Beyond Soul.

Corpsey said:

I was pondering some of what was said in this thread recently and wondering if the fact of where I grew up made it somehow more possible for me to appreciate Mozart than someone who grew up in an urban hellscape. Not just because of my class (as Luka says, I'm on the lower end of middle class, and a lot of people who grew up in London, say, would be as or more well off than I was), but because of the landscape. Open fields, gently rolling hills, clear blue skies, stars at night - some might say a banal landscape, certainly not a hive of cultural activity, but a place where a sort of pre-modern romanticism can still flourish. And what was said in this thread (can't remember by who) - Mozart's music, or any pre-modernist classical music, is about harmony, unbroken melodies, structure, cycles. A slower pace of life. Perhaps I'm able to believe in peacefulness and serenity more than somebody who rarely saw an unimpeded horizon growing up, somebody surrounded by constant advertising, traffic, litter, homelessness, crime, etc.

Is 'soul' antipathetic to urbanity, in particular? (And has the internet made city-dwellers of us all?)

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Yes and yes. Turkish classical music could never go fully atonal for instance because of the way it doesn't use counterpointt and its compositional structure involving more quartertonal and smaller steps. It's a heavily monophonic melodic music. yet its almost non-existent now and any attempt to revive it would be utterly quixotic. I also think Hindustani classical is a bigger thing in the west than it is in the streets of Delhi or Calcutta.

patty can sneer all he likes but none of my south asian mates are into Shivkumar Sharma or Ali Akbar Khan really. You can't say they are brainwashed by the majors though. I mean that's only ever a half truth isn't it.

The internet and id-pol has made thinking about social positioning too drastically vicious. It's a game of 5D chess where you look at your roles in society based on birth and access that were thrust upon you before you could have conscious thoughts about the world beyond basic desire to meet needs. Class, Career, Race, Gender, Sexuality, Wealth, so-on-and-such forth. It happens even here where we have to remember to be mindful of Web or third, who clearly take themselves more seriously than me or Barty. Me and Barty aren't on similar class lines I'm guessing (which is even further thrown askew b/c as well class doesn't have the same connotations in the US as the UK. I can't tell you how many people in this country have barely pennies to scrape together and they'll insist that they're in The Middle Class) but! we share an irreverence of the self that Corpsey lacks, yet third and Web also lack and when we gesture to that can often fall flat.

Corpse is really self-conscious that he got access to the right books, to moments of luxury, to Difference, and now he's fixated on what fuels those desires and what makes him the way he is. Is he good or bad for doing so? And that's a healthy question to ask, but the danger is making it a block. Ultimately the reality is there are more people who are unconscious of that or even consciously Weaponize those things. "Maybe if you fucking plebs listened to Real Music like Mozart once in a while"

But ofc. then you study classical music and you realize Baroque is all math wank shit, dentist music muso nonsense. You realize that Beethoven is basically the goonish 3 chord rock of his day, a la The Ramones or smth. Granted maybe this is me and I strive for being an Objective Hater as much as I do have my interests and passions. I admittedly listen to and enjoy Carly Rae Jepsen from time to time and also have numerous criticisms as her that are not Patty's where 'soul' comes into the field because it's an affectation and a label and a pose due to the nature of a lot of this being pop music no matter how far away we try to go with it. It's like Jay-Z telling Kanye West that his beats were 'so soulful' or whatever... fucking nonsense, but you get what he Meant. You understand the signifiers of soul he's pushing out there for people to receive.

Re: the funk supplanting soul thing - I think Prince was exemplary of this, and perhaps explains why I've never felt able to really connect with his music, as much as I admire and enjoy some of it. The emotion in his songs feels like a parody of emotion, somehow ironised. I guess the same was true of Michael Jackson later on, but in his earlier music ('Rock with You' e.g.) there felt like something guileless, naive and heartfelt about his music...

sadmanbarty said:

You fell out with a friend over their writing style?

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Yes cos they were in another country and whenever they wrote they couldn't help but to adopt the tone of talking down to people always. I don't think they realised it. which ties into Crowley's point above. they were probably even more conscious of their class positionality than any of us on this bord but they were so irreverent, (whilst feigning compassion) as white people tend to be, that this consciousness didn't serve as a mechanism of improvement but an actual block.

sadmanbarty said:

Your whole communism as aesthetic perimeters thing is just a disguised form of this

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It's not just aesthetic though is it? I'm coming for yer justin beiber mates, i told you last night. no gak = no shamanism from moi.

I make no secret of being for violent revolution. blood will be spilt. Just like it is not a shame for any man to confess his most kinky fantasies in public and in his writing, no communist should be afraid to admit that they have any tolerance for the arbitrary clap trap known as resolving questions of a tactical nature through debate. If we apply the wrong tactics (which we will do many times) we have objectively and scientifically erred.

sadmanbarty said:

Your whole communism as aesthetic perimeters thing is just a disguised form of this

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alright dr. Lacan. your contrarianism is also a disguise for you liking anti-pop consordium, el-p, and aesop rock back in the day.

should go a little more upscale, a nice sweater from COS.

oi talk to me you dirty old rotter you throw a bomb in our midst and then remain conspicuously silent this is like the stabbed in the back 1918 german myth again. the secret elite concealing their perverting marxism under the guise of anti-marxism.

Barty is mischief incarnate

sadmanbarty said:

Your whole communism as aesthetic perimeters thing is just a disguised form of this

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Alright, I'll fucking bight because you've got me in a mood now. I actually have legitimate reasons for self-loathing, at least far more legitimate ones than our lawyer. Had I had vision and been able bodied I'd probably driving around london with my mates, chatting up girls, getting the back of my hands tattooed, holding down a good job or maybe even being your stereotypical entrepreneur and probably would have never even fucking heard of Omni Bloody Trio. If this is some kind of middle class superiority of taste, then, yeah, so what? It's not as if people ever came over to ours and said this shit has gotta stop third has to be given chances to develop his life without spiralling into drug and alcohol addiction. And you know what really gets to me? The fact that hardly anyone in our community wants to acknowledge these basic truisms, instead whenever I meet with anyone from the community it's all some superficial clap trap about me being intellectual. Because the unvarnished blind man is unforgiveable for them *in this city and this country.* We live in a right wing society. The right is not against hypocrisy so long as that hypocrisy does not upset the moral order.

So now, sit the fuck down and stop trying to play the role of the dissensus control freak.

corpsey is like oh chief keef violence and sexism and im like uh so fucking what? Certain members of my extended family shot each other to death in a bloodfeud. like, the self-loathing is hardly fucking comparable is it?

I should probably delete all of this but I'm so ready to punch your poxy shit eating face to a pulp. I mean you are a mate but I told you, some things are off limits in public.

an old pair trainers is ok, provided they're a hip vintage style and in decent condition.