, relaxed breath- ing and ocean breakers ( i.e., about 5 .to 8 seconds per cycle) . That is much slower than the frantic quality of a white or black classroom in the urban settings which most American school- children encounter today. Native Americans who had been through U .S. educational mills produced rhythms that were in be-tween. The Colliers' material made me realize that it was only when the Indian children were immersed in their own familiar rhythm that they felt comfortable enough to settle down and learn. To return to my own film footage, consider one scene from an Indian market: An AE woman from the American Midwest wearing a cotton print dress and straight-brimmed straw hat was trying to be polite and nice to people she had been brought up to look down upon. She had just approached a table full of pottery. Behind the table sat a woman from Santa Clara Pueblo. Watching the white tourist enter the scene, I had to remind my- self that what she was doing might not be her fault. She looked at the Pueblo woman and smiled condescendingly. Before my eyes, on the movie screen, the microdrama began to unfold. Holding herself in, the woman began bending forward from the hips to help bridge the gap made by the table, then her arm rose and slowly straightened at shoulder height. My God! It was like a rapier! The extended finger came to rest only inches from the Indian woman's nose and then it stayed there, suspended in midair. Would it never come down? The mouth moved continuously throughout the transaction: Questions? Statements? There is no way of knowing, for this was an unobtrusive record- -there were no booms or shotgun microphones, no sync sound. After a while the Indian woman's head slowly rotated away from the offending finger deep inside her personal space and an expression of unmistakable disgust covered her face. Only then did the arm come down. The tourist's body rotated and she slowly moved away, with a smug, superior look on the face. Total time thirty seconds. Analyzing this encounter, I realized that part of the communi- cation-the real impac-t of the woman's unspoken feelings- wasn't just in the pointed finger but in that extended time in- terval that the accusing finger was held in place--the fact that she wouldn't let go but held on almost as though she were pin- ning an insect to a sheet of paper . There were more encounters, fortunately none with quite the extended intense effect of the one just described. Another tourist approached a table which was apparently unattended at the time. I watched while territorial markers emerged and were played out on the screen. The tourist got too close; it was evident that he was not well coordinated and that he might rock the card table, which was tightly packed with fragile, expensive pottery .A handsome young Pueblo matron sitting a few feet away rose from her chair, straightened her spine, slowly walked to the table and placed the extended fingertips of both hands on the table's edge. There it is: "This table is mine"-said in movement and gesture. The tourist backed away and continued his conversation. I could tell from the context that not a word had been said about what really happened in that transaction. It is doubtful that either party was aware of more than a fraction of what had transpired, or that communication was occurring on multiple levels. The question, then, was: Could other people see these things? Could people who have not been to the Southwest or lived there for years see them too? I decided to find out by repeating an adaptation of a procedure used in various research programs in which it had been demonstrated that what people see is very much a function of what they have been trained or have learned to see in the course of growing up. Each person sees a slightly different world than everyone else, and if the people are from different cultures, the worlds can be very, very different. The question was, could students overcome their earlier conditioning and learn to see differently if subjected to a prolonged and re- peated exposure of short segments of film? In those days at Northwestern University, it was possible to hire students through one of the government's student aid programs for a percentage of what the student was actually paid. This aid made it possible for me to risk a limited amount of money on something that had not to my knowledge ever been done before. I asked the personnel office to send me the next student who came in looking for work. Of course, the people in personnel wanted to know what the student would be expected to do and what skills he or she had to have. I explained that it was more important for me to have the next student than one who had a particular skill. Actually, what I needed to know was whether students who were not trained in visual analysis and who were uninformed as to the subtleties of interethnic encoun- ters in the Southwest could on their own, and without prompting from anyone, see what I had seen and make the same interpreta- tions I had made. The first student, Sheila, was an English major. I showed her the time-motion analyzer, demonstrated how it worked and, having assured myself that she knew how to run the machine, said, "I want you to look at these films and keep on looking until you begin to see things in the films that were not obvious to you at first." Sheila, of course, wanted to know what she was supposed to see and I told her that I had no idea what she would see, but my only condition was that she keep looking even if she thought she was going to go out of her mind from boredom. In the process, I began to feel like the worst kind of tyrannical task- master. Two days went by and Sheila, with a worried expression on her face, stuck her head in my office. "Dr. Hall, I don't see anything; just a bunch of white people wandering around and talking to those Indians." I said, "Sheila, just keep at it. You haven't been looking long enough. I know its not easy, but trust me." Sheila tried every dodge in the book; she even went into my files and got out films she had not been told to review. This was all right, because I knew that she would need a break from time to time. Her verbal skills were no use at all; she was learning to see things in a new way and would return to her assigned task when she felt up to it. This process of walking into that darkened room, turning on the projector, and going over and over that fifty-foot film clip until she felt she couldn't stand one more look at Indians and white people sauntering around in the New Mexico sun lasted about three weeks. But one day, just when I was about to despair that she would ever see anything at all, Sheila burst into my office in an obvious state of excitement: "Dr. Hall, please come in here and look at this film." Clearly, she had found something. The frozen image of the woman in the print dress was on the screen. There she was in her cotton dress and straight-rimmed straw hat right out of the middle of the nation's breadbasket. Starting the projector, Sheila began to speak: "Look at that woman! She's using her finger like a sword as though she is going to push it right through that Indian woman's face. Just look at that finger- the way she uses it. Did you ever see anything like it? Did you see the way that Indian woman turned her face away as though she had just seen something unpleasant?" Every day from then on Sheila found something she hadn't seen before in the film. At first it was difficult for her to accept the fact that what she was seeing had been there all along; that what she hadn't seen at first and what she was able to see now were the same. The film hadn't changed; she had changed. With each succeeding student, the scenario was repeated: irritation, puzzlement, boredom, searching the files for something interesting, and then suddenly when I was about to give up, a flash: "Did you see that?" Over a two-year period all students saw the same things, and in very much the same order. Later in New Mexico I decided to use this same procedure as a sort of interethnic test. My question was: Would Spanish Americans in New Mexico, with their polychronic time system and their related deep involvement with each other, take as long to learn to read film as the monochronic, less-involved Anglos? I was not particularly surprised when the person-oriented Spanish Americans with whom I was then working proved to be remarkably adept at reading nonverbal behavior, quickly learning that film was layered information in depth. Attuned as they were to each other's mood shifts and subtle nonverbal communication, the Hispanic subjects mastered film reading in a fraction of the time required by Anglo undergraduates. Normally a weekend was enough.6 During an earlier research project on the subject of nonverbal communication as a factor in interethnic encounters, we discovered that ethnic blacks are even more attuned to the significance of subtle body cues than the New Mexico Spanish. It must come as somewhat of a surprise to people raised in a word culture to discover the great differences in the ability of ethnic groups to read nonverbal cues. How unfortunate that these skills are never tested in standard intelligence tests. In a culture such as our own, with a time system like ours, people are conditioned-with rare exceptions ( teenagers who see a movie twenty times )-to viewing a single performance. Even reruns on TV are avoided and only viewed if there is nothing better to do or if the movie is a classic revival. We demand variety and shun what we have already seen. This introduces a certain superficiality, a certain lack of depth that leads to dissatisfaction with the simple things of life. It was this pattern that had to be overcome in Sheila and my other students. Repetition is something few Americans are trained to appreciate. Perhaps this is why the invisible rhythm is not widely recognized in our culture, because if there is one thing that is the essence of rhythm it is that the intervals are repeated. Our real rhythms are therefore buried and must operate out of awareness. They can only be seen on stage and screen when conveyed by talented performers, or in microanalysis using a time-motion film analyzer. Interpersonal Synchrony It is hard to write about rhythms in English. We don't have the vocabulary, and the concepts aren't in the culture. We in the West have this notion that each of us is all by himself in this world-that behavior is something that originates inside the skin, isolated from the outside world and from other human beings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Have you ever had the feeling that, under certain circumstances, particular people have a good or bad effect on what you are doing? The chances are that you are right, and that you should pay attention to this feeling. Discussing this rhythmic web with a friend, I found myself listening attentively as he described an example from his own experience: "Our family was at breakfast, and my daughter, who is very bright and unusually sensitive to mood and the microcosm of human transactions, was sitting diagonally across the table from me. Back against an adobe wall, I reached out to pour myself a cup of coffee. My fingers, without warning, simply let go of the half-full cup. Before I even had a chance to become annoyed with myself for being so clumsy, my daughter said: 'Did I do that?' Somehow, without realizing how, she had managed to disrupt a rhythm. How she knew she had done this I do not know except that we are unusually attuned to each other." William Condon, whose work will be discussed shortly, might provide some clues. It had to do with the delicate web of body rhythm that ties us together-a break of some sort, the short-circuiting of an action chain at a crucial point. The implications are almost beyond belief-both for good and for evil. Condon says that when people are talking, the two central nervous systems drive each other. Of course, there are certain people who have a talent for breaking or interrupting other people's rhythms. In most cases they don't even know it, and how could they? After all, it's other people who are having the accidents, breaking and dropping things, stumbling and falling. Fortunately, there is the other kind of person: the one who is always in sync, who is such a joy, who seems to sense what move you will make next. Anything you do with him or her is like a dance; even making the bed can be fun. I know of no way to teach people how to sync with each other, but I do know that whether they do or not can make a world Of difference in a relationship. While personality is undoubtedly a factor in interpersonal synchrony, culture is also a powerful determinant. Polychronic people must stay in sync because if they don't the kind of dissonance alluded to earlier is bound to occur. I discovered this with my Spanish friends and neighbors in Santa Fe a number of years ago. While we were building a house and were all working in close proximity, it became clear how much faster and more adept the Spanish were. It was as though our small work crew was a single organism with multiple arms and legs that never got in each other's way. Synchrony of this sort can make a dif- ference in life or death situations or in whether or not people get hurt on the job. If two or more men are lifting a heavy roof beam while standing on a wall, they must move as a unit. If they don't, one of them ends up supporting the whole load and is pushed off the wall. What I am describing is a simplified, slower- moving version of what one sees on the basketball court during championship games or when a good American jazz combo really begins to "groove," with the players constituting a single, living, breathing body. One can observe coordination of this sort in Japan, where people work in close proximity to each other and live and breathe as a group. Even vice-presidents of large firms such as Toyota frequently share offices to facilitate decision-making via consensus and remain clued into each other at all times. The end result has made a major contribution to Japanese dominance in the world's industrial and product line markets. In the AE pattern, the office is part of the symbol system in the prestige and ranking hierarchy. American executives seal themselves off from each other-to compete better. Corporate vice-presidents in the United States have to make a real effort to get together because the American system is one in which the status of the individual is closely tied to the space which he occupies. It is no accident that we refer to such things as a "badge of office"! Status is important. However, in Japan, the markers are different. The group is more important than the individual; Japanese groups live and work and play as a unit. Toyota's assembly line teams, start the day doing exercises together, then they work together, take their breaks together, eat together, live next to each other in a company compound, and even vacation together. In the past, I have watched them work in incredibly small places. I have been impressed by how they move in synchrony, a necessity in cramped quarters. I would predict that when faster methods are developed for studying synchrony, the close relationship between cultural homogeneity, polychronic decision- making, and close proximity of the members of working groups to each other will be clearly demonstrated. Actually the means are already available for studies of this sort, using the relatively simple methods described earlier. Even without these studies there is no doubt in my mind as an experienced observer of synchrony that the Japanese are more in sync on the job than Americans or Europeans. One clue is that the Japanese are more aware of synchrony than the average Westerner. Those tremendous Sumo wrestlers, for example, must synchronize their breathing before the referee will allow the match to begin, and the audience is fully aware of what is happening. In this same vein, Japanese who are conversing will frequently monitor their own breathing in order to stay in sync with their interlocutor! Love, Identification, Synchrony, and Level of Performance George Leonard, who has studied the rhythms of people, is convinced that nothing happens between human beings that is not reflected at some point in a rhythm hierarchy.8 John Dewey was also interested in rhythms. In his book Art as Experience he states, "a common interest in rhythm is still the tie which holds science and art in kinship. "Dewey believed that rhythms pervade all the arts: painting and sculpture, architecture, music, literature, and dance. I once had an American friend and colleague--Dr. Gordon Bowles-who was both bilingual and bicultural in Japanese and American, with a slight edge in the direction of Japanese. Cordon loved Japan and the Japanese. The two of us worked together one summer in northern New York State preparing students for study and research in Japan. Every so often Gordon would disappear for a few days and when he would return, I would say, "Gordon, you've been with the Japanese again." He would reply, "Yes, I have. Some friends came through from Kyoto and I met them in Detroit. We had a wonderful time. But how did you know? " "It has something to do with the way you move--your rhythm. For a few days you move to a different beat. Then it begins to switch around to the American pattern again. It affects your entire being!" As one might suspect, there is a relationship between rhythm and love: they are closely linked. In fact, rhythm and love may be viewed as part of the same process. People in general don't sync well with those they don't like and they do with those they love. Both love and rhythm have so many dimensions that the rhythmic relationship to love might be easily misinterpreted. After many years in the classroom, I noticed that if I couldn't love my students, the class didn't do well, and that the rhythm of the class refused to settle down and was constantly changing. There would be good days when a rhythm seemed to be present and others when it was not, when there were several competing rhythms. A class that is going well develops its own rhythm, and it is that rhythm that pulls both the students and the professor to each meeting. What does it mean to love one's students? It sounds out of place in a university classroom, doesn't it? I am not sure it is even possible for me to unravel and identify the multiple strands that make up this particular tapestry. The classroom can be an extension of the home. It is therefore necessary for the professor to discourage any impulses on the part of the students to cast him in the parental role. Somehow the idea must be accepted that the greatest pleasure and real expression of love on the part of a teacher is to be able to watch and occasionally encourage the talent of each member of the group to grow. Also needed is the trust to permit each to do his or her own thinking. This means that we strive to bring out the best in each other and to somehow allow the rhythm of the group to establish itself and avoid at all costs the imposition of the artificial rhythm of a fixed agenda. On the interpersonal level, observations have been made that when a mate becomes involved with someone else, there is a shift in his or her rhythm. It's as though a third person were in the house, and in a way they are, because their rhythm is there. Individuals repeatedly demonstrate that there are very great differences in regard to their basic rhythms. There is "fast Jane" and "slow John." They should never marry or work together. These are people who temperamentally are so far above or below the average that while they can manage with some effort to synchronize with the average person, they are not able to approach the extremes of the rhythm spectrum. Most people seem to have the capacity to get up to speed, as it were, so we don't notice them, and it is not known how much this speeding up- or slowing down-process contributes to stress. These points are common experiences shared by practically everyone. Is there a person alive who has not been either held back or tailgated by others? As any athlete knows, after strength and endurance, success in sports is largely a matter of rhythm. The super athletes are those who "have rhythm," which is why they look so beautiful and graceful when they are performing. Motorcycle riding can hardly be considered an aesthetic, to say nothing of a rhythmic, sport. Yet the all-time motocross champion, Malcolm Smith, had rhythm and won every major award in the motocross class. It didn't seem to matter whether it was desert sand, arroyos and brush, mud, rocky mountain trails, or rough desert terrain. All the other riders were yanking on their handlebars, manhandling the machines around stones, logs, shrubbery, and bad ruts. Yet a film of Smith ( On Any Sunday, with Steve McQueen) reveals a symphony of effortless ease. He would establish his rhythm at the beginning of the race and never deviate from it. Most remarkable was that this man who was passing everyone else did not seem to be going very fast. In fact, the other contestants, when looked at individually, actually gave the appearance of going faster than Smith. It was mind-boggling to watch a man traveling at such a leisurely pace consistently pass the furious speed demons. George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright who knew so much about human nature, captured this point in an essay, "Cashel Byron's Profession," the story of a public school boy with effortless rhythm who defeated his strongest schoolmates in boxing. He went on to become a champion boxer and then a respected Member of Parliament by using effortless, faultlessly timed attacks in Parliamentary debates. An even more dramatic case is reported by George Leonard,9 who describes the extraordinary performance of a friend going for his black belt in Aikido: "So gentle and coherent were his movements that they seemed to capture time itself and to slow it to a more stately pace. ..As the exam continued, the speed and intensity of the attacks increased, and yet there was still a sense of time's moving slowly, at an unhurried dreamlike pace." This rhythmic coherent defense was maintained by the candidate while he was being simultaneously attacked by several other students. It is paradoxical that velocity, which under ordinary circumstances would be unmanageable, appears to slow down and become manageable when the right rhythm is established. In fact, it is a fundamental truth of Zen that straining is the enemy of rhythm. Also, whatever the performance, the more perfect the rhythm, the easier it is for another person to perceive the details of what is taking place before his eyes. Did you ever see an unusually graceful person who lacked a natural sense of self or basic confidence ? The key is in the rhythm. For those interested in confidence building, or improving performance and grace, it should come as no surprise to learn that one of the most effective and rewarding combinations is gymnastics and speech training. Gymnastics - done under the watchful eye of a true professional - is the most important element and should be given the first priority. For those who are either less confident or less energetic ( apparently age is not a barrier) , dancing, choral singing, playing musical instruments, even marching, contribute to body synchrony, confidence, and a general sense of well- being. The above foreshadows possibilities for progress when enough is known about synchrony so that it can be used both diagnos- tically and therapeutically to improve a wide variety of dis- orders. My intuition tells me that depression, which is so com- mon in today's world, may have its roots in the person who is out-of-sync in deep and basic ways. Certainly, compatibility has much to do with the degree to which individuals sync with each other. Synchrony and Group Cohesion It should be clear by now that it is impossible to synchronize two events unless a rhythm is present. Rhythm is basic to synchrony. This principle is illustrated by a film of children on a playground. Who would think that widely scattered groups of children in a school playground could be in sync? Yet this is precisely the case ( reported here in slightly revised form from Beyond Culture). One of my students selected as a project an exercise in what can be learned from film. Hiding in an abandoned automobile, which he used as blind, he filmed children playing in an adjacent school yard during recess. As he viewed the film, his first impression was the obvious one: a film of chidren playing in different parts of the school playground. Then watching the film several times at different speeds - a practice I urge all my students to use - he began to notice one very active little girl who seemed to stand out from the rest. She was all over the place. Concentrating on that girl, my student noticed that whenever she was near a cluster of children the members of that group were in sync not only with each other but with her. Many viewings later, he realized that this girl, with her skipping and dancing and twirling, was actually orchestrating movements of the entire playground! There was something about the pattern of movement which translated into a beat-like a silent movie of people dancing. Furthermore, the beat of this playground was familiar. There was a rhythm he had encountered before. He went to a friend who was a rock music aficionado, and the two of them began to search for the beat. It wasn't long until the friend reached out to a nearby shelf, took down a cassette and slipped it into a tape deck. That was it! It took a while to synchronize the beginning of the film with the recording - a piece of contemp-orary rock music--but once started, the entire three and a half minutes of the film clip stayed in sync with the taped music! Not a beat or a frame of the film was out of sync. How does one explain something like this? It does not fit most people's notions of either playground activity or where music comes from. Discussing composers and where they get their music with a fellow faculty member at Northwestern University, I was not surprised to learn that for him, and for many other musicians, music represents a sort of rhythmic consensus, a consensus of the core culture. It was clear that the children weren't playing and moving in tune to a particular piece of music. They were moving to a basic beat which they shared at the time. They also shared it with the composer, who must have plucked it out of the sea of rhythm in which he too was immersed. He couldn't have composed that piece if he hadn't been in tune with the core culture. Things like this are puzzling and difficult to explain because so little is known technically about human synchrony. However, I have noted similar synchrony in my own films of people in public who had no relationship with each other. Yet, they were syncing in subtle ways. The extraordinary thing is that my student was able to identify that beat. When he showed his film to our seminar, however, even though his explanation of what he had done was perfectly lucid, the members of the seminar had difficulty understanding what had actually happened. One school superintendent spoke of the children as "dancing to the music"; another wanted to know if the children were "humming the tune." They were voicing the commonly held belief that music is something that is "made up" by a composer, who then passes on his "creation" to others, who, in turn, diffuse it to the larger society. The children were moving together, but as with the symphony orchestra, some participants' parts were at times silent. Eventually all participated and all stayed in sync, but the music was in them. They brought it with them to the playground as a part Of shared culture. They had been doing that sort of thing all their lives, beginning with the time they synchronized their movements to their mother's voice even before they were born.10 This brings us to the real pioneer in this fascinating field of rhythm. Before the Renaissance, God was conceived of as sound or vibration.11 This is understandable because the rhythm of a people may yet prove to be the most binding of all the forces that hold human beings together. As a matter of fact, I have come to the conclusion that the human species lives in a sea of rhythm, ineffable to some, but quite tangible to others. This explains why some composers really do seem to be able to tap into that sea and express for the people the rhythms that are felt but not yet expressed as music. Poets do this too, though at a different level. Tedlock12 reports something very similar for the Indians of Zuni Pueblo. Zuni songs are composed for each year's ceremonies. A single composer will bring a song to the kiva before a dance. He will talk about the song, sing the introductory part, and then recite some of the body of the song (the "talking about" part ). If the song has possibilities, his clan brothers will go to work, editing it, cutting words, changing some and, most important, matching the lyrics with the melody. It all has to fit: the words, the melody, and the message of the song. Everything has to be right. Of the 116 songs which she recorded, Tedlock reports that less than 4 percent were considered co'ya or beautiful, while 2.6 percent were k' oksi or good. When songs are really beautiful or good and the audience likes them, they will ask the dancers to do them again. Like good jazz-which also springs from the hearts of people - Zuni music is judged according to how closely it approximates the living reality of the different currents in the sea of rhythm in which people are immersed. The songs perform multiple functions: religious and ceremonial, social feedback, and social control, because they frequently describe in recognizable, unmistakable detail the actions of members of the community. In Western thought, religion is one thing and social control is another. Not so for the Zuni (or any other Native American group I know). Theirs is a comprehensive philosophy. Religion encompasses everything and is neither set aside from life nor compartmentalized. The songs, therefore, perform an emergent, formulative function because they come from that unconscious, previously unverbalized layer representing group sentiments and beliefs. That is why the very good songs are co'ya ( co'ya is congruence on all levels ) . One of the differences between white Americans and Native Americans, as well as blacks, is that the latter two are closer to their music. Most blacks know where their music comes from- it comes from them. The Pueblo peoples, as well as the Navajo and other American Indian groups, recognize that a people's music is inseparable from their lives and that the songs represent an important part of their identity. This is one of the reasons they don't want strangers recording sacred songs during the public part of ceremonies. Another reason is that during a dance the audience has a function to perform. That function is to be there with good thoughts and prayers! The audience's role is to add to the dance, not to take things away. Not only do Native Americans have a beat and rhythm all their own which is reflected in their music, but each region and town in the United States has its own rhythm as well as music. An excellent example was recently provided in the opening scene of the movie Nine to Five, starring Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton. The talented Miss Parton sings the music with ground-level shots of people's legs and feet as they walk down the street. One fantastic shot zeros in on feet and ankles, in beat, cutting to a shot of three metronomes-in sync with each other and with the beat of the city. It's only a short shot, but it sent shivers up my spine. The late Goddard Lieberson experienced the power of what I am expressing so strongly that he was motivated to spend the last two years of his life producing a two-hour CBS special, "They Said It with Music," with Jason Robards and Bernadette Peters. This was the history of our country in music, beginning with "Yankee Doodle" and the Revolution and ending with World War I and "Over There." According to Lieberson, no one had ever done this before, and I can't imagine why not. Perhaps it's because we no longer think of God as sound or vibration. Differences in Frequency, Adumbration, and Feedback Rhythm Feedback is a term derived from the field of cybernetics, a technical word coined by Norbert Wiener.13 Cybernetics is the study of controls. If we consider the problems of steering a ship, both the pilot and the automatic pilot work on the principle of correcting the natural tendency of the ship to drift away from a course established for a given voyage. Various devices and aids, such as compasses, star charts, and inertial systems, are used by the pilot to stay on course; the wind, the ocean swells and currents, as well as irregularities in the ship's hull, work to push the ship off course. The link between the forces pushing the ship off course and holding the ship on course is feedback-"information" concerning how far the ship has deviated and how much correction will be needed to bring it back on course. Human beings - in fact, all living organisms - depend on feedback from the environment - human and physical - to maintain the necessary stability in life. Part of the. strategy in any feedback mechanism is to know the proper interval for corrective action. If the correction is too fast, the system becomes unstable; if it is too slow, the ship wanders wide of the mark, is brought back toward the course line, crosses it, and so forth. As a consequence, the distance traveled is longer than necessary and resembles a snake or a meandering stream. This critical correction interval, which I have termed the feedback rhythm, is a function of many things, but in humans this rhythm is cul- turally detenDined at the primary level. A little-known source of communicative dysfunction is failure to match feedback rhythms with corrective action. In an earlier work, Beyond Culture, I described how the polychronic Spanish people of New Mexico kept very close tabs on each other's emotions so that even slight variations in mood were detected immediately and commented on: "Theresa, what's the matter? A few moments ago you were cheerful. Now you are sad. Is anything wrong?" This sort of quick reading can be good for group morale, particularly if the group is made up of people who get along well, but it can also lead to disastrous confrontations between younger males. The same sensitivity and quick reading of low-level, nonverbal cues coupled with hair-trigger machismo, alcohol, fast cars, and guns make for real trouble. While the Hispanics are generally more tuned into each other than are the Anglos, their short-cycle feedback on the interpersonal level makes for greater volatility .A concomitant pattern is their lack of interest in long-term planning, which is always difficult to achieve in polychronic cultures unless other critical elements are present. Things happen quickly and the consequences are commonly not considered. The Japanese have built-in systems for keeping in touch on the emotional level. This is particularly important for teams that are working together on a daily basis. The basic patterns seem to apply no matter where one taps into the Japanese hierarchy. In the morning, the J apanese start off being formal, and as the day progresses, if things are going well, the language used becomes less formal. Dropping the honorifics ( suffixes which mark status signaling where each person is in relation to the other) proceeds at a steady pace. This means that everyone is up to the minute on how things are going. Unlike the Spanish of New Mexico, the Japanese do not get technical about what is wrong because they depend a great deal on context, and people are supposed to know what is wrong. In this instance we have short-term feedback-a daily rhythm broken down into inter- action segments-which keeps the members of the working and living group in tune with each other and which synchronizes the emotional tone of the group. I do not want to give the idea that all groups and all Japanese work in complete harmony; they don't. It's just that they have an ideal, a method, an ap- propriate rhythm, a strong drive that motivates them to move from one pole ( formality ) in their daily transactions to the opposite ( informality ) , which is warm and comfortable. What type of feedback rhythm do we find on the interpersonal level in the United States? Depending on one's class and ethnic background, there is considerable variation. Even in a diverse society such as our own there are norms, because without norms it is difficult to get enough synchrony for anything to work. This kind of behavior is not the technical, verbal, manifest, explicit type found in books or in directives from management, but rather in the collective unconscious of people across the nation. In general, Anglos, when compared to Spanish Americans, have a very long term interpersonal feedback rhythm. They take it for granted that there will be mood shifts. At the office, when something is wrong, it is attributed to trouble at home and vice versa. Anglos tend to avoid interfering or intervening in the lives of others. This is in part a function of the monochronic, compartmentalized time system and the reinforcing effect it has on our highly individualistic culture. People frequently feel that they are alone in the world, and that it is right and proper that they should be able to solve their own problems. Any failure to do so is a sign of weakness or lack of moral fiber. What happens when things do go wrong? At first nobody says anything, and if they do it is only after it is obvious to everyone that matters are completely out of hand. A young friend who recently quit her part-time job with a professional man who had a habit of exploiting his female help could only tell him that she resented what he did and how he ran his office and that she was going to quit. He, in turn, then felt he could vent some of his feelings about her performance. It is too bad they couldn't have conveyed their feelings sooner. In marriages, individuals can go for years before they say anything about things that have been bothering them. Occasionally, one runs into a marriage or an office relationship where feedback is reliable and quick, but my own experience, as well as my reading in the folk literature on the subject ( advice columns, comic strips, and letters to trouble- shooters in the press), is that three to six months is the normal interval, but that it can take up to five years before grievances are aired. This is quite different from the Japanese and the Spanish American. Spanish feedback intervals are shorter than the Japanese, while Japanese intervals are much shorter than those for white Americans. 10 Entrainment Entrainment is the term coined by William Condon for the process that occurs when two or more people become engaged in each other's rhythms, when they synchronize. Both Condon and I believe that it will ultimately be demonstrated that synchrony begins with the myelination of the auditory nerve about six months after conception. It is at this point that the infant can begin to hear in the womb. Immediately following birth, the newborn infant will move rhythmically with its mother's voice and will also synchronize with the voice of other people, speak- ing any language! The tendency to synchronize with surround- ing voices can therefore be characterized as innate. Which rhythm one uses, however, is a function of the culture of the people who are around when these patterns are being learned. It can be said with some assurance that normal human beings are capable of learning to synchronize with any human rhythm, provided they start early enough. Clearly, something so thoroughly learned early in life, rooted in the organism's innate behavior program and shared by all mankind. must be not only important, but also a key contributor to the survival of our species. In the future, it is entirely possible that synchrony and entrainmentl will be discovered to be even more basic to human survival than sex on the individual level and as basic to survival as sex on the group level. Without the ability to entrain with others-which is what happens with certain types of aphasia-life becomes almost unmanageable. Boston pediatrician Dr. Barry Brazelton, who has spent years studying the interaction between parents and children from the moment of birth, describes the subtle, multilevel synchrony in normal relations and then states that parents who batter their children have never learned to sync with their babies. Rhythm is so much a part of. everyone's life that it occurs virtually without notice. Somewhere in the process of synchrony there is a link between the normal experience on the conscious level and the so-called metaphysical. Only a short step separates the rhythmic sea in which all people are entrained and some of the more contemporary theories concerning precognition. To return for a moment to the role of rhythm in our lives and why it may be so necessary to be able to entrain with others: at present, possibly because there are so few people wo(king in the field, there are no great widely accepted theories of synchrony .2 The familiar, middle-frequency range rhythms are those that can be consciously attended, like: those of music and dance, which are universal. No matter where one looks on the face of this earth, wherever there are people, they can be observed syncing when music is played. There is a popular misconception about music. Because there is a beat to music, the generally accepted belief is that the rhythm originates in the music, not that music is a highly specialized releaser of rhythms already in the individual. Otherwise, how does one explain the close fit between ethnicity and music? Music can also be viewed as a rather re- markable extension of the rhythms generated in human beings. In addition to music, human rhythm systems can be viewed as covering a broad spectrum, ranging from the .oz second ( beta I brain waves) at the short end to hundreds or possibly thousands of years at the long end. The ultra-long rhythms with which the classical historian and theorist Arnold Toynbee was so pre- occupied require hundreds of years before they are played out, and we see their patterns take shape in the rise and fall of civilizations. Toynbee's theory is derived from thoughtful observation of successions of civilizations where highs are followed regularly by periodic lows. While proving Toynbee's theories is not yet feasible, it does appear that the rhythmic tempo of contemporary mass culture may be speeding up. At least there is popular consensus that this is the case. If there are such .rhythms and if they are really speeding up, there may be less time than in the past to adjust to the changes that are already on us. There has always been great coherence in nature and it would be valuable to know more about the rhythmic interrelationships. Human beings are just beginning to recognize that there may be an underlying unity .It is necessary for us to understand that "rhythm is nature's way," and it is up to our species to learn as much as possible about how these remarkable processes affect our lives. Condon comes closer than most to the root of the matter: "There is a genuine coherence among the things we perceive and think about, and this coherence is not something we create, but something we discover. ..Ideas and hypotheses are derived from and clarified by arduous observation. ..By making or finding distinctions within the world, however, we do not break it into fragments which can never again be brought together. ..The temporal is basic and involves history .Pro- cesses have their histories. There are many histories, so that while history is pluralistic, it is not therefore discontinuous."3 Condon believes, as I do, that all nature (life) paradoxically is both discrete and continuous- simultaneously and without contradiction. I also maintain that nature is not restricted to the physical world, but includes man and man's productions. Nothing is excluded from nature, particularly the microrhythms that tie people to each other. Condon, a philosopher interested in phenomenology, was originally trained in kinesics at the University of Pennsylvania by Professor Raymond Birdwhistell and later by an associate, the late Albert Schehen, a psychiatrist. Condon quickly discovered two things : first, that he had tapped into an unpredictably rich field of study; second, that no one else at that time was willing to make the commitment or had the patience to really develop the field. The temporal logistics in research of until........ 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