Paul Cooijmans: Independent Psychometitor; Administrator, The Giga Society; Administrator, The Glia Society (Part Two)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2015/07/08

ABSTRACT

Interview with Paul Cooijmans. Independent psychometitor and administrator of The Glia Society and The Giga Society. He discusses: 1986 to 1993 attendance at Brabants Conservatorium, acquisition of academic qualifications through studies in conservatory, composition and guitar, and additional qualifications in the middle of life including programming (2002), web design (2003-2004), CompTIA Network+ (2004, not certified), Cisco C.C.N.A. (2004), and Basic Bookkeeping (2006), and the interest for formal certification in the middle of life; written musical compositions with personal photography or movies, and other productions, published through YouTube, extensive productions on the main website, and inspiration for musical composition, photography and filming; and personal interests in Asperger’s disorder, composition, counterpoint, creativity, eugenics, genius, guitar, human quality, intelligence, justice, running, Tourette syndrome, and truth, with emphasis on the interests in Asperger’s disorder, eugenics, genius, and intelligence, and the development of these prominent, relatively varied, but focused, interests.

Keywords: administrator, Asperger’s disorder, Brabants Conservatorium, composition, conservatory, counterpoint, creativity, eugenics, genius, guitar, human quality, intelligence, justice, Paul Cooijmans, psychometitor, running, The Giga Society, The Glia Society, Tourette syndrome, truth, undergraduate studies, YouTube.

*Incomplete, common reference style listing without access dates.*

4. From 1986 to 1993, you attended Brabants Conservatorium.^[1] You earned one bachelor degree while studying “conservatory, composition and guitar.”^[2],[3] You have upgraded personal education with programming (2002), web design (2003-2004), CompTIA Network+ (2004, not certified), Cisco C.C.N.A. (2004), and Basic Bookkeeping (2006).^[3] What produced the interest in these areas of study for formal certification in the middle of life?^[5],[6]

By my own counting, I have two bachelor degrees, to wit one for guitar and one for composition, but I am uncertain if the conservatory counts that way too. The Netherlandic title is “baccalaureus” (abbreviated bc.) and the papers that go with it say I can call myself “Bachelor” (B.) in English. This was the highest degree possible at a conservatory at the time. The programming, web design, and network courses (CompTIA and Cisco) were taken because I was trying to find work in informatics. The bookkeeping course was to be able to do the bookkeeping for my own business, which I formally started in 2005.

5. You write musical compositions with personal photography or movies, and publish other productions, through YouTube.^{[7],[8],[9],[10],[11],[12],[13],[14],[15],[16],[17],[18],[19],[20],[21],[22],[23],[24],[25],[26],[27],[28],[29],[30],[31],[32],[33],[34],[35],[36]} You provide extensive productions on the main website too.^{[37],[38],[39],[40],[41],[42],[43],[44],[45],[46],[47],[48],[49],[50],[51],[52],[53],[54],[55],[56]} What provides inspiration for musical composition, photography, and filming for you?

The musical compositions are written to make others experience how I undergo life, or how my thinking goes, how it feels to be inside my head. I should emphasize that not all of my available compositions achieve this; it is hard to get musicians to play one’s music, so that of a huge part of my high-quality work there exist no recordings. The recordings that are available are mostly of pieces that I can play myself or could realize through MIDI, or of pieces that I wrote because my composition teacher now and then wanted me to write something more simple than my usual work, so that amateurs would be able to play it, and in those pieces I did not always succeed in getting my own sound idiom.

The inspiration for photography was the 1970s Netherlandic television series “Q en Q”, in which a boy by accident photographs a murder victim, not dissimilar to what happens in my favourite film “Blow up”. Photography has only been a hobby, I never reached any level of significance in it, and my talents do not seem to lie in visual-spatial fields. Actual filming I have never done, and I have never owned a film camera. The film “Liquidatie” was shot by a class mate, with me as the director, and almost all of my YouTube videos are collages of still photos. I made those videos primarily to make the music in it available through YouTube and thus reduce the amount of heavy M.P.3 sound files on my own web site. I could just put one photo over an entire composition and leave it at that, but that is too easy for me, I tend to want to make something special out of it, and even include labour-intensive stop-motion animation here and there.

The reason that many photos are of small objects is that my digital camera is from 2001 and only has two megapixels, which is not enough for landscapes or other big things. Macrophotography is what it does best. It still works on the original rechargeable battery.

6. According to LinkedIn – personal profile, your interests lie in Asperger’s disorder, composition, counterpoint, creativity, eugenics, genius, guitar, human quality, intelligence, justice, running, Tourette syndrome, and truth.^[57] How did these prominent, relatively varied, but focused, interests emerge throughout the years, including ones of some controversy in the modern world, e.g. Asperger’s disorder, eugenics, genius, and intelligence?^{[58],[59],[60]}

First, I would like to add that my original childhood interests lie in fields like astronomy and physics, as said in an earlier answer. While I have not formally studied those subjects, I have attended a number of lectures on astronomical topics over the years, and am looking at the relation between solar activity and human behaviour, which involves both astronomy and psychology.

The other interests emerged at various points in my life: Truth and justice (in the sense of righteousness) are innate dedications; I was born with absolute sense of justice and the inability to lie. This has everything to do with high intelligence, as logic, which is a faculty of intelligence, is the basis of righteousness. Life is an everlasting confrontation with lies, liars, and injustice, so these interests are inevitably stimulated daily whether one likes it or not. It took me decades to figure out that much of the lying, truth-denial, and injustice stems from ideological motivations, and that many believe in lies as a result of purposeful political indoctrination.

Guitar, composition, and counterpoint are music-related interests that began in puberty as already explained. Once having started playing guitar, composing was natural to me, and was the main motivation to learn to play. I was an autodidact until going to conservatory. Counterpoint, the technique of writing melody and polyphony (= multiple rhythmically independent melodies sounding at the same time) is the summit of the development of music. It started in the Middle Ages when Gregorian chant was embellished with extra voices, resulting in organum, cantus firmus technique, Ars antiqua, Ars nova, and then Renaissance polyphony, the highest and purest form of music. Although still practised and further developed in the baroque era, the harmonic aspect was becoming too important then, and after Bach it has really only gone downhill. This deterioration from roughly the Renaissance to the present day can be observed in other art forms too, especially and conspicuously in visual art and architecture. I link this to a decrease of visual-spatial ability in Western peoples. Musical ability is somehow related to that, in the brain.

In music, melody (= notes sounding after each other) corresponds to thinking, while harmony (= tones sounding at the same time) corresponds to emotion (do notice that I avoid the word “feeling” here, as that would create a confusion with the tactile sense and other forms of physical sensation). The decadence of polyphony into music with more emphasis on harmony, eventually resulting in homophony (= one melody accompanied by harmonies) corresponds to a decline of raw intelligence and overvaluation of emotion. Nowadays, virtually all the music one hears is strictly homophonic, and can be appreciated and created by persons of quite limited ability, as one may observe daily in the popular media.

Interest in the Asperger and Tourette syndromes arose because I appeared to have those conditions. Regarding Tourette, this became clear to me in my teenage years when I saw someone with Tourette in a television program, and at once recognized I had that too. I had been having tics since about age six. I have never received the diagnosis though, because I mainly have the tics when alone. They stay mostly away in the company of others, so a psychiatrist can not see them, and a diagnosis requires the tics having been observed by a professional. This lacuna in the diagnostic practice is a point of concern, as is the underestimation of the physical damage caused by tics. While the psychosocial problems of Tourette receive attention, it is less known that tics persisting for decades may damage or wear out the pertinent parts of the body, in my case the teeth, jaw joints, and neck. And any damage or wear of the neck may ultimately have neurological consequences, including paralysis and death.

Of Asperger’s disorder I only became aware in the late 1990s, and, as with Tourette, immediately understood that it could explain many of my experiences and traits, which I had hitherto put down to either psychological trauma or to a lack of intellectual peers. Unlike with Tourette, doctors had no problem recognizing these symptoms in me. Interesting about Asperger is its possible relation to creativity; a thing that worries me is its confusion with autism. In fact, in the current diagnostic manual, the Asperger label is even absent, due to a consensus among psychiatrists that Asperger and autism are identical conditions, which I believe is a mistaken view.

Running is an interest that began when I was 21, in bad shape, and too heavy. Since graduating from secondary school I had not had much exercise any more, as my prior physical activities had consisted of gymnastics class and bicycle rides to and from school. While I had always been bad at gymnastics, running was the only thing I was good at, and around age 16, I ran 100 metres in 13.5 seconds at school. There was a boy who belonged to an athletics club and was faster than I; at some point he claimed to be a psychic medium and predicted I would once be abducted by a U.F.O. He advised me to stay in good shape to be able to endure what would happen then. Well, having become 21, I finally took that to heart. I remember the first time I went out to run as an adult in 1986; I ran about 1500 metres slowly, stopped, turned around, and ran the same distance back. Laurel and Hardy were on television when I got home, I think it was “A chump at Oxford”. Running improved my health and shape a lot, and is certainly the best single thing one can do for self-improvement.

Late 1988 I got the idea to compete in a local 5 km race to be held in April 1989. I became 11th in 18:44, which was surprisingly good, and ever since I have been trying to do well in races when I get the chance. It would take until 2007 to improve my 5 km time to 18:39 though, as I tend to get problems with the kinetic apparatus that hold me back. In 2014, I learnt of a training method that seemed to agree with me and began to apply it. My latest race was in April 2015, 3.8 km in 14:15 (first place). My running now consists almost exclusively of interval training of moderate intensity, and I have also switched to forefoot landing and am transitioning to minimalist shoes.

Intelligence, creativity, genius, human quality, and eugenics are fields of interest that came forth from the test-related activities and studies of psychometrics since 1994. Human evolution is another such interest.

[1] See Cooijmans, P. (n.d.). Paul Cooijmans.

[2] Ibid.

[3] See Cooijmans, P. (n.d.). Detailed personal information.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] For those with complete interest in personal information, the article entitled Detailed personal information provides additional resources on Mr. Cooijmans. In addition, and as stated in the core of the interview, there exist thorough representations of personal views within the website.  This interview cannot provide the whole suite of interests and information within the question and response format.  However, and in light of that consideration, this interview, through a separate venue, might perform a complementary role to the general research and background information in his own resources, e.g. websites, articles, music, photography, and others.

[7] A select set of footnotes relevant to the compositions by Mr. Cooijmans following this one.

[8] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2011, November 23). Fugue#2.

[9] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2012, January 2). Fugue #1.

[10] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2011, November 5).  Fugue #3.

[11] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2011, December 14]. Jan met de pet.

[12] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2014, June 9). Sanctus (motet).

[13] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2013, November 29). Fourth miserable Paul Paulmans blues.

[14] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2014, February 14). Chromatic Phantasy.

[15] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2013, November 8). Third miserable Paul Paulmans blues.

[16] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2013, March 7). Second miserable Paul Paulmans blues.

[17] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2012, March 22). First miserable Paul Paulmans blues.

[18] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2012, January 20). Canon, 2-part, d Dorian (1987).

[19] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2011, December 22). If music and sweet poetry agree.

[20] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2011, December 12). Ut !.

[21] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2011, November 12). Anti-hero.

[22] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2011, October 26). Composition, dedicated to Pietje.

[23] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2009, April 21). Composition, dedicated to the singing of a very strange little bird.

[24] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2009, April 21]. Fugue, dedicated to apathy.

[25] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2008, December 25). Absurd composition in plusminus B flat.

[26] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2009, January 5). Liquidatie (fragment).

[27] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2008, December 18). New Amsterdam Times – Computer beats Vagant.

[28] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2014, December 14). I wonder….

[29] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2012, December 29). Field of eternal integrity – introduction.

[30] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2011, April 11). Walking with herniated disk L5-S1.

[31] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2011, November 29). For who loves truth, the garrote called “life” is daily tightened a turn.

[32] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2010, May 16). Murine Dinner.

[33] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2008, December 29). En plezier doen.

[34] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2008, December 17). Flying rhomb #0, Autumn 2001.

[35] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2008, December 13). Flying rhomb #2, December 2008.

[36] See [Paul Cooijmans] (2008, December 13). Flying rhomb #1.

[37] See Cooijmans, P. (2015). Compositions by Paul Cooijmans.

[38] See Cooijmans, (n.d.). op. -3, 1982-1983: Introduction (played before “Words”).

[39] See Cooijmans, (2001). Early Guitar Compositions.

[40] See Cooijmans, (1987). op. 10, 1987-1989: Christ lag in Todesbanden (Motet in Renaissance style, 2-part, in e Frygian, 1987).

[41] See Cooijmans, (1987). op. 10, 1987-1989: Allein Gott (Motet in Renaissance style, 2-part, in a Aeolian, 1987).

[42] See Cooijmans, (1987). op. 10, 1987-1989: O bone Jesu (Motet in Renaissance style, 2-part, in g Dorian, 1987.

[43] See Cooijmans, (1987). op. 10, 1987-1989: Agnus Dei (Motet in Renaissance style, 2-part, in d Dorian, 1987).

[44] See Cooijmans, (1987). op. 10, 1987-1989: Asperges me (Motet in Renaissance style, 3-part, in g Dorian, 1987).

[45] See Cooijmans, (1987). op. 10, 1987-1989: Kyrie (Motet in Renaissance style, 3-part, in G Myxolidian, 1987).

[46] See Cooijmans, (1987). op. 10, 1987-1989: Ricercar #1 in Renaissance style (3-part, in e Frygian, 1987).

[47] See Cooijmans, (1987). op. 10, 1987-1989: Ricercar #2 in Renaissance style (3-part, in d Dorian, 1987).

[48] See Cooijmans, (1987). op. 10, 1987-1989: Ricercar #3 in Renaissance style (3-part, in g, 1987).

[49] See Cooijmans, (1990). op 12b, 1990: Tja.

[50] See Cooijmans, (1989). op. 13, 1989: First to third composition for piano.

[51] See Cooijmans, (1991). op. 21, 1991: “Easy introduction” to the art of advanced music-making
4-part setting, instruments undefined + 3 voices, percussion, piano 3:45 Recording of middle part.

[52] See Cooijmans, (1991). op. 21A, 1991: “That’s a long story and the sting is in the tail…”
choir.

[53] See Cooijmans, (n.d.). op. 21b.: Ick ging op eenen morgen.

[54] See Cooijmans, (1993). op. 34A, 1993: 2-part setting of “Mijn hertze en can verbliden niet”.

[55] See Cooijmans, (1995). op.i (unnumbered), 1995 Educational pieces: Blues (guitar).

[56] See Cooijmans, (n.d.). Later work, op. 41, 2004: Glia Society Canon.

[57] See Cooijmans, P. (n.d.). Paul Cooijmans.

[58] See Cooijmans, P. (n.d.). GAIA: Gifted Adult’s Inventory of Aspergerisms.

[59] See Cooijmans, P. (n.d.). Straight talk about asperger syndrome.

[60] See Cooijmans, P. (2010, September). Human degeneration.

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