The TIME Barrier.

luka

Well-known member
these are zones of feeling, mentation, mapping out forests, deserts, polar wastes
regions of consciousness.
 

luka

Well-known member
There’s always the impossible to shake off feeling that certain rare records correlate to certain rare modes of consciousness. That music is a map of consciousness in its various states. And exploring the edges of music is somehow skin to exploring the edges of consciousness. To stop exploring music is to stop exploring existence. A way of closing the net curtains. Books too, to find the book which forces you to expand the brain box, like a snake dislocating it jaw to swallow a large animal. Anything else is closing the net curtains, or pressing the same pleasure button for the same predictable stimulus. Compulsive behaviour in other words, dull routine, insidious habit.
Habit change is a magical operation. It gives you more control over your own behaviour. Less compulsion, more choice.
 

CORP$EY

no mickey mouse ting
Kafka wrote:

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
 

CORP$EY

no mickey mouse ting
This is an interesting sort of idea to apply to music and music fandom, because most people seek out music (/books/art) which is like what they already like, not music which is nothing like what they already like. But then there is also the human addiction to novelty, and in the case of us dissensians, the constant desire for the next new thing, the music which doesn't just sound like something we've heard before (but at the same time probably shares something in common with what we've liked before).

(A side question that might be of interest to ponder is, when people do encounter art which isn't like what they do like, are they likely to have their minds changed by it, or their prejudices only reinforced?)

btw this is a good thing about radio, and to a lesser extent about the shuffle function - the pleasure of discovering something you weren't looking for.
 

luka

Well-known member
most people

most people are squares mate [ ] they replicate boring by being boring and the world arounds them turns grey
dont stop dreaming never stop beleiving
life is a rave and the world is a dancefloor
 

luka

Well-known member
an idea you find explicitly in rilke but is implicit in all poetry is that the outer world is externalised mind
and everything in it correlates to a state of consciousness
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the pleasure of discovering something you weren't looking for.

this has been replaced (for me, anyway) by the pleasure of discovering that are the best/weirdest/most notable examples of what I am looking for

I understand the appeal of the radio but at this point, life is short, time is limited, there's a lotta things to sort thru

plus there are so many things that you could spend multiple lifetimes and still not get to even half of them, so even if you know what you're looking for there are still always new things
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
it is interesting how the internet - availability of information - has a tendency to if anything narrow + reinforce people's beliefs thru self-curation

kinda suspect most people are more interested in believing they like to try new things than actually trying them
 

Leo

Well-known member
there have been times when i've not been into a particular work of art/art form/artist (album, music genre, film, painting, photography, etc.) but then been convinced to reevaluate and reconsider based upon the feedback of someone i really respect. in many of those cases, my opinion remained unmoved. but in some of them, i have "broken through" and come to like and appreciate that which hadn't previously.

off the top of my head...i was never a fan of stereolab, pet shop boys or "seinfeld" at the time of their emergence and popularity but was convinced through various sources to reconsidered them years later and found lots to enjoy and appreciate.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
Kafka wrote:

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

definition of great art - a traumatic experience you voluntarily put yourself through?

i think that applies to literature, film, theatre... there are films and novels that you end feeling "wish it were not so, but it must be so" (examples countless - McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Dream Life of Angels, Madame Bovary...)

not sure it works with music or visual arts

there is nothing traumatic or upsetting about e.g. "Marquee Moon" or Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony or In A Silent Way or "Neon Lights" or...

music can grant you feelings of glory or exultation or simple well-being / cleansing clarity that are not simply reassuring or mind-closing

is even such a thing as tragic music? tragedy is a property of the narrative form, and music isn't exactly narrative... certain most popular music is more like a loop of feeling, a frozen moment... it has to be repeatable


talking of repetition and spirit-dulling habits: what if you find your magic, in music, and it never stops working, and it's your magic, for you and your time. so there isn't a real impetus to expand your horizons simply because every expedition can lead as easily to non-magic as to a new kind of magic - indeed it's more likely to end up with empty hands

that's my prototype for a defense for e.g. endlessly playing old jungle and pirate tapes
 
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CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Narratives are imposed based on the cultural designation of notes and sounds having semiotic relationships to perception. So in the western world tyhe minor keys on a piano constantly internalized by children as 'the sad keys'. The "Blues" scale, etc.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think the sheer beauty of music (sometimes at its most life affirming and joyful) can be moving, even devastating, reminders of the transience of life. This is particularly obvious with the work of artists who have died. The content isn't tragic but the experience is, in a way?
 

droid

Well-known member
This entire thread is about context, its virtually impossible to disentangle context from listening except under certain circumstances; raving euphoria, adolescence, stoned bliss etc.

The time barrier is in itself a self imposed cognitive narrative, so experiencing music in a tragic sense because of personal context, knowledge about artists or circumstances, nostalgia... is entirely valid as in the mind of the listener these narratives are inextricably linked to the sonics themselves in a fettering of intangible concept and intangible object.
 

luka

Well-known member
the funny thing is if the prose was more stylised and self-aware craner could have written it

The witty, stylish, emancipated women of 1930s and ’40s movies liked and admired men and did not denigrate them. Carole Lombard, Myrna Loy, Lena Horne, Rosalind Russell and Ingrid Bergman had it all together onscreen in ways that make today’s sermonizing women stars seem taut and strident. In the 1950s and ’60s, austere European art films attained a stunning sexual sophistication via magnetic stars like Jeanne Moreau, Delphine Seyrig and Catherine Deneuve.

The movies have always shown how elemental passions boil beneath the thin veneer of civilization. By their power of intimate close-up, movies reveal the subtleties of facial expression and the ambiguities of mood and motivation that inform the alluring rituals of sexual attraction.

But movies are receding. Many young people, locked to their miniaturized cellphones, no longer value patient scrutiny of a colossal projected image. Furthermore, as texting has become the default discourse for an entire generation, the ability to read real-life facial expressions and body language is alarmingly atrophying.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Havent read whole thread, largely agree with what luke and barty were saying about jazz, but what about blues? Ive been listening to blues on and off for a long time and found I can go much further back than with jazz. I only hit the invisible barrier with charley patton and I think that was more to do with the sound quality rather than the actual music.
 
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