Dear Chuck
I don't see the need to make the division between emotions and sensory exeperiences except as a re-vision. That is, yes, we see our sensory experiences differently when we interpret them as aesthetic (asethetics means the science of the senses and not the study of beauty) - and yes, we can have emotions about all experiences - hence my example of the dumb numness of ice. The same facility to reassociate with sensory experiences can happen with pain - it is often called disassociation when pain or trauma are involved.
This gap is a major problem in design because the majority of sensory experiences are not resolved as emotions of any kind and yet they are all lived. We can know much more about our everyday experiences than we bother to - some cultures spend more time in this sphere and they are recognised as design cultures - try France and Italy. The British wonder why they make brutish design - well they have a brutish approach to their own lived lives as sensations. "We don't talk about such things". They even think that not talking about life is the high point of culture.
You speak of rap as if it is a minor and discorganised social event that also has features of major and organised art forms. Rap - like all labguage forms - plugs into the history and generation of language such that it is potentially as rich and various as any other langauge form.
all the best
keith russell
OZ newcastle (that is, not the UK newcastle)
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