The concept of overtones comes from music. Different instruments such as stringed-instruments, wind instruments and percussion do not play a pure note. Instead, when a note is played, different sound frequencies can be heard which give the instrument its character, timbre and color.
Also, communications between people can have overtones. Many years ago when the phone companies were analyzing conversations between people for the purpose of billing, they established that nothing being said, silence actually was communication.
As we go through life we meet many people whether in common family background, in business, in spiritual beliefs, life experiences. When we meet others who have this commonality with ourselves, we have an ease of understanding in the conversations we have with them.
Imagine trying to explain your childhood to someone who grew up differently than you. Some people grow up in foster homes, bouncing around from family to family, no security, with people who didn’t understand their needs. Imagine them trying to explain to a person who grew up in a secure stable home, loving family, their needs met and understood. Since there are no “overtones” of understanding, the conversation goes much slower because meanings of words aren’t shared and understandings sometimes of individual words have to be defined between persons to be able to have a meaningful conversation.
In the beginning, in conversations between people of different backgrounds, speaking the same language – say for example English, can be like two people, one who grew up in a fundamentalist English community talking to another who grew up speaking Tibetan in a Buddhist monastery village. How do they come to a meaningful conversation? How do they even get to the point that they need to develop a common understanding between them?
Here is a great article of physicist Richard Feynman trying to explain magnetism to a BBC interviewer.
Richard Feynman interview about magnetism
How do people share life experiences? How do they share ideas without a common experience, vocabulary? Death? Spirituality? Love? Health? Life Purpose? Business? Finances? Medicine Plant Ceremonies?
After my near death experience (NDE) at age 18 I was presented with a world that was totally different than what I had experienced before that time. I saw things in a ‘new light’. Different frequencies of light “overtones” were impacting how I saw my world. A lot of my life since that time in 1972 has been to expand and grow my understanding of the multi-dimensionality of life.
When you look at my art it changes depending upon the light frequencies you view it. It can be daylight, Ultraviolet light (this changes things quickly), a pure light color frequency, for example like red, blue, green. Not everything is seen in one frame of mind in different light: An experience or artwork viewed in one color frequency, or viewpoint when it can seen in a different color or viewpoint might present new insights and understandings. Where something doesn’t seem complete or maybe a mistake in one way of looking at it (a color, a viewpoint) becomes something different or more complete when seeing it a different way.