cardboard adolescent

Every song is a blank slate which we project onto. The mechanics of projection, what can be projected onto what, are socially determined. All music gains definition relative to the mainstream. There are no beautiful songs or ugly songs, no traditional songs or experimental songs, no cool songs or lame songs. When someone explains why they like a song, they aren't really explaining anything.

"I like this song because it has a smooth flow and sounds really harmonious."
"I like this song because it's disjointed and abrasive."

There is no "proper" way to divide time, there is no "proper" way to arrange or combine tones. We have simply come to relate certain arrangements to certain feelings or ideas. A particular song does not have an emotional or thematic content, there is simply an implicit agreement between the artist and the audience to project these emotions or ideas. When this agreement breaks down, music loses its sense and purpose. If, for instance, an audience member is not familiar with the prerequisite idea a certain way of performing becomes associated with, they will say: "I don't get it." The whole enterprise has become meaningless for them.

In fact, this meaninglessness is always present. We must construct the meaning of music, and this construction is always inherited. It needs a ground, and the only ground possible is the musical tradition, or mainstream. This construction is always violent, since it imposes a division between good songs and bad songs. Taste expresses itself more powerfully when it deals with what it doesn't like, because this isn't just a matter of taste defending what it likes, but of taste defending itself.

Freud toyed with the idea of defining all behavior in terms of sex drive and death drive. Sex drive is the impulse for a moment of intense pleasure, whereas death drive is simply the drive to sustain oneself (which, paradoxically, always leads to death). Music that encourages associations of sex, elitism, victory, and sometimes God are linked with sex drive, they beg us to provide our most powerful emotions. Music that tries to express music itself, that toys with structure and tradition, is linked to death drive. Its novelty is just an expression of the fear of death, the fear that music itself could die. Sometimes this fear is even masked behind a push toward the death of music, toward the destruction of the notion of music.

The reason music can even exist as something separate from the ordinary sounds of reality, or as something separate from other art forms, is because music is grounded in an arbitrary differentiation of sounds. Because this differentiation is arbitrary, the more one studies it the more it changes, the more it moves towards its own disappearance. We resist this disappearance because it means the disappearance of good songs. However, so long as we listen and hear a good song, we don't hear what is actually there. Namely, silence.

TheBig3

Deconstructionism comes to music. The problem with a "nothing is nothing" argument is that if we all agree on it, you've only created an ash-pile for things to grow from.

Without parameters through which we view things, you can't have anything. I don't mean to revisit overused arguments, but without borders there aren't exclusions. It comes up on the idea of utopia, and those are always dystopic. It seems you're pointing out that everything is everything.

Or did I miss something?

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cardboard adolescent

With parameters, all you see are the parameters. Without parameters, you see what's actually there.

cardboard adolescent

cardboard adolescent

cardboard adolescent

The mind can’t read what the eyes can’t see, so where are these things coming from before they get here? A moment arrives it is coming and going, one foot in and one foot out, we’ll never find the border-line. We’re all on this merry merry-go-round and which one of us can imagine anything else? I think therefore I am not where I am, but where I am thinking, somewhere outside of myself. Thinking around myself, in the merry merry-go-round with its ups and downs and eventual nausea.

All the mind can know is what it has seen before and it will only lead us into echoes of the past. Who lives where the mind ends? Who is asking who is asking? We call it void because the mind must fit it on the map even though no roads go there. But all roads come from there, and all roads return there. But the mind can only circle in its merry merry-go-round, and say there is a place where all will go and I know what it has been called though it has never been known. And yet, it is knowing. So speaks the mind, in its merry merry-go-round, knowing that it will keep on not knowing the knowing that cannot be known.

You may find one who knows, and your mind will say, who are you to know? And the one who knows will say, who are you not to know? Your mind will say, how do I get there? And the one who knows will say, how do you get to where you are? Your mind will say, why do I suffer? And the one who knows will say, why does your mind say that you suffer? Your mind will say, I do suffer! And the one who knows will say, do not listen to your mind. Listen to the sounds that wash around you. Listen to the muscles in your body. Listen to the silence that speaks in gentle whispers, in loving stillness, in perfect completeness. It is the reaching that pushes what you long for away.

Here we are, but where are we? We are not there, or there, we are this far from there, it has been this long since then. But where is there, and when was then? When did we get here, and are we still here? You carry the road you took on your shoulders, and I carry the road I took on mine. Shall we see if our roads intertwine? Perhaps it is not possible to carry roads, we should just leave them be. So here we are, well come my friend! The end of time feels comfortable and free. The end of space has just enough room. So it seems the end is the beginning, we must set out again. We are two travelers without baggage, without identities, without a sense of destination or direction. Take my hand and let’s go downhill, we’ll see where the landscape takes us.

The only movement is ever deeper into the present. What was a snowflake becomes a glacier, what was a glacier becomes a stream, what was a stream becomes a lake, what was a lake becomes an ocean. And what has changed? A single drop of water has become more aware of itself. A single drop of water has lost itself. A single drop of water, a single atom, a single quark, a single vibration, a single drop. A movement moving into itself. A stillness with mind dancing around it, telling stories about that which cannot be told. The stories are beautiful, the stories are obscene. The stories explode into bliss, into terror, recede into death. Who watches them go? Who chases after them? Who learns to sit still and watch?

No fear, no desire, no anger, no indifference.

cardboard adolescent

Just kidding.



I think this song is so pretentious and "I-don't-give-a-fuck" that it comes out the other side and just ends up being a totally sincere celebration of life and its glorious diversity. I'm also lovin' the flow. I also really like the Das Racist song "Return to Innocence." For a while I was worried that the attempt to return to innocence was an escapist routine, but now I think innocence is just dropping the fear and expectations and baggage, and we should all return to innocence.



I don't really care about what the video is trying to prove or say, if anything, but I really like this song. Soulful but feels like it transcends 'soul music.' Very universal to me, perfect relaxed delivery. Very honest.



Really into Cat Stevens at the moment. What is there to say? Beautiful vocals and lyrics, and I love how fast and dynamic the piano is while still feeling totally tranquil and effortless.



Oh snap, remember Eiffel 65? This song is very true. You should avoid living in a bubble. Love the vocoder vocals, totally catchy, the musical content isn't ground-breaking but I think it's exactly what it needs to be. Love it.



This is just totally ridiculous, but also kinda revolutionary. <3



Perfect. What is there to say?

cardboard adolescent

I really like this song.



An old favorite that still hits the spot.



Same for this. I like this early sound.



If I ever meet any of you in real life, we'll have to sing this together, deal?



Whenever I'm feeling down, I think to myself: What would I want? Sky. Then I look up and let go of being sad.

starrynight

There will probably always be some kind of music if that is what you mean. If you mean specific pieces of music being eternal that isn't really true, all it takes is for a manuscript to get lost or a recording and that music might have been lost forever and hardly heard. Otherwise you made some good points in that post, post no23 of the thread I think.

I like to look at music in totality myself rather than build up too many boundaries like people do now. Yes music now is apparently more fragmented into different things, but some of that is marketing people's creation.

Some might say that music doesn't exist separately from ordinary sounds and that sometimes it might reflect them in some way.

Of course the rules as they are built around music are in some ways an unnatural construct, and yet music in all societies has basic elements like a kind of rhythm or pitch. Even other animals like whales and birds create their own musical-like sounds. A rising series of notes is somehow more uplifting to us than one that is falling. Is that just a construct that fits music or does it reflect other things?

The fact that you relate music to silence (ie no sounds) suggests that you are relating it beyond just music to sound in general. To me in this post at times and certainly the previous one I commented on you seem to relate music to a more general universal theme than the more limited one you sometimes infer.

cardboard adolescent

I actually want to retract that post completely. I think there is a direct correlation between sound and sensation, which is partly mental and partly physical. In part you're responding to the social (ego) constructs which categorize certain melodies as sentimental and others as profound, etc. but you're also responding to the sensation that specific sound vibrations cause in your body. Some music will generate very pleasant feelings and other music will generate unpleasant feelings. Sometimes people enjoy music that causes unpleasant sensations because most people don't like it and they feel special in liking it. Most of the time people like music that makes them feel good. I think that's really all there is to it.