Here's W.H. Auden in The Dyer's Hand generalizing about our senses:
"The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition."
Is Auden right? I think he nailed our acoustic cortex. (For more on that, check out my Stravinsky chapter in the book.) But I'm not sure our sense of sight is quite as restless as he would have us believe.
Thanks for the tip Steve!
More like this
First, a quote, then (below the fold) the book I found it in (and, incidentally, the post title about infinite variability, is taken from the book, below):
W.H. Auden:
The thrill I get from watching Michael Phelps swim is the same thrill I get from watching Tiger Woods put for birdie on the 18th hole or from reading 1930's Auden: the impossible isn't just made possible: these guys make the impossible look easy.
If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
- Wystan Hugh Auden
For more on this, check out the doctoral thesis of Alice B. Sheldon (better known as the sci-fi writer James Tiptree) in the early 60s. Basically, she argued that novelty is appealing to the eye in familiar surroundings, but in a strange environment, the familiar is what attracts.