Music as id

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Contrasting the nervy consciousness of social niceties, sensitivities, being "woke" and above prejudice and adverse to violence with

Listening to aggressive, violent, money obsessed and/or apolitical music.

And wondering if music is becoming more ID as the superego presses it's claims more insistently. (If it does.)
 

luka

Well-known member
Yes very good. I've been looking for a way to frame this since visiting droid in Dublin and feeling that he had deliberately foregone music as Id that the drone and the ambient were ways to hook music up to the higher centres of consciousness exclusively.
 

luka

Well-known member
When I say, as I sometimes do, that black music was the primary motor for revolutionary change in the 60s more so than drugs or politics this is part of what I mean.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yes very good. I've been looking for a way to frame this since visiting droid in Dublin and feeling that he had deliberately foregone music as Id that the drone and the ambient were ways to hook music up to the higher centres of consciousness exclusively.

I have a possibly not sufficiently examined belief that the ID is the only motor. That the higher centres of consciousness are inert and impotent without it's rude energies. This I sometimes use to give myself license to behave in ways perhaps I shouldn't behave.
 

luka

Well-known member
It was something my dad said. Luke motivation is very hard to come by so don't be fussy. Hate lust fear envy. These are the only true sources! Now you can sublimate those but you can't get the initial impetus from higher considerations.
 

luka

Well-known member
Conventionally Freudian but it's how I think this works. At least for me, now, at this stage.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I have a possibly not sufficiently examined belief that the ID is the only motor. That the higher centres of consciousness are inert and impotent without it's rude energies. This I sometimes use to give myself license to behave in ways perhaps I shouldn't behave.

I think there's definitely evidence of this in all art forms.

Even look at the most "classicist" artworks of all(?), the Elgin marbles - all veiny muscular violence and sexily sprawled women and men.

Perhaps this could even be mapped to the middlebrow thing? A fudging between one or the other?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It's good having people like you around cos I can create a half baked thread that deserves to die and you'll rescue it with a dozen posts
 

luka

Well-known member
I think there's definitely evidence of this in all art forms.

Even look at the most "classicist" artworks of all(?), the Elgin marbles - all veiny muscular violence and sexily sprawled women and men.

Perhaps this could even be mapped to the middlebrow thing? A fudging between one or the other?

Ay! Corpsey is on fire! You're spot on. I hadn't thought of that!
 

luka

Well-known member
My aborted breeding thread was my way to try and get at this topic. The droid experience got into my head trying to think around this stuff of aggression and dominance and the pleasure we take in things that are maybe not good. Like, should you be questioning it or is the pleasure primary? You have to be prepared to make yourself uncomfortable and maybe pull out some supporting timbers of your whole personality
 

luka

Well-known member
Is that kind of wolf pack mentality something you have to evolve out of? Just guard dog mentality for useful idiots like in platos republic ferocious loyal obedient mutts
 

luka

Well-known member
One of the threads I'm trying to tie together here is droids implicit attack on the top dog mentality. That accepting the top dog mentality makes you an instrument of fascism.
 

luka

Well-known member
Third says we should listen to the music of losers. Always choose the losing side. This is a linked critique. But what I am unwilling to do is to lose force, energy, exultation. So again this is something that needs to be squared
 

luka

Well-known member
Energy power momentum how can I prioritise these things without without succumbing to the obvious dangers?

Energy has to be freed up. I can't tolerate anything else. The thing has to move.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I have a Reichian take on this, in that I don't think the id's aggression is as primary as it seems. I'll quote myself

Firstly, I’d like to look at a model of Reich’s which I find has much explanatory power. He broke out character down into three “layers”. The first of these is a “social” layer, a veneer of good behaviour and politeness with which we interact in the social world. If we see this layer as partially a product of armouring and learnt restraint, we can see that underneath it might lie a second layer — of frustration, anti-social impulses, rage and so on. Where Reich really showed his insight was that he posited another layer beneath this, a part of us which is open, loving and vulnerable. Reich argued that this “core” is naturally decent and moral. It is the suppression and suffocation of this layer, through the events of our birth and childhood that produces armouring. I only have to think about which emotions I have easiest “access” to, to see the validity of these ideas ÿ real openness and tenderness seem much more affecting and come from a much more guarded place.

Often one finds expression of the second layer touted as somehow iconoclastic. Anything one has been told not to do — be it violence, promiscuity, substance abuse or shitting on someone’s doorstep — any acts which break the social veneer prove how “liberated” or “crazy” one is one. Sometimes these impulses are presented as our “true” inner self, which everyone would act out if only they weren’t so repressed. From a Reichian perspective, a lot of these acts, rather than being “liberated” are simply one more layer of our defences, a way of warding off deep feeling. I’m much more interested in the first layer — that point of surrender, openness and vulnerability. A lot of occult practises – and the “outsider stance” one often encounters in occultists — seems to me to be a shield from this openness and simply another way of armouring.

 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The music of winners is unfreighted by doubt. Say compare that Katie Perry song to the Elgin Marbles (lol). The Greeks were winners, saw themselves as such, but their art has death boiled into it due to its scientific concentration on the actual physical form (though idealised). Actually what's also helped those statues out, perversely, is how damaged and decayed they are. There's something more approachable and organic about them as a result, and can't help but cause you to think about physical decay.

Maybe I'm thinking more of the id as the opposite to the ideal.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
How would you use that to think about music Danny? And specifically music as id

I don't as such. I think it's worth challenging Freudian orthodoxies though. I'll think on it. I do think music draws a lot of power from its id-expressions, I just question whether that's the kind of bottom of the hierarchy. Is there not anything else we can get to whether it's expressed musically or not
 
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