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I just finished up my Christmas composition project. Here's a two minute piece on the topic of "you need to define a thing to be able to think about a thing, so that you have a word to attach your thoughts to." Apparently blue is the last color to gain a word in any language. There are still languages that haven't evolved a word for the concept of "blueness" yet. One theory is that color words appear as we need to be able to distinguish between things that we want to buy, sell, or trade: "Yeah, I can make you a new deer skinning knife. What color do you want the handle to be?" "Blue." Because blue paints and dyes are relatively difficult to produce, compared with other colors, cultures don't develop a word for "blue" until they are pretty advanced. The cultures that don't have a word for it, interestingly have a hard time seeing and thinking about it as well. Scientists have done experiments where they have say, three green squares and one blue one, and ask these language users to pick out the square that is not like the others, and people have a very difficult time with the task. It seems that our brains need a word to attach a concept to in order to think about the concept. We need to think using our interior monologue. Actual language has to be running inside or outside of our heads in order for us to think in any meaningful way. It's an explanation for why you can't do basic math and listen to someone having a conversation involving numbers at the same time. So get out there and learn the names of things, any kinds of things, and your basic thought processes will deepen. I'd suggest that you open the score while you listen so you can see how the text fits the notes, or click the youtube link below. It has the score scrolling along behind the music. And I used a harp sound instead of piano, because all the piano sound fonts that come with my composition software are pretty clunky, but I do intend this to be piano accompaniment. Thanks for listening and I'd love to hear any thoughts about this piece! Furtak-Semantic.mid