Negative Energy

vimothy · May 12, 2009

Mr. Tea · May 12, 2009

nomadthethird · May 13, 2009

zhao said:
i think someone said: the dark shit is hedonism for a lot of people.

i'm aware of this alleged connection from all that EBM industrial i listened to as a kid, all the sinister bondage imagery and all that, but i was thinking today that i never really knew how exactly that worked, and still don't. how does this logic go?

i mean, being pissed off isn't exactly the most pleasurable way to live is it?

(ahhhhhhhhh yes! i'm going to enjoy my weekend to the hilt by wearing black eyeliner and screaming at the sky!!! )

is indulging in anger and all those emotions which are frowned upon by society supposed to be "hedonistic"? but is the pleasure to be had by "taboo busting", "transgression", and general "deviant" behavior for its own sake anything more than that of a baby who just learnt to say "no"? it may be an exercise of existential "freedom", ala Camus and noble negation, suicide being the ultimate act of free will and what not, but it has nothing to do with Pleasure.

seems to be more about frustration and inability to indulge rather than excessive pleasures of the flesh.

There's this enduring idea in the West (thx fucking Greeks) that pleasure is what is produced when someone is attaining to "excellent" things. It would take a while to go over the Greek concepts of eudaimonia and arete, but suffice it to say the Greek usually thought "excellent" things were the things that made you more intellectual or physically stronger. ASICS, and all that.

It's a nice ideal, but I don't think it accurately reflects how pleasure works.

I think pleasure comes when experiences make people feel vital or alive. And this can take all sorts of forms--pain, anger, hunger, unhappiness, love, etc. I'm a firm believer in the pleasure principle, and it's correlate: if someone is doing something, they're getting some sort of psychic reward from it, even if they aren't conscious of what it is.

zhao · May 13, 2009

nomadthethird said:
There's this enduring idea in the West (thx fucking Greeks) that pleasure is what is produced when someone is attaining to "excellent" things. It would take a while to go over the Greek concepts of eudaimonia and arete, but suffice it to say the Greek usually thought "excellent" things were the things that made you more intellectual or physically stronger. ASICS, and all that.

It's a nice ideal, but I don't think it accurately reflects how pleasure works.

thats intersting but not sure if it can explain at all the alleged correlation between anger and depression as expressed through music and "hedonism".

nomadthethird said:
I think pleasure comes when experiences make people feel vital or alive. And this can take all sorts of forms--pain, anger, hunger, unhappiness, love, etc.

i dont think that's the classic definitiion of pleasure, which is the absence of pain, and the fulfillment of needs. and i'm having a hard time with your definition, because the word kind of becomes meaningless when "pleasure" can be derived from "pain, anger, hunger, unhappiness"? does pleasure only happen when the state of unhappiness is stopped? when you finally eat after being hungry?

nomadthethird said:
I'm a firm believer in the pleasure principle, and it's correlate: if someone is doing something, they're getting some sort of psychic reward from it, even if they aren't conscious of what it is.

i agree with the existence of this "psychic reward" for everything people do, but would add that it can be a lot more complex than simple "pleasure"; and due to the psychological make up of the modern individual, can take very, very convoluted, complex and contradictory forms,

i think people engage in activities for reasons other than "pleasure" all the time. reasons like: substitution, replacement, validation, affirmation, compulsion, addiction, release, etc, etc.

a child abuser doesn't necessarily, or just do it out of "pleasure" alone, but a compulsion to repeat what has been done to him/her, and to release some of the pain and anguish bestowed upon their own childhood by giving it to someone else.

a lonely old woman has 15 cats and talks to them constantly: they are not exactly a source of "simple pleasure" as much as a replacement for what she actually wants, the actual source of pleasure of which she is deprived.

sure one can claim that some of these things i've described (the cats) belong in a broad definition of "Pleasure", but with these situations i am saying it is useful to distinguish secondary and problemized forms of "pleasure" from simple and straight forward pleasure.

Mr. Tea · May 13, 2009

nomadthethird said:
There's this enduring idea in the West (thx fucking Greeks) that pleasure is what is produced when someone is attaining to "excellent" things. It would take a while to go over the Greek concepts of eudaimonia and arete, but suffice it to say the Greek usually thought "excellent" things were the things that made you more intellectual or physically stronger. ASICS, and all that.

It's a nice ideal, but I don't think it accurately reflects how pleasure works.

I think pleasure comes when experiences make people feel vital or alive. And this can take all sorts of forms--pain, anger, hunger, unhappiness, love, etc. I'm a firm believer in the pleasure principle, and it's correlate: if someone is doing something, they're getting some sort of psychic reward from it, even if they aren't conscious of what it is.

And a lot of the foremost Greek philosophers were really down on anything that aroused 'passions' - i.e. sex, rich food, wine, dancing, most of the things I would consider essentially enjoyable in any kind of somatic way - and instead championed a sort of ascetic intellectualism.

luka · May 13, 2009

everything posted on this thread that i have listened to thus far reminds me of those weird kids at school who never engaged with anybody and just spent all their time doing talentless but very detailed pictures of things like warplane strafing hundreds of people at an outdoor party, monsters dismembering young maidens, ufos liquidising entire cities etc.
its not for me.

vimothy · May 13, 2009

luka said:
weird kids at school who never engaged with anybody and just spent all their time doing talentless but very detailed pictures of things like warplane strafing hundreds of people at an outdoor party, monsters dismembering young maidens, ufos liquidising entire cities etc.

Get out of my head, you sick fuck!

Mr. Tea · May 13, 2009

luka said:
everything posted on this thread that i have listened to thus far reminds me of those weird kids at school who never engaged with anybody and just spent all their time doing talentless but very detailed pictures of things like warplane strafing hundreds of people at an outdoor party, monsters dismembering young maidens, ufos liquidising entire cities etc.
its not for me.

Harris and Klebold, in other words?

padraig (u.s.) · May 13, 2009

the Greatest Song Ever about Nothing

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padraig (u.s.) · May 13, 2009

also, Zhao - dunno what you're on about tho nomad said everything I would've (plus a bunch of business about the Greeks & all that).

not that people don't do all kinds of wacky things to substitute for pleasure but of course pleasure can be derived from pain, anger, misery etc. lots of people enjoy being miserable. sure you can get into some frippery about "real" pleasure or whatever but come on, whatever people define as pleasure, that's it.

also re: dark music & hedonism - what the hell is "No Way Back" then? I mean I can kind of see the argument as far as EBM/crap industrial (i.e. NIN, not Cabs) & so on being rather childish but what about all that darkside house business, "Where's Your Child", "I'm Losing Control" etc., which is all quite literally about mixing darkness/negative energy & hedonism.

massrock · May 13, 2009

luka · May 13, 2009

i really enjoy the first part of notes from underground where he's talking about getting lots of enjoyment from toothache, and moaning about toothache. its funny and true.

padraig (u.s.) · May 13, 2009

@massrock - surely you're not implying that that self-conscious hippie art wankery is somehow a better or more revealing take on the topic of nothing? no offense - but the fugs, ugh, what insufferably smug shite.

really the only thing that could come close to the purity of that Negative Approach bit is hip hop at its most cold-blooded & nihilistic. like Mobb Deep but moreso. black metal being also too self-conscious (& more hung up on grim kvlt rage than despair anyway), nihilistic dance music being still too pleasure-seeking to really be so bleak, etc.

yunno really thinking on it I'd have to say the opposite of pleasure isn't really pain but bleakness. like heroin it's this intense rush of pleasure but then eventually it, as i understand it, just induces this gray torpor of nothingness pretty much devoid of feeling. to get back to Zhao's original post I've always thought of Christoph De Babalon as heroin music (not that man himself was on dope or nothing).

massrock · May 13, 2009

I think taken on its own merits that Fugs track is great. And you know, funny. I don't have some kind of arch take on it. Your comment sounds kind of insufferably smug and self-conscious tbh.

And arty or not some of that ESP disk stuff did represent a useful cyncism in the context of hippie positivity. The Godz were better though.

bassbeyondreason · May 13, 2009

The other great "Nothing"

How about this?

swears · May 13, 2009

padraig (u.s.) said:
lots of people enjoy being miserable. sure you can get into some frippery about "real" pleasure or whatever but come on, whatever people define as pleasure, that's it.

Well, misery can be enjoyed in a number of ways. You can see it as being realistic, you're taking unpleasant things on face value rather than running away from them, which is quite bracing sometimes. It can be very comfortable if you have a strong lazy streak: "Well, this is as good as things get for me, so why try harder". Guilt can make almost grateful to be unhappy if that's all you feel like you deserve. And sometimes melancholy just feels nice.

massrock · May 13, 2009

That CDB track Zhao posted is pretty slick. Mary Anne Hobbs might play that. Sounds alright though. Wouldn't call it feral rage exactly, it's very controlled. But nice to see someone taking up the darkside baton.

A lot of the stuff here is really quite affirming, which is good, I guess that's the 'energy' part. In terms of actual Negative Energy I tend to think of stuff that is properly enervating. Like nomad mentioned radio ballads or something, I think that's very true - some of that stuff can be a hugely depressing representation of reality. One crappy record shop I worked in for a short while would insist on having daytime pop radio on and at the time this seemed truly truly bleak. Not saying I'm down on pop music, just that particular playlist at that time.

Also the other thing is in a live situation where the performers have a kind of vampiric relationship to the audience without giving anything back. Have seen this with some hardcore emo / screamo bands where it becomes an excuse for the performers to act out childish tantrums.

Ultimately negativity has its place and functions but as an all-encompassing world view hopefully it's something you grow out of.

padraig (u.s.) · May 13, 2009

massrock said:
Your comment sounds kind of insufferably smug and self-conscious tbh.

that's only cos it is. you can keep the useful hippie cynicism.

bassbeyondreason said:
How about this?

yeh that's more like it. I mean a million stupid hardcore songs, that NA one is just the epitome of that kinda mindless (not as in stupid, more like don't know any better) teen nihilism.

Flipper tho, great band & well underrated, heavily influential on all that latter slow/heavy Black Flag & also the Melvins which in turn heavily influenced all those Seattle bands plus all the Eyehategod (now there's some nihilistic music)/Buzzoven/etc. sludge business. strong legacy in the Bay too - I used to live around the corner from a long, long running punk house in Oakland that still had ancient Flipper graf from some show back in the 80s.

massrock · May 13, 2009

padraig (u.s.) said:
that's only cos it is. you can keep the useful hippie cynicism.

Pff, I was going to make a joke of it. Like, fuck your negative approach, or something. It's not a competition, just some different angles that the topic suggests. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

Mr. Tea · May 13, 2009

Fuck all these hipster cynics. I was being cynical before they'd even heard of the word! Honest unaffected cynicism is so hard to find these days...

Negative Energy

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