Another metaphor

With regard to a forthcoming post, I was trying earlier this morning to think of a suitable illustration for the notion of threads of consciousness. I usually use a picture with the different threads arranged up the page, perhaps in different colours, with each one running in time across the page, something that is easy enough to work up in Excel. The idea is that the threads wax and wane in time, with one sometimes occluding another, perhaps partially or completely. Threads come and go in time. Some threads - perhaps representing a significant other - have a more or less permanent existence, even though they may only appear in consciousness from time to time. At which point Excel starts to struggle a bit and my Powerpoint is not good enough to rise to the challenge.

This morning's brave wave was that perhaps a more convenient metaphor was that of a piece of instrumental music, with the various parts waxing and waning in the way suggested above, but with the whole somehow present in consciousness. Both integrated and differentiated as, I think, Tonini of reference 3 sometimes has it.

A full orchestra would have been better in the sense that it did not come with a small fixed number of threads, but I don't think it would work quite as well on the screen.

Note that there is a separate volume control for each thread.

I am grateful to reference 2 for the illustration, which appears to have been taken from the Beethoven String Quartets offered for sale by reference 1. The opening of Op.135 and a rather better copy than I would have managed with my telephone.

PS: a further thought being that once Deepmind has sorted out the challenge at reference 5, they could try reverse engineering the score of this quartet from a recording of a performance. Part 1: sorting out the threads. Part 2: turning the threads into the sort of score that a musician might recognise.

Reference 1: Dover Study and Playing Editions, New York, 1970.

Reference 2: http://themusicsalon.blogspot.co.uk/.

Reference 3: http://integratedinformationtheory.org/.

Reference 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laUMuPkm7Ow may be helpful. Very respectable quartet.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/bees.html.