Len Fehskens, who surprises with the astuteness of his observations (he
has obviously followed me far better than Stirling has) asks:

>>The consequence of this is it means nothing that some people may see
>>a piece of music as being "happy" whereas others see it as "sad".
>
>This is precisely the substance of my question.  What kind of a language
>is it that means one thing to one person and the opposite to another?

This is precisely the point of the Marllame quotation.  Ask any two people
who decided they enjoyed Marllame what they think of the quotation and you
will encounter the same problem as in music.  Reading Stirling Newberry's
response to my posts on this subject suggest the same thing is happening in
his reading of my posts.

>I worry that it abuses the meaning of the word "language" and so
>dilutes it as to make it mean whatever one wishes to make it mean.
>If you believe that it is not necessary for a language to be interpreted
>consistently (and nowhere did I make any assertions about precision),
>then we are no longer talking about "communication".

Call it consistency, precision, or exactness I think it amounts to the same
thing.  It is unquestionable that my line of argument (Marllame quotations
and all) mirrors ideas presented in Jacques Derrida's "Of Grammatology".
Derrida's critics come up with exactly the criticism that Len comes up
with.  I have argued that "meaning" does not necessarily require
consistency, exactness, or precision.  I have made "meaning" as abstract
as a Marllame poem or a Kandinsky canvas (often entitled "Komposition" in
the musical sense).  That meaning in music should be abstract is something
already implied by the idea of Absolute Music, and my position differs
from the conventional Wagner-Dahlhaus view only in that I have eschewed
a metaphysic of a transcendental Absolute Music (see Dahlhaus, The Idea
of Absolute Music).  As such any argument that musical meaning is abstract
is easy for many to stomach, but it is true that if you follow my argument
to the letter then I extend this abstraction to verbal language as well.
I appreciate that this will really throw the cat amongst the pigeons and
raise hell.  It's not hard to see why Derrida has as many enemies as
admirers.  Nonetheless I will happily deconstruct the notion that meaning
must always be consistent and cannot be abstract.

I do not agree that lack of consistent meaning "in itself" outside of its
necessary context always means mindless chaos as Derrida's critics suggest.
Nor am I attempting to follow Camus in insisting that meaning (and thus
existence itself) is always absurd.  I do not see abstraction as being the
same as absurdity.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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