“It”: Of mimesis

In the morning one suddenly notices that she a body.  She, however, has an ambiguous sense about finding that “it” within her body “it” surely is there.  A bird is flying away if she looks up the sky.  She notices that she is not a bird while at the same time she also thinks that “it” would be a bird later on.  She wishes to let “it” out from her body to see, to touch, so listen, and to lick “it.”  Since it is impossible to let “it” out from her body, she simply shouts in frustration.  If many things and matters are forgotten, she can leave her frustration alone.  Since she cannot do it she starts using words as ecriture.  “It,” therefore, has many names because of ecriture, and these are: “self,” “spirit,”  “identity” and “I,” for example.   “It” successfully gets a name, however, she still cannot lick “identity.”  It's unfortunate for her, therefore, she can merely find fear so she decides to dance.  In ancient Greek culture, all arts such as music were considered as mimesis.  According to both Plato and Aristotle, art represented the inner human spirit, the so-called ethos.  European Renaissance thought argued that melody should reflect the ethos, through the words.  The Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, who proposed the concept of soundscape, thinks about mimesis differently from this European tradition.  Schafer found “it” in his body and then tried to assimilate “it” into acoustic space.  In short he found “it” in his auditory nerve.  There are two different kind of mimesis in music and dance: 1) The concept of mimesis based on logos (Greek tradition); 2) Mimesis as human echoes towards soundscape as Schafer sees.  This paper attempts to contribute to that discourse.