Luke Jeffery - Recollection or Fresh Experience?

In class on April 23, we discussed music, specifically concerning Van Der Leeuw's work. He posits that we experience things twice, first in nature and secondly as we see something, we recall the image we first saw.  He defines these first experiences as those occurring in the "uninterpreted life," which has no meaning because it is not related to anything else.  This second type of experience he defines as the "transformed life," which is when we associate our surroundings with memories of images.  This is interesting in light of the Platonic understanding of recollection in which Plato described our experiences in light of information which we recall from a past time.  For Van Der Leeuw, we must experience these things first before we can recall them, which is a uniquely different approach than Plato who believes we have always known these things. I'm interested in this whole process and wonder if we will ever be able to resolve this philosophical difficulty or if it will continue to be a matter of opinion. Regardless, Van Der Leeuw's insight allows us to think about our experiences in the everyday and how we process our surroundings. It is informative to be able to think of these surroundings in the context of other experiences that we may have had with similar objects or people.