Music that is psychedelic

[nomadthethird]

More superficially, masculinity-wise, there was that husky, hairy masculine thing in a lot of the more heavy late-60s, early 70s Psych and proto-Metal (think the scuzzy sleazebag seducer in "Magic Carpet Ride"), but personally I'm thinking that this was more the product of the sexual revolution than the psychedelic one, more a symptom of the times' reactionary indulgence (and all the weed). Eros is there sometimes in psychedelia, but really... anyone ever tried having sex while tripping? Not very pleasant.

But yeah, if anything, that kind of "vision" of psychedelia expands to a larger view where the Solar and Lunar are married (which calls to mind the symbolic androgeny of some Shamen). For all the Lunar irrationality, there's the Solar vision and clarity and revelation. Think of some of the jams. Jams could be described as expansive and receptive, but there's usually a central clarity/gaze intrepidly charging into the center, kind of a phallic singularity, the Logos eternally arriving towards a knowingness with the Other. For instance, for all the any-way-the-wind-blows philosophy of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia's "noodlings" were actually usually very on-point, summing up the central point of the Idea as it continued to change and expand.

Yeah I agree, sex on acid is not very good in the typical guy sense of "can I have an orgasm within 15 minutes", but people who have done acid tend to have a broader less categorical sexual/erotic outlook.

Here's the thing, in my mind, when it comes to the archetypes that you're describing-- I don't know if I'm sure that the phallic and the Solar match up very often. I mean I can see how the phallus is sort of like a Sun in that it's a focal point, a locus of power in all power relations (unfortunately), even still. Is this what you meant? I might not be following you.

 

[Chris]

Mr. Tea...nah, sorry... I wasn't even really offended, I knew you were just kidding there. I guess I can be a bit opinionated on music sometimes (hence this board), and felt inclined to defend my attempt to describe psych music in Jungian terms... silly hippie that I am.

 

[DJ PIMP]

And wanting to have sex is what - inherently masculine? Sorry if that's not what you're saying, but it's kind of how it's coming across (to me).

uhh, no. more observing that psychedelia exists within a broader set of gender politics.

sex and tripping is all gravy in my books...

 

[nomadthethird]

yeah, well that's it, it's like cock-rock only wobbly, or prog or psy-trance or basically anything that becomes a phenom and commoditized... it becomes competetive... heirachy, posession, ordering, neutered through extremes.

i also think saying psychedelics are post-gender or more feminine that masculine is a crock of shit. look at 60s hippies. i'm sure there were a variety of intentions floating around but really people did a lot of fucking under whatever kind of guise you want to put it.

at least, it certainly doesn't gel with my experience. i've been tripping for real and i'm still basically a tiny, tiny brain attached to a big bag of nuts.

No one is saying that you become a woman and somehow less "manly" or whatever from tripping. The point is bigger than that.

The point is that the psychedelic experience is about tuning into frequencies and receiving them, rather than just putting them out. In terms of traditional gender norms, this is considered the "artist's" role, a more "feminine" position or state of being, part of what was threatening to bourgeois values about the hippie movement was that the traditional distinction between "masculine/feminine" broke down in hippie culture, while FUCKING MULTIPLIED INDEFINITELY.

The hippies proved that you didn't need stupid prescribed gender roles to have hot sex. This was hugely offensive and threatening to your grandpa's way of life. (Get married to the first girl you accidentally knock up, then live miserably together in holy matrimony with the kids you screw up and send to therapy)

 

[nomadthethird]

Also, like Tea said, women don't have "less" of a sex drive than men do just because they are less aggressively inclined than men are in their sex drive. That attitude really bothers me (not that I'm saying you have it, just that it does exist, and where it exists, it's very destructive and annoying).

That was a huge part of the thinking behind the sexual revolution, actually.

 

[nomadthethird]

the bolded bit is totally wrong, from a technical standpoint anyway. Compression is distortion, the idea is to make things sound loud even when they aren't, so heavily compressed program material played back at high decibel levels is loud loudness.

But I took a minor in audio production in my MA program, and when we used compression, we used it so that we could get music to go louder in digital format without distorting at higher decibels.

 

[DJ PIMP]

the hippie movement was that the traditional distinction between "masculine/feminine" broke down in hippie culture, while FUCKING MULTIPLIED INDEFINITELY.

this is more what i was thinking of... you know, the issues around notions such as Free Love.

i wouldn't say that women have a lesser sex drive than men, but whether it's nature/nurture, there are differences.

 

[Chris]

Here's the thing, in my mind, when it comes to the archetypes that you're describing-- I don't know if I'm sure that the phallic and the Solar match up very often. I mean I can see how the phallus is sort of like a Sun in that it's a focal point, a locus of power in all power relations (unfortunately), even still. Is this what you meant? I might not be following you.

yeah, I wouldn't usually associate the Solar and phallic, other than them being commonly associated with traditionally male attributes (phallic understandably, but there were just as many, if not more, Solar goddesses)...

but in this case, I was using Solar as shorthand for Apollonian clarity and order. I guess this had to do with a couple observations... One being that for all the "Lunacy" of the psychedelic state, there's that clear vision, the feeling that "it all makes sense now", that there's a larger pattern and order. Another was basically that same idea, but about psychedelic music; that despite the sprawl and expansiveness (and I could, and maybe should have used Earth or water to represent this side, but I like the image of the marriage of the Sun/Moon to signify cosmic androgeny), the noise and chaos still spirals around the tonal center, is all harmonically in tune with the root frequency (unless it's atonal noise, but even that usually falls into a default key center) and however vaguely, in rhythm. And I guess I was picking up on a vaguely phallic sense of the order/light aspect, partly because music moves forward and thus the order aspect's "straight and narrow" fidelity to "the Truth" makes it phallic shaped in time, but also because of the nature of it's relationship with the emotive and expressive.

ugh I'm a fucking hippie

 

[nomadthethird]

this is more what i was thinking of... you know, the issues around notions such as Free Love.

i wouldn't say that women have a lesser sex drive than men, but whether it's nature/nurture, there are differences.

There are differences in behaviors, yes, and societal expectations for sexual behaviors among males and females, but when it comes to androgens and sexual feelings and sex drive, it's pretty clear scientifically that in the absence of cultural repression factors, women and men have differently expressed at times-- but equally "strong"-- sex drives.

Care to make a little wager right now?

I'll put down $100 right now that within 20 years a) we will no longer prescribe female androgens/hormones for birth control (due to the high risks for blood clots, heart disease, cancer, and so on, not to mention the fact that they lower libido), and in fact the FDA will yank them from the market, and b) we will discover that female sex drive has very little do to with testosterone and more to do with female androgens. As of now, many scientists still insist on studying female sex drive only in terms of testerone, which I know, know know know intuitively is wrong and I know they're going to discover that it plays only a minor role for women.

 

[nomadthethird]

yeah, I wouldn't usually associate the Solar and phallic, other than them being commonly associated with traditionally male attributes (phallic understandably, but there were just as many, if not more, Solar goddesses)...

but in this case, I was using Solar as shorthand for Apollonian clarity and order. I guess this had to do with a couple observations... One being that for all the "Lunacy" of the psychedelic state, there's that clear vision, the feeling that "it all makes sense now", that there's a larger pattern and order. Another was basically that same idea, but about psychedelic music; that despite the sprawl and expansiveness (and I could, and maybe should have used Earth or water to represent this side, but I like the image of the marriage of the Sun/Moon to signify cosmic androgeny), the noise and chaos still spirals around the tonal center, is all harmonically in tune with the root frequency (unless it's atonal noise, but even that usually falls into a default key center) and however vaguely, in rhythm. And I guess I was picking up on a vaguely phallic sense of the order/light aspect, partly because music moves forward and thus the order aspect's "straight and narrow" fidelity to "the Truth" makes it phallic shaped in time, but also because of the nature of it's relationship with the emotive and expressive.

ugh I'm a fucking hippie

Gotcha.

I don't know how I've avoided becoming a hippie really...

 

[DJ PIMP]

Care to make a little wager right now?

No, but that's interesting stuff. Any good articles?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Mr. Tea...nah, sorry... I wasn't even really offended, I knew you were just kidding there. I guess I can be a bit opinionated on music sometimes (hence this board), and felt inclined to defend my attempt to describe psych music in Jungian terms... silly hippie that I am.

Well you sounded quite offended, at least that's what I got from it.

Let me expand on why I said I didn't have too much time for the whole 'solar/phallic/male vs. lunar/menstrual/female' line of argument (the obvious similarity between the lengths of the lunar and menstrual cycles notwithstanding, I suppose). Taking that particular dichotomy as an example, it can seem 'obvious' to us that if one had to assign opposite genders to the sun and moon, they'd be male and female respectively (probably the best-known example being their association with yang and yin in Taoist metaphysics, which still has a lot of currency in China). But it's certainly not universal: in pre-Christian times the Germanic peoples had a sun goddess and a moon god. Tolkien not coincidentally followed the same prescription in his own creation myths, and to this day modern German has 'die Sonne' and 'der Mond'. Likewise it may seem 'intuitive' in a polytheistic belief system to have an active, potent sky god who fertilizes a receptive, maternal earth goddess with his spunky raindrops. Now this is indeed seen in the old Indo-European cosmologies, but in ancient Egyptian cosmology the roles are reversed; there's an earth god and a sky goddess. This is why I'm hesitant when people talk about 'archetypal' associations between the solar and the phallic, for example: isn't the whole point of archetypes that they're universal, after all? The idea of archetypal characters - yer hero, warrior, witch and so on - is a slightly different thing.

Edit: if I'm being totally honest another reason is that this kind of discourse seems to be bread and butter to the likes of 'feminist critiques of special relativity' and so on.

I'm sorry if it sounded like I was slagging off Cope, I've actually got a lot of time for him. I said he'd "talk your ear off" as a light-hearted comment on his 'etymosophies', which are sometimes rather spurious-sounding but sometimes have a real ring of truth to them - but they're generally interesting and, vitally, do not pretend to be rigorous scholarship.

 

[Mr. Tea]

b) we will discover that female sex drive has very little do to with testosterone and more to do with female androgens. As of now, many scientists still insist on studying female sex drive only in terms of testerone, which I know, know know know intuitively is wrong and I know they're going to discover that it plays only a minor role for women.

I heard about this woman who writes for a British broadsheet who volunteered to take a testosterone injection and she said it was nuts, she was practically having stop herself humping inanimate objects. How do you 'intuitively' know it's got nothing to do with female sex drive? I mean, it sounds like you've kind of decided that because you'd like it to be true, but if there's any evidence you point to be I'd be interested to see it.

 

[Chris]

Well you sounded quite offended, at least that's what I got from it.

Let me expand on why I said I didn't have too much time for the whole 'solar/phallic/male vs. lunar/menstrual/female' line of argument. Taking that particular dichotomy as an example, it can seem 'obvious' to us that if one had to assign opposite genders to the sun and moon, they'd be male and female respectively (probably the best-known example being their association with yang and yin in Taoist metaphysics, which still has a lot of currency in China). But it's certainly not universal: in pre-Christian times the Germanic peoples had a sun goddess and a moon god. Tolkien not coincidentally followed the same prescription in his own creation myths, and to this day modern German has 'die Sonne' and 'der Mond'. Likewise it may seem 'intuitive' in a polytheistic belief system to have an active, potent sky god who fertilizes a receptive, maternal goddess with his spunky raindrops. Now this is indeed seen in the old Indo-European cosmologies, but in ancient Egyptian cosmology the roles are reversed; there's an earth god and a sky goddess. This is why I'm hesitant when people talk about 'archetypal' associations between the solar and the phallic, for example: isn't the whole point of archetypes that they're universal, afte all? The idea of archetypal characters - yer hero, warrior, witch and so on - is a slightly different thing.

I'm sorry if it sounded like I was slagging off Cope, I've actually got a lot of time for him. I said he'd "talk your ear off" as a light-hearted comment on his 'etymosophies', which are sometimes rather spuriouss-sounding but sometimes have a real ring of truth to them - but they're generally interesting and, vitally, do not pretend to be rigorous scholarship.

yeah, totally. I hear you. the few times I might use these types of motifs, do keep in mind that I realize it's a man-made system. I did briefly mention to nomad what you're further illustrating here very well, that symbols aren't universal (sun goddesses, etc). But it kind of seems like the most basic things that they're signifying are... right? (whatever these things really are, in their nameless existence)

I may not have given this impression, but I don't believe the sun or moon or whatever universally symbolize anything (but I do think there are universal attributes, that while maybe not existing Platonically - though how do we know they dont?... exist like elemental building blocks in things). It gets fuzzier in art and music, but even then qualities can be so polarized, or ambivelent if that be the case, that people can mutually discern and discuss them. But I should have made more clear the rules and implications of the symbolic systems I was using, I was more focused on trying to scry out some type of metaphor for certain qualities and their composition within that paradigm... not that any way we try to name or make sense of "it all" can do it justice.

and sorry if I seemed cross, I've noticed sometimes that people would rather just wave off other values (and potentially intelligent people who hold them) as old world or crazy, without being willing to reasonably or respectfully debate. which you haven't done, so thanks. and other than your personal atheism, I don't think I really disagree with any large view that you've expressed before anyway.

 

[nomadthethird]

I heard about this woman who writes for a British broadsheet who volunteered to take a testosterone injection and she said it was nuts, she was practically having stop herself humping inanimate objects. How do you 'intuitively' know it's got nothing to do with female sex drive? I mean, it sounds like you've kind of decided that because you'd like it to be true, but if there's any evidence you point to be I'd be interested to see it.

Sigh.

Why should women necessarily have an "aggressive" sex drive?

Have you ever taken female androgens? Because I have. And they do make you horny, just not in a "go around humping inanimate objects" way, which is apparetly the only way men can imagine being horny.

Plus, I never said it had "nothing" to do with it, just that it probably plays a minor role.

 

[nomadthethird]

I'm so sick of people trying to circle the square to prove that the circle is a square, when they're also so intent on proving that the circle is, in fact, inherently nothing like a square. It's so strange.

As a woman, you try to argue that women have an equally strong, yet differently mechanized, endocrinological system, and you're instantly met with all kinds of strange reactions. No, all sex drive is aggressive and related to testosterone! But then you have the same people arguing to the death that women are inherently "feminine" which means they aren't inherently as "sexual" as men. Which is it?

 

[nomadthethird]

I heard about this woman who writes for a British broadsheet who volunteered to take a testosterone injection and she said it was nuts, she was practically having stop herself humping inanimate objects. How do you 'intuitively' know it's got nothing to do with female sex drive? I mean, it sounds like you've kind of decided that because you'd like it to be true, but if there's any evidence you point to be I'd be interested to see it.

If you want evidence, search medline.

 

[nomadthethird]

I've also heard of women (healthy and with normal sexual functioning) getting collagen injections into the internal structures of their clitori and being aroused basically 24/7 with no hormone therapy.

 

[nomadthethird]

I guess I should be patient because I don't think there's anyone here who studies biology or medicine.

But it's considered a really, really old-fashioned and out-of-touch idea that the female sex drive comes from testosterone primarily. Female androgens like estrogen and progesterone are actually much more conclusively tied to libido in women, according to newer (better, less flawed, less biased) research. In fact, the farther away from the bias we get that all sex drive is the drive to act upon someone else sexually, the clearer it becomes that progesterone and estrogen in the balance that you tend to see around ovulation (yes, there may be small amounts of testosterone, but even adrenaline and other hormones involved as well) is the magic formula for female horniness.

 

[zhao]

ugh I'm a fucking hippie

I don't know how I've avoided becoming a hippie really...

it's OK! i am also a hippie! so is nomad! (she just doesnt realize it / chooses to use a different definition) we dont don the signifiers but we all sympthize with, if not all, but i think most, of the idealism.
_________

thanks Tea for clearing up a bit of the German male-moon female-sun history. that has always been something of a stick in the cogs of my archetypal universalism... which i more and more realize may not be so universal! i guess i have been subscribing to Taoist definitions...

Also, like Tea said, women don't have "less" of a sex drive than men do

oh god do they ever... it can actually be argued that they have more. because, you know, they can keep going and never have enough where as we have to get some rest for at least a couple of hours... and can not keep up the 5 times a day schedule for long.