幽玄 (Yūgen) - Analysis Methodology

One of the greatest challenges of analysis for subjects like art (incl. music), is that they are fundamentally non-verbal. Analysis requires verbalization, which entails reductionism and determinism. Higher models of analysis, despite being more in accord with the abstractness of art, then risks indulgence in jargon and redundancy.

The prior reduces music to tones, symbols, and logical inferences, while the latter is like listening to an inferior version of music but without the music. For concepts such as 幽玄 (Yūgen), the latter risk may be preferred, because of its irreducibility. Like the French Esprit, German Geist, or Graham Harman’s “Real Object,” 幽玄 is a Japanese aesthetic that is expressive of the non-verbal, ethereal, physically and spiritually refined sensations that reside within, and emanate from, art. I believe such a category is beyond mere dopamine release.

The model I use on this level is metaphorical communication, from treating G.E. Moore’s analogy of “Yellow is yellow; Good is good” as an a priori. Then, to treat the object “art” or “music” as a gestalt (an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts). Harman’s “Object-Oriented Ontology” as well as Kuki Shuzo’s “Reflections on Japanese Taste: The Structure of Iki,” can then be applied, as these models acknowledge the parts in the context of the whole.

Conclusion:

What can be derived from the above method, is that there is always some activity in the “in between,” e.g., linkage, the ambience between subject and object, or “ghost in the machine.” Non-verbality is due to the “in between” being potently interwoven throughout the whole. It is sometimes through embracing the “in between,” that we can “feel.” The “in between” may even be the essence of artistic affects, 幽玄 being the Japanese variant that brings forth a facet of it. Like umami manifesting from fermented pinot noir, blind-tasting the net of “Indra’s Net.”