The meaning of Chopin's "Funeral March" sonata?

[faulty_damper]

What's the meaning of this sonata?  It sounds like endless drivel except for the third movement.  Otherwise, it's musically meaningless.  After all these years, it still sounds like a crap.  I even tried learning it before in an attempt to understand it but I couldn't get passed the fact that I was playing a lot of notes that had no meaning behind them.  Is there meaning behind it?  Can you tell me what it's about?

[nyiregyhazi]

What's the meaning of this sonata?  It sounds like endless drivel except for the third movement.  Otherwise, it's musically meaningless.  After all these years, it still sounds like a crap.  I even tried learning it before in an attempt to understand it but I couldn't get passed the fact that I was playing a lot of notes that had no meaning behind them.  Is there meaning behind it?  Can you tell me what it's about?

If you think that all music is supposed  to have a "meaning" that can be conveyed in descriptions, stick to the Four Seasons by Vivaldi. There's no point even trying to get started, with the terms you've set out for judgement.

Start by describing the "meaning" of another composition, if you want your use of the word "meaning" to have any obvious meaning in this context.

[j_menz]

I pretty much agree win N.  What you are asking is pretty much along the lines of the below:



There are always going to be pieces we just don't get. Including ones that other people seem to have no trouble with. Time may cure it. It also may not. Nothing else has a chance.

[dima_76557]

What's the meaning of this sonata?  It sounds like endless drivel except for the third movement.  Otherwise, it's musically meaningless.  After all these years, it still sounds like a crap.  I even tried learning it before in an attempt to understand it but I couldn't get passed the fact that I was playing a lot of notes that had no meaning behind them.  Is there meaning behind it?  Can you tell me what it's about?

I think it's about Chopin's struggle with death, or better even: his fear for death. Each movement gives us a different "act", a different situation so to speak with which the individual has to cope spiritually, sometimes even seeing hallicunations. One cannot understand this with intellectuality alone. One has to know the Western culture very well to feel what's in there, a culture based on worship, love, forgiving, appreciation of each person as an individual as keys to overcome the fears of life.
I hope the following analysis helps you somehow, but you have to keep in mind: words are just words, and some things cannot be described in words.
https://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/composition/detail/id/92

[awesom_o]

It's isn't about. It just is.

[dima_76557]

It's isn't about. It just is.

I'm afraid that everything speaks for itself only for the "owners" of the spiritual culture. We have many Asians here in Moscow, for example, who worship nothing and were born in a culture of cold intellectuality and orderly social relationships only, with absolutely no appreciation for individuality. They need the kind of pictures I used to be able to make anything out of "our" music.

[j_menz]

I'm afraid that everything speaks for itself only for the "owners" of the spiritual culture. We have many Asians here in Moscow, for example, who worship nothing and were born in a culture of cold intellectuality and orderly sociel relationships only, with absolutely no appreciation for individuality. They need the kind of pictures I used to be able to make anything out of "our" music.

That is errant nonsense.

Apart from it's failure to understand the first thing about the plethora of Asian cultures, for most of us "a culture of cold intellectuality and orderly sociel relationships only, with absolutely no appreciation for individuality" would appear to apply most directly to Soviet era Moscow better than to any other place on earth since the fall of Sparta.

[dima_76557]

That is errant nonsense.

No doubt, especially since it is movie director Chen Kaige (who comes from a more consciously cultured high stratum of Chinese society) who makes those remarks in this article: East Asians and Western classical music.

Instead, Chen hopes Western classical music can educate his people in spirituality and individualism. "One of the biggest differences between Chinese and Western culture," Chen said in an interview with MovieWeb.com, "is that we don't have religion. We don't worship anything. Western classical music has elements of love and forgiveness that come from religion. Chinese music is very intellectual, very exotic, but there is no love. You don't feel warm after you listen to it."

The cult of the Romantic hero, as exemplified by virtuosi like Franz Liszt, first emerged in a Christian culture whose theology valued each unique soul, rather than a Confucian culture that emphasized orderly social relations.

P.S.: Your view of the Soviet era needs correction. The System was the System, but the people inside never changed; they carried on the culture that had existed before within the boundaries they were given.

[j_menz]

movie director Chen Kaige (who comes from a more consciously cultured high stratum of Chinese society)

I don't consider the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution a "more consciously cultured high stratum of Chinese society", nor representative of Asian culture more broadly. 

You have also taken an excessively broad interpretation of his meaning, even as it applies to Chinese Communists. He found, within western Classical music, on his own and without the need for "words" the expression of ideas that were unfamiliar or less stressed in his own cultural background.  He hopes that others will find the same. The converse could be said of westerners listening to , say, traditional Chinese music (or any of the other thousands of musical traditions extant across the continent).  Your suggestion that they need a porrly drawn word picture to enable them to do so underestimates the force of music, and the nature of humanity.

within the boundaries they were given

The walls of Lubyanka or Lefortova?

[dima_76557]

Your suggestion that they need a porrly drawn word picture to enable them to do so underestimates the force of music, and the nature of humanity.

When we speak about the power of music by Bach and Mozart, yes, but the "Romantics" work with programs. The music itself no longer speaks for itself in the same way the "Classics" did. If you don't know/feel the program, some of the music in itself becomes virtually meaningless.

EDIT: Chen refers to Confucianism as the cultural roots of his people. Where did you get the idea that he limits everything to the culture of Communism?

[j_menz]

When we speak about the power of music by Bach and Mozart, yes, but the "Romantics" work with programs. The music itself no longer speaks for itself in the same way the "Classics" did. If you don't know/feel the program, some of the music in itself becomes virtually meaningless.

If it is explicit, yes. But that is as true of knowing the words and background to St Matthew's Passion as it is to knowing Mazeppa involves a horseride.

EDIT: Chen refers to Confucianism as the cultural roots of his people. Where did you get the idea that he limits everything to the culture of Communism?

Conficianism is one of the cultural roots of China, but he was raised a fully fledged Communist, and his early exposure to it was filtered through those eyes. Confucianism allows for love and worship and forgiveness. Mao's Red Brigade rather less so.

[dima_76557]

If it is explicit, yes. But that is as true of knowing the words and background to St Matthew's Passion as it is to knowing Mazeppa involves a horseride.

Neither would help very much to express the spiritual essence of the Mazeppa if they were approached with a cold intellectual analysis by someone who does not know the culture in which it was created, and under what circumstances. One should also know how this or that idea is expressed musically, how it is expressed in other art forms, etc., otherwise owners of the Culture will not understand what you are doing. The Mazeppa will sound "mechanical", "technical", "empty", etc. in their ears.

[j_menz]

Neither would help very much to express the spiritual essence of the Mazeppa if they were approached with a cold intellectual analysis by someone who does not know the culture in which it was created, and under what circumstances.

Surely that is as true, in the specific case of Mazeppa, of any modern European as of anyone else. The story of Mazeppa struck a chord with the early Romantics - poems by Byron and Hugo, paintings, music (not only by Liszt). They clearly got something out of it we no longer do.

[dima_76557]

Surely that is as true, in the specific case of Mazeppa, of any modern European as of anyone else. The story of Mazeppa struck a chord with the early Romantics - poems by Byron and Hugo, paintings, music (not only by Liszt). They clearly got something out of it we no longer do.

I added something to my previous post. If it is true for the Mazeppa by Liszt, then why isn't it true for Chopin's second sonata? I feel it is the key to the kind of understanding the OP is asking for.

[j_menz]

If it is true for the Mazeppa by Liszt, then why isn't it true for Chopin's second sonata?

Because Mazeppa is specifically program music, descriptive of a particular event. It aids the understanding to know what is being portrayed. There is no argument about what that is - Liszt was quite upfront about it.

The Chopin Sonata isn't like that - no event, no specific story. Anything you say about is is descriptive of your own experience of it, and the relationship of that to what Chopin meant is tangential at best - second hand, if you like.

In other words, Mazeppa explicitly attempts to musically portray a specific prior thing, which can also be explained in words (indeed, Hugo's words as this was Liszt's explicit source). These are things that went into the music.

Any words you say about the Chopin Sonata are not words that went into it, they are descriptive of what you get out of it.

[dima_76557]

The Chopin Sonata isn't like that - no event, no specific story. Anything you say about is is descriptive of your own experience of it, and the relationship of that to what Chopin meant is tangential at best - second hand, if you like.

In other words, Mazeppa explicitly attempts to musically portray a specific prior thing, which can also be explained in words (indeed, Hugo's words as this was Liszt's explicit source). These are things that went into the music.

Any words you say about the Chopin Sonata are not words that went into it, they are descriptive of what you get out of it.

We won't know for sure, of course, but what do we do in the context of the OP's problem, when the music in itself doesn't "speak" in musical terms? Is "Play something else", "Wait and see until you see the light" etc. helpful? The "funeral march" is generally accepted as being such, and the last movement is supposed to depict "the wind blowing through a graveyard" for most who analyzed and discussed this sonata. If that is true, then what is the "programmatic" link to the first and second movement?

[j_menz]

The "funeral march" is generally accepted as being such, and the last movement is supposed to depict "the wind blowing through a graveyard" for most who analyzed and discussed this sonata. If that is true, then what is the "programmatic" link to the first and second movement?

The Funeral March is marked Marche Funebre, so is pretty obviously such - I suspect OP already knows that, though. "The wind blowing through a graveyard" is, I suggest mere projection in the absence of any evidence of what Chopin's program was (or, indeed, whether he even had one).  And why need we find a programmatic link to the other two movements? What evidence is there that one even exists?

Is "Play something else", "Wait and see until you see the light" etc. helpful? - Not really, but it's the only truth. Truth isn't always helpful. Nor is an apparently helpful lie in the long run.

[dima_76557]

And why need we find a programmatic link to the other two movements? What evidence is there that one even exists?

Maybe because Chopin created the sonata as a whole work of art, albeit in four separate parts that are interrelated? He may not have said anything explicit about it, but he was a Romantic, and Romantics mostly had programs with stuff that exceeds purely musical/tonal values.

[swagmaster420x]

imo music is like poetry, and like poetry, music is an experience. though music/poetry may contain a particular meaning, hunting for the meaning instead of simply allowing yourself to sense the work is missing the point.

[dima_76557]

imo music is like poetry, and like poetry, music is an experience. though music/poetry may contain a particular meaning, hunting for the meaning instead of simply allowing yourself to sense the work is missing the point.

This may work if you play the work for yourself, but what if you have to communicate something to your listeners and you have no clear idea of what you want to say, or what the composer could have meant? Point in case:

Ruth Slenczynska, who studied piano with Rachmaninoff on his prelude in E flat major op. 23 no. 6 (no explicit subtitle or program mentioned). Listen to what the composer's instruction to her was on "how it should be played" (Rachmaninoff had very clear ideas about that, which he did not always write down explicitly), and ask yourself if you would be able to do anything with such a description:

If you do something else, you may miss the point, just as you can understand from Rachmaninoff's discussion of his prelude in B minor with Benno Moiseiwitsch:

Chopin used to make the same kind of remarks to his students, for example regarding the military polonaise, etc.

[outin]

P.S.: Your view of the Soviet era needs correction. The System was the System, but the people inside never changed; they carried on the culture that had existed before within the boundaries they were given.

Which of course explains why that experiment did not work that well...

I find many of the Asian cultures quite spiritual compared to my own, so I don't quite understand your idea. I would say most of my countrymen understand Chopin's sonata just as little as any Asian.

[dima_76557]

I find many of the Asian cultures quite spiritual compared to my own, so I don't quite understand your idea. I would say most of my countrymen understand Chopin's sonata just as little as any Asian.

I never said they are not spiritual! They are of a different spirituality, and these values clash as soon as any member of either culture tries him/herself on something that is part of that "foreign" culture. The same goes for youth all around the world in their own cultures. Most of them no longer have the cultural (and moral!) values their ancestors had, and this explains your second point very well.

[outin]

I never said they are not spiritual! They are of a different spirituality, and these values clash as soon as any member of either culture tries him/herself on something that is part of that "foreign" culture. The same goes for youth all around the world in their own cultures. Most of them no longer have the cultural (and moral!) values their ancestors had, and this explains your second point very well.

But of course this is the same with Asian cultures. Even if to an outsider it seems that their offspring follows traditions better. In any given culture there are those who are open and understanding to outside influences and those who are not. Even if those influences have been absent for some time, it takes surprisingly little time for things to change.  My cultural environment has been completely turned over in a few decades and the change is in no way destricted to the youth.

It's just as impossible to satisfyingly explain musical understanding or preference by cultural origin as it is by biological factors.

[dima_76557]

It's just as impossible to satisfyingly explain musical understanding or preference by cultural origin as it is by biological factors.

Tradition is a factor, you know, and a very strong one in this case. As a performer/artist/composer in this particular kind of music, you cannot understand your present and the possibilities for the future if you have not deliberately lived through the cultural heritage of your past, not only intellectually, but also in other aspects.

[outin]

Tradition is a factor, you know, and a very strong one in this case. As a performer/artist, you cannot understand your present and the possibilities for the future if you have not deliberately lived through the cultural heritage of your past, not only intellectually, but also in other aspects.

It is a factor but it is quite often overestimated. If you look at the big picture, the kind of understanding and appreciation of the "Western art music" you talk about only applies to a very small fraction of the population in the West as well. I believe in certain areas it has a bigger role, but mostly it's just a thing for a small group, sometimes referred as elite.

It's amazing really how fast the influences from other cultures have taken over in many cultures. One could of course claim that people do not really deeply understand the imported musical styles (rap being a good example considering it's roots), but I'd say some do better and some do worse. Just like it is in it's country of origin.

[dima_76557]

It is a factor but it is quite often overestimated.

Is it? I would say the reverse: it is heavily UNDERestimated.

If you look at the big picture, the kind of understanding and appreciation of the "Western art music" you talk about only applies to a very small fraction of the population in the West as well.

Isn't that why there are so many people who play the piano, but so few artists that really move people? Most think that you can just play the notes as required, simply read something superficially about the composer and the work you are going to play, and that's it.

EDIT: I forgot that by the latest standards, you also have to look impressive since nobody is listening anyway.

[outin]

Is it? I would say the reverse: it is heavily UNDERestimated.

Isn't that why there are so many people who play the piano, but so few artists that really move people? Most think that you can just play the notes as required, simply read something superficially about the composer and the work you are going to play, and that's it.

EDIT: I forgot that by the latest standards, you also have to look impressive since nobody is listening anyway.

I haven't been able to completely explain yet why some pianists move me and some don't. I don't think it's about their nationality, although I have to admit many are Russian. But not all

What is missing here is that we haven't really talked about what it means to "understand" music. Some part of it is about skill and technical knowledge. That can be learned and taught. It's easier if one has been exposed to it since early childhood, but where you live doesn't really make a difference.

The rest is more vague. Are we talking about understanding the (assumed) feelings of the composer, the environment they worked in or their background? None of this can be replicated anyway when we talk about people dead for over 100 years. But it is still possible to experience poverty, oppression, disease, rootlessness, happiness, love or whatever we might imagine being behind the composer's ideas. And sometimes it doesn't have to be actual physical experience, certain people actually have the ability to experience things in their mind only.

Maybe I could claim that I understand Chopin better than most because I actually know how it feels to have a disease where you cannot breath 

[dima_76557]

I haven't been able to completely explain yet why some pianists move me and some don't. I don't think it's about their nationality, although I have to admit many are Russian. But not all

What is missing here is that we haven't really talked about what it means to "understand" music.

I think that music speaks for itself (if it is good and the performer knows what he/she is doing and has something to communicate); it is "understood" by everyone on an intuitive level. The emotional "charge", however, is culturally, spiritually determined. If it is "understood" in this context, it works like psychotherapy; liberating, confirming, whatever the listener needs. If it is "understood" in a limited musical, structural, tonal, intellectual context, then it can turn out to be unbearable punishment for both wanna-be-performers and listeners.

[outin]

I think that music speaks for itself (if it is good and the performer knows what he/she is doing and has something to communicate); it is "understood" by everyone on an intuitive level. The emotional "charge", however, is culturally, spiritually determined. If it is "understood" in this context, it works like psychotherapy; liberating, confirming, whatever the listener needs. If it is "understood" in a limited musical, structural, tonal, intellectual context, then it can turn out to be unbearable punishment for both wanna-be-performers and listeners.

I still feel you do not (want) to see the whole picture. There is no homogenous culture in any given country, not on the level of the individuals. Two people growing up at the same "culture" can have nothing in common when it comes to their experiences. So how could they develope similar cultural or "spriritual" mindset? A priviledged urban Asian is as far away from a farmworker in the poor countryside as he may be from a Westener. It is exactly the same here. Considering this and the fact that research has already proven that we are genetically often closer to someone living on the other side of the world, what is left? Only the fact that it is statistically more likely to share past experiences with someone in your own country. That has nothing to do with understanding the music written by someone lifetimes ago in a completely different culture to ours. It only that you can relate better to the way that person understands the music because you are more likely to understand it the same way. Which can be quite far away from the way the composer understood it. In fact, you have no way of knowing whether the Asian player actually has an understanding closer to the composer's, just more far away from the modern Western one.

I have to admit I don't know what you mean by spiritual, that's a concept I avoid because it doesn't have any established meaning.

[dima_76557]

@ outin

It is not about the type, amount, etc. of good or bad experiences people go through that makes the difference; they are virtually the same all of the world regardless of culture. It's the philosophy they have about what happens to them in terms of justice/injustice, life, death, reward, punishment, hope, despair, religion, worship, individual, group, love, hate, who is responsible for everything, etc. etc. that makes cultures so different. Classical music has most of its roots in Western religious and philosophical thinking, etc., and the cultural gap to be filled for people from other cultures is considerable if they want to express themselves in works of art from the West (and be understood by Westerners!), just as Westerners will have more than a hard time to "get" all the subtleties in something typically Eastern.

[outin]

@ outin

It is not about the type, amount, etc. of good or bad experiences people go through that makes the difference; they are virtually the same all of the world regardless of culture. It's the philosophy they have about what happens to them in terms of justice/injustice, life, death, reward, punishment, hope, despair, religion, worship, individual, group, love, hate, who is responsible for everything, etc. etc. that makes cultures so different. Classical music has most of its roots in Western religious and philosophical thinking, etc., and the cultural gap to be filled for people from other cultures is considerable if they want to express themselves in works of art from the West (and be understood by Westerners!), just as Westerners will have more than a hard time to "get" all the subtleties in something typically Eastern.

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. I do not think the difference in religious and philosophical ideas of the time and place are as large or as  important as you see it. Much of it is just on the cover. What really happens in people's minds is quite diverse and born from a complex combination of experience, social interaction and individual perception.

[mjames]

It's isn't about. It just is.

Perfect response.

[nyiregyhazi]

I think it's about Chopin's struggle with death, or better even: his fear for death. Each movement gives us a different "act", a different situation so to speak with which the individual has to cope spiritually, sometimes even seeing hallicunations. One cannot understand this with intellectuality alone. One has to know the Western culture very well to feel what's in there, a culture based on worship, love, forgiving, appreciation of each person as an individual as keys to overcome the fears of life.
I hope the following analysis helps you somehow, but you have to keep in mind: words are just words, and some things cannot be described in words.
https://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/composition/detail/id/92

I agree that this is the theme. However, nobody should need to be told that to appreciate it. If they don't like the work simply by listening, either this is not a theme that resonates with them or its just not a piece for them.

Also, I'm neither remotely religious nor a militant atheist. If religion were any issue, all western music would be lost on me. I prefer the concept of "intonatsia" (the ability to inflect intervals with a "speaking" quality and to reflect harmonic tension etc.) to vague discussion of culture. Culture means nothing if you do not understand how to draw sound out. It's a matter of hearing good singers and instrumentalists and having the urge to make the piano more than a mere piano. Nobody is devoid of emotions altogether. It's whether we can express them via understanding of musical language.

[dima_76557]

Also, I'm neither remotely religious nor a militant atheist. If religion were any issue, all western music would be lost on me.

I didn't mean to say that you have to be super-religious to understand the problems in the piece. At least one should have a feeling/intuition for the influence religion and philosophy had on Chopin, the more so since he was a Romantic, and the main concern of the Romantics seems to have been only their dear selves and their personal struggles with life's deepest problems, expressed through both extreme emotion and imagination.
P.S.: I just played the piece through: everything in that sonata heads towards that Funeral March, which was, by the way, composed before all the other movements. The "wind on the graveyard" idea of the 4th movement is credited to Anton Rubinstein.

[awesom_o]

At least one should have a feeling/intuition for the influence religion and philosophy had on Chopin, the more so since he was a Romantic, and the main concern of the Romantics seems to have been only their dear selves and their personal struggles with life's deepest problems, expressed through both extreme emotion and imagination.

Chopin saw himself as a classicist.

[dima_76557]

Chopin saw himself as a classicist.

He certainly found a perfect balance between Romantic emotionalism and Classical purity, no doubt about that.

[j_menz]

Chopin .... was a Romantic, and Romantics mostly had programs with stuff that exceeds purely musical/tonal values.

Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. What evidence do you have that there was such a thing here?

[awesom_o]

What evidence do you have that there was such a thing here?

Why bother with evidence when you can just have an opinion without any?

[j_menz]

Why bother with evidence when you can just have an opinion without any?

Credibility?

[awesom_o]

Credibility?

I think that comes more from posting in the audition room than citing evidence

[j_menz]

I think that comes more from posting in the audition room than citing evidence

That depends entirely on the argument in question.  A creditable performance of, shall we say by way of example, a Chopin Etude says nothing about whether an assertion that Brahms and Clara Schumann were more than friends, say, is credible.

In this case, an ability to play this sonata neither supports nor detracts from an argument about whether it was intended to be programmatic.

[dima_76557]

Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. What evidence do you have that there was such a thing here?

Is the unmistakable mood of the music itself not good enough evidence?

[j_menz]

Is the unmistakable mood of the music itself not good enough evidence?

If it was unmistakably programmatic, you would have been able to say what that program was. And no-one would disagree with you. And everyone would have seen it ages ago. And Chopin might have mentioned it.

So, no.

[dima_76557]

If it was unmistakably programmatic, you would have been able to say what that program was. And no-one would disagree with you. And everyone would have seen it ages ago. And Chopin might have mentioned it.

So, no.

Not so in spiritual affairs. There, you need no "evidence" to know that something is true; you just know. The music speaks itself to those who are receptive enough. Putting a subtitle on top would have been too trivially "Romantic" for a purist like Chopin, who never did that.

P.S.: If that is really not enough for you, you can always check Chopin's biography, check when the sonata was written, and in what order, check the mood in his correspondence and make the link.

[j_menz]

Not so in spiritual affairs. There, you need no "evidence" to know that something is true; you just know.

And so have said heretics down the ages.

The music speaks itself to those who are receptive enough.

Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with what Schumann said of it.

I have never said it didn't speak, just that it didn't speak of what can be said in words.

And even you know that "those who are receptive enough" is the line of a scoundrel, not a debater.

[dima_76557]

Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with what Schumann said of it.

So, what *did* he say of it that could make me change my mind?

[j_menz]

So, what *did* he say of it that could make me change my mind?

That in this Sonata, Chopin had  "simply bound together four of his most unruly children".

I suspect you will find cause not to change your mind, though.

[dima_76557]

That in this Sonata, Chopin had  "simply bound together four of his most unruly children".

I suspect you will find cause not to change your mind, though.

I have read that before, and I'm still willing to think about what that could mean. It might have something to do with the construction of the sonata form as such (not exactly according to the established rules), though, not with the contents. I guess that even Schumann must have felt that the macabre chords the sonata begins with and the many sinister and demonic passages throughout the whole sonata spell nothing particularly joyous.

[j_menz]

It might have something to do with the construction of the sonata form as such (not exactly according to the established rules), though, not with the contents.

Doubtful. It largely follows the form of Beethoven's Sonata No 12 in Ab, Op 26. The Beethoven has a set of variations as it's first movement, but Chopin's replacement is a conventional sonata form movement. Schumann would undoubtedly have been aware of this.

Schumann may also have been aware of the compositional history of the piece. It was written over about two years, with the third movement (the funeral march) being written first. It's final collection into a sonata may have had less to do with overarching plan than recognition that the movements (originally separate pieces) more or less fit the above pattern.

[dima_76557]

Chopin's replacement is a conventional sonata form movement.

It was so "conventional" that it confused virtually all critics of Chopin's time. Everybody thought that Chopin simply couldn't handle large forms because the separate parts seemed to "lack cohesion". Again, your Schumann quote refers to the structure, not to the (emotional) contents. If wikipedia is not a reliable source for you (they quote Mikuli), then I'm sure some others can be located. We are still faced with an OPINION, though. If you require "evidence" for something that can't be seen, then we'd better stop this conversation.