s_clover said:
tame it by making it something that feels less private and more able to be shared and shaped and discussed.
actually i take it as axiomatic that music is most powerful when experienced with and alongside others
i don't have in the mind "teenager in bedroom w/ radio & angst"
again, i'm using rave as paradigm -- you might contest that paradigm
so perhaps by "private" you mean outside of language?
or do you in fact mean by "private" the teenager's bedroom testing ground?
s_clover said:
disarming the music is rearming the listener, yeah. but it takes a lot of work to get there, dig?
errrr, no -- a bit befuddled actually
s_clover said:
which isn't to say that changing the world shouldn't be done, but if say the music is parta how you structure your understanding of *why* you wanna change it isn't the actually changing it part also about getting *over* the music?
first, no matter how one engages or chooses to engage w/ music -- as rockist, as popist -- he cannot deny the seeming fact that this is a "low-level political choice" -- see especially the 2nd or 3rd pages of this thread
and indeed a persistent theme of this thread has been the notion of "fantasy" -- the person who engages with music retreats from the world of action and (real) politics into a fantasy world of record collecting and scene politics
second, it is abundantly clear that the adult world of politics and law and management is so far gone that its participants have no serious beliefs -- only desperate strategies for perpetuating their position -- or, if in opposition to the system, half-hearted measures whose only effect is to assuage their own conscience, i.e., make themselves feel good
that is, get into a conversation about politics with ANY person and i predict that person will soon waver and confess utter confusion about the best course of action in today's world
i realize i'm making a sweeping claim -- and to pursue it here would take this thread way off track
however, as k-punk recently said on his blog -- no one can imagine the end of capitalism
and yet i think we're pretty damn near to the breakdown of the world system
and once that happens new political positions will be elaborated
but until then -- does anyone seriously have a position
(a) severe austerity for america which would entail great material suffering w/ little by way of spiritual consolation
(b) naked imperialism -- i.e., though we have nothing of value to exchange for the world's products, we're not just going to vanish like the dispossessed -- no, we're going to deprive others of resources -- make them render unto caesar by one brute method or another
(c) crusade for a worldwide minimum wage as the best way to save global capitalism
(d) nay say doomsday as just a bad dream -- and continue to invest in parliamentarian politics as though it mattered
choose your position now!
of course what we have instead are pseudo politics
turning to music . . . .
music is not about "how you structure your understanding about why you wanna change the world" -- rather music is one of the few sites where politics still happen
that is, the SITE OF THE POLITICAL since the end of wwii has been music & art & culture
the traditional site of politics is today non-political -- not about serious alternatives
the alternatives that (at least some) people take seriously are in music
this is why i describe members of music scenes as willing to die for their claims
let's put the matter this way --
the rockist agrees w/ nietzsche -- serious belief is far superior to weak belief or no belief at all -- and so too the products of such belief as compared w/ other products
the popist wants to affirm lack of belief as descriptive of who we really are -- i.e., popism as the post-therapeutic position -- i.e., even though popism as ideology is prescriptive -- i.e., the drug that if swallowed whole has wondrously therapeutic effects, dispelling all fantasies about music
OR in the case of the k-punkian sublimating popist -- critical purchase as opposed to belief on the one side and drug therapy on the other
s_clover said:
on another note it hit me re: "fidelity to the event" -- that unless you reduce music to the live performance, yr. stuck with a v. hazy and confused notion of "event." Is the "event" of 50's "candy shop" the entire multi-month span of it playing out on charts worldwide and blossoming and then ppl. getting sick of it, and kids getting the words wrong to it, and then maybe an answer track by Lady Saw (or whoever) and then a skit on SNL 3 years later when he guest hosts that has a gag about a "candy shop" in there too? Or what then?
first, the event need not be a single instant in time
(although badiou -- whose idea i'm vulgarizing -- seems to have in mind a single diagonal that cuts across existing processes -- the diagonal that interrupts linear time -- or rather, i forget the details of badiou's theory as soon as put him back on my bookshelf -- what stays with me is the idea of fidelity to the event -- and the event as that which has changed everything -- at least for its subjects, i.e., those who are formed as subjects by the event)
so let's call the event the "conversion experience"
and let's say that the conversion experience may occur all at once -- paul being struck by lightning on the road to damascus
or that the conversion experience may occur as a series of encounters that together constitute a unified experience when viewed retrospectively -- or rather as viewed through the eyes of the believer
viewed from the outside and analytically, the conversion to rave may have occurred over a series of months -- and through a series of discrete small "e" events -- perhaps consisting of hearing a couple of rave tracks at your friend's house, then listening to pirate radio first time, then going to a rave, then reading a couple magazine articles, then talking to people who are part of the scene, etcetera
and then suddenly, at some point, you cross over -- you shed the old clothes and take on the new garments
you are now a believer -- and the conversion experience is for you the unified Event -- the Event that has formed you as a subject of its truth
you also raise the question of how to distinguish true events from false events
and that's a difficult question that can perhaps be taken up later on this thread -- though surely with no adequate answers
though i don't think 50 cent's "candy shop" could in any way be construed as an Event
it's simply a blip on the radar screen
a passing moment in hip hop
though you could perhaps argue that 50 cent is a subject of the truth of hip hop -- and that his works have a place in the process of hip hop's truth
others might call 50 cent a charlatan and his works cheap & disposable
and this is what i mean by music as a site for politics