Is music good for one?

[Corpsey]

If Dennis Nielsen had only done what was good for him, we'd never have had his London dungeon Waxwork to steal, undress and go to bed with.

 

[luka]

Jack

 

[luka]

Come to Greenwich. It's a perfect evening for a lager. Let's have a few lagers

 

[Corpsey]

Dennis Nilsen, prior to strangling each of his victims, Dennis used to get himself “in the mood” by listening to Tommy by The Who, Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Rick Wakeman, Royal Philharmonic’s Hooked on Classics, and – his personal favourite - Frankenstein by The Edgar Winter Group.*
* click on any red text for more information

 

[Corpsey]

That record collection - now that's what I call criminal!

 

[version]

Didn't Plato want to ban music? When was he ever wrong about anything?

 

[Corpsey]

Plato also said that Alan De Boitton should be in charge of parking regulations.

 

[Corpsey]

The Virgin Plato Vs the Chad Aristotle

 

[version]

I wonder also if the explosion of mental illness has some intimate relation to the all-pervasiveness of music. Especially music experienced alone.

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

 

[Corpsey]

Best music of recent years has been the stuff that inspires teenagers to stab each other and laugh about it. Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa.

 

[craner]

Dua Lipa is stoking the new Balkan wars.

 

[Corpsey]

Is this the face that launched a thousand UN interventions?

I like her but she does that stupid stickouttongue face too much.

 

[Woebot]

That can alienating too I think? Condemned to belt out your one hit, night after night, to dwindling audiences so you can pay the bills.

ah yes. but pipe and slippers tinkling the ivories in your own boudouir. or playing a little violin as you plot the downfall of moriaty. or giving it what for at easter evensong?

 

[Corpsey]

Randomly picked up "What is art?" by Tolstoy in Foyles today. About a third through. He rejects all theories of aesthetics that posit the production of beauty (which he associates with personal pleasure) as the function of art as being the product of irreligious and immoral societies, and asserts that the purpose of art is to provide communion between people, feelings being shared via art as thoughts are via words.

 

[Simon silverdollarcircle]

Yeah I think that's why listening to music, continuously, can be so oppressive. All these people wanting to get into your head, communicating with you, wanting you to like them. They're fiddling about with your most intimate circuitry. Exhausting.

The more extreme end of the spectrum is stand up comedy which I find absolutely tyrannical

 

[version]

Another angle's the physical damage you can do to yourself with earphones, both in terms of hearing damage due to listening at high volume and blockages and infections due to shoving the things in your ears on a regular basis.

 

[version]

Also people acting out due to being energised by whatever they're listening to.

 

[version]

The point about the pervasiveness of music can be extended to sound in general. There's little room for silence atm and that can certainly drive you mad.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Didn't Plato want to ban music?

not ban, but rigorously control what kinds of music people are allowed to play or hear

so all modes are banned except iirc Dorian and...Lydian? Mixolydian? something

on various grounds that they make people lazy or intemperate or soft or whatever

it's part of his larger comprehensive system of intensely authoritarian youth indoctrination

he also goes on at some length about what kinds of stories (myths, etc) will and won't be allowed to be told

for him art is basically a means to an end, part of ideally tempering the soul (of the ideal ruling class)

the ideal soul is moderate in all things - you can't just only warlike things because it will make people too savage to be just, wise, etc

but you also can't let art make people too soft or pleasure-loving, so you have to control what kinds of art are allowed

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

the thing about banning modes is interesting because he's literally attacking the melodies themselves

like you can see why he'd want to control what kinds of stories are told

but what's his basis for deciding that the Dorian mode is suitably dour and warlike (or whatever) and the Ionian isn't?

presumably there was some kind of cultural context for it, but tho I don't think anyone really knows