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PostSubject: The Luciferian Mon Apr 02, 2012 11:31 pm Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
I have in the recent weeks posted a few things on ILP and in another thread on this forum, on “Luciferian” x. The silence in reaction to these posts has been deafening and gave pause for thought. I realize that I may risk to alienate those with whom I otherwise have a strong philosophical rapport. Besides, these notions do not actually indicate anything concrete, they are merely suggestive, and perhaps suggestive of things I do not intend to suggest.
While writing these posts I already felt uncomfortable and uncertain. As they address the more uncomfortable and uncertain elements of our political society this is no wonder - but the question is whether there is any merit in posting such speculative and controversial thoughts that do nothing to clarify or to aid towards any ethical aim.
In terms of philosophy, I am 100% certain that I am making sense, and this is corroborated by my friends here on BTL. In terms of politics, I am almost 100% certain that I am only in part accurate. I always run into trouble whenever I try to define “what really is going on” in terms of politics - and have arrived at the conclusion that I am per definition wrong even if I am also right, whenever I try to sufficiently define, in terms of outlining, something in this context.
So I withdraw my notions of the Luciferian, or at least, take a distance toward them. I will proceed on the philosophical path you have come to expect of me, and which I am proud to be capable of walking.
" The strong do what they can do and the weak accept what they have to accept. "
- Thucydides
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Mon Apr 02, 2012 11:46 pm Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
Fixed Cross wrote:
I have in the recent weeks posted a few things on ILP and in another thread on this forum, on “Luciferian” x. The silence in reaction to these posts has been deafening and gave pause for thought. I realize that I may risk to alienate those with whom I otherwise have a strong philosophical rapport. Besides, these notions do not actually indicate anything concrete, they are merely suggestive, and perhaps suggestive of things I do not intend to suggest.
While writing these posts I already felt uncomfortable and uncertain. As they address the more uncomfortable and uncertain elements of our political society this is no wonder - but the question is whether there is any merit in posting such speculative and controversial thoughts that do nothing to clarify or to aid towards any ethical aim.
In terms of philosophy, I am 100% certain that I am making sense, and this is corroborated by my friends here on BTL. In terms of politics, I am almost 100% certain that I am only in part accurate. I always run into trouble whenever I try to define “what really is going on” in terms of politics - and have arrived at the conclusion that I am per definition wrong even if I am also right, whenever I try to sufficiently define, in terms of outlining, something in this context.
So I withdraw my notions of the Luciferian, or at least, take a distance toward them. I will proceed on the philosophical path you have come to expect of me, and which I am proud to be capable of walking.
This luciferian notion where applies to art has been useful for me. The word has a unique connotation here and implies something otherwise seemingly alien or which evades clear articulation. I have been trying to distill my thoughts along these lines, with regard to something which I feel must need greater explication here:
What ought be the role of luciferian art to aesthetics generally? The luciferian element seems a highest elevation of the principle of reaction, opposition in that it seems designed to push the moral-aesthetic to its furthest limit, and beyond. Lucifer pushed the limit of man beyond God; ought luciferian art also push art beyond the limit of all that has traditionally become able to encapsulate the aesthetic sense?
Maybe this topic should be re-named The Luciferian… but I do see your point, most people are unable to talk about this notion. Which, of course, makes it the perfect choice here. But I am interested in any difference you see between your conception of the luciferian here (as applied to art, aesthetics, creation) and a “mere” radically-oppositional reactionism. Of course this latter can be taken to induce a Hegelian sort of dialectical synthesis, so perhaps the luciferian is a way of provoking this sort of synthetic possibility?
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Tue Apr 03, 2012 1:13 am Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
Great insights. I had not arrived at any of these thoughts as I remained morally bound, fearful and doubtful of the merit/value, justification of using the term Lucifer, which prevented me from observing coolly what I was actually putting on the table. I do not wish to immediately fill the space that you open here, I will take some time to reflect. I will however change the topics name as you suggest, because with your response the entire reason for this disclaimer vanishes, and what remains is the actual subject, which is indeed, The Luciferian.
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:12 am Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
Now i am interested, what where your thoughts on the Luciferian? heck i don’t even know what Luciferian means…? Embarassed
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:35 am Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
Capable wrote:
What ought be the role of luciferian art to aesthetics generally? The luciferian element seems a highest elevation of the principle of reaction, opposition in that it seems designed to push the moral-aesthetic to its furthest limit, and beyond. Lucifer pushed the limit of man beyond God; ought luciferian art also push art beyond the limit of all that has traditionally become able to encapsulate the aesthetic sense?
When you say this, I’m reminded of impressionism, cubism, surrealism, abstract (esp. textiles), postmodernism, etc.—really every major movement since the late 19th century mutates through a weird syncretism of iconoclasm and apotheosis: deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Impressionism seemed to mimic the world reflected upon a zephyr-rippled lake (contra facsimiles of sybarite ‘Louis’s, corpulent concubines, and the decadent splendor of the court), they used violets and blues not for insalubrious, bruised flesh, but for the shadows cast upon the most fair of rosy complexions–and they did all this very fast; Cubism scrapped whole, congruous form—it’s shattered, a jumbled juxtaposition of abstraction qua cracked mirrors; Duchamp asked if a toilet isn’t art, Dali queried why an octopus isn’t a brush, Magritte levitated an apple to hide his face while saying “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” Ernst did his thing and the rest followed suit; Postmodernism nidified sardonic lenses symbolizing self-applying salt shakers of irony and satire, insinuating themselves upon every applicable dish until pop culture’s salting itself mired the entire movement in a collective existential quandary; Rothko scoffed at Michelangelo and spun impossibly captivating fields of color, Pollack hurled frumious cans of paint in vain attempts to metastasize his alcoholism on the canvas, and countless campus-haunting aesthetes welded found objects together with neon paint and Elmer’s, turning for validation with imploring puppy-dog eyes to philosophy privy critics; a mousy, near-albino painted soup cans and icon-ized gratuitous nudity and salacious themes until a member of his artificial family introverted him by means of a pistol; a group of maverick virtuosos contradictorily disguised their work as photography—my montage (especially the second time through) is plagued by omissions and perhaps a bit of anachronism, but my point is this: if the Luciferian is as you say, then is it not the catalyst behind the evolution of art itself, and how then is it defined?—as an aesthetic, a(n) (a)morality, or a specific temporality (zeitgeist of an evanescent present moment)?
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Thu Apr 05, 2012 11:54 pm Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
Aleatory – your beautiful post describes the diametrical opposite of what I understand as the limit to be pushed. In simple terms, the l9th and 20th century revolutions in art were an inquisition into what can be art, whereas the Luciferian would be a question of what art can be. In simplified terms, and doing a lot of injustice to a lot of great art, the movements you describe would have been a breaking open of the lower limit of art, thereby including what I would call the elements of chaos and the mundane into the realm of aesthetics, and in this process moving toward a-moralism. The Luciferian should be the breaking open of the upper limit of art.
This “upper limit” refers to the process of the creation of culture. As the Homeric art created the ethical groundwork (or perhaps more apt, heavenly Form) of the Athenian mindset, from which, through the immensely successful self-institutionalizing of this mindset, followed Rome, from which followed the Church with artists like Michelangelo, Bernini and such to shape the “upper limit” of the Catholic empire (Quite literally exemplified int he sistine chapel). We can see that the highest, most valued art has been the symbolization of morality, i.e. God as the upper limit of the state.
All the post-representative movements you describe represent to me the death of this God, or the loss of teleology in art, with as the remainder ‘l’art pour l’art.’ The Luciferian should be seen as the reintroduction of teleology into art, the effort of man to stop contemplating the empty throne of God, the vacuous upper limit (the naked object in the room, the toilet), and to boldly ascend to this throne himself, and take place in there.
What it would mean to claim the locus of what had until some 150 years back been felt as God, has up until this point been far too great a burden for man. God, as as noble and good as man thought him as he was alive and well, appears, when we consider what He has been responsible for, quite evil. And this is actually the most common present-day objection to God – not that He doesn’t exist, but that He is a violent maniac.
To take a position similar to what we have imagined as the divine position (and this is all God has been to art, an imagined position of supreme power) man can not simply be besides good and evil, in the sense of being anarchistic, not-valuing power-structures, but he must move beyond this duality, which means through it, breaking the notional realities of these judgments. This is not a question of disinterest, but of pain. We can not simply dismiss what is embedded in our moral skeleton, our physiology, our pre-cognitive impulses, our linguistic configuration, which has existed as long as written history. The de-hierarchizing art-projects of the past century have been attempts at condition-less, priceless negation of the burden of power. These attempts have failed the world, and man is back at square one, standing at Gods empty throne which appears to many as crueler and more forbidding than ever. Western man has exhausted all the energetic, courage-and liberty-generating resources of the subconscious to break with his responsibility toward God, only to be drawn into an extremely rigid shadow-morality, representing not any positive idea, but merely Gods absence and the reckless efforts of his orphans to obscure their anxiety to themselves by preaching happiness and enacting nothingness. The circuitry of a nihilistic society.
The moral fabric of these times are of a historical shallowness, as it is a continuous disowning of the void. Narrative art at this point is aimless, weak, spineless and far more conservative than it has ever been – speaking from a narrow mindedness belonging not to certain problematically privileged classes but to the generally dis-privileged creature than now calls itself by the name “we are all humans!”.
To move forward from this means to ove through something, destroying something, breaking away from this Demiurg, this thoroughly ignoble God-surrogate, abandoning the commandment that all be equal which implies that all is meaningless. The notion of evil has to be penetrated into its phenomenology, which means that it has to be touched. As before the death of God, mans greatest fear was to be touched by evil, he must now reach to touch evil himself, as a disowned remainder of his being, to make it his own, include it into a moral aesthetics – as far as this will prove to be posible.
(The limit of morality can of course not be itself integrated, but it needs to be pushed back by integrating that which presently represents this limit (in western mans own sphere of responsibility). Our type desperately needs moral breathing space, his self-negation can not go on much longer)
As Parodites has made clear, the new ethics shall be a speculative ethics; as art has been the explication of the limits of morality, the Good, “Luciferian art” means explication of the limits of the Daemonic. This is not a work for the faint of heart, and I stand before it in fear and trembling – I must address the darkest dagger in my own psyche before I can begin to move foward to claim for man the throne that he has hitherto filled only with his imagination. “Lucifer” represents something that is for man a necessary part of his worldview, but lies beyond the reach of his personal conscience.
I see this now as the only way in which man can theoretically regain contact with his political-economic actions, which are absolutely beyond the reach of his moral good vs evil logic. Man, at least the philosophical class standing between the working class and the ruling capital-machine, must establish value differences beyond good and evil. Until now the sphere “beyond good and evil” has for philosophy been a theoretical, an ideal, un-filled-in by reality, therefore undifferentiated, non-being. The concrete artist, not the abstract philosopher, must venture out as a pioneer into this terrain, establishing new law in the wilderness.
There is a great unchartd territory that is at this point unseen, hidden as the discrepancy between morality and futurality. To will the future, under all conditions, this means to integrate what is necessary and unavoidable into morality. Morality thereby loses its status as an absolute, fixed good, loses the power to result in universal principles, and becomes the continuous effort of a speculative ethics.
If this operation is to be successful, man will live guided by a philosophical machinery. Thinking will no longer be isolated incident, a curiosity - the thinker will no longer be the archetypical hermit ascetic, but part of a war-effort to keep mankind sane in the direct apprehension of his power.
" The strong do what they can do and the weak accept what they have to accept. "
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Tue Apr 10, 2012 11:36 pm Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
I think perhaps this ‘upper limit’ has been breached, namely by surrealism. Andre Breton, in the manifesto: “Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.” Note that last bit, “outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.” Though seemingly an apotheosis of the [un/sub]conscious mind, perhaps it neglects to deify itself. Well, but if God were a simulacrum in the first (and thus his throne a vacant altar from the get-go), what need have we to take this seat if not to wield the hegemony of Religion, the scepter of the Vatican against the people ourselves? Art as the expression of dasein, this attempt to make connections outside oneself despite this solipsistic condition; what should be a free territory if not this? And if we instigate an infection via the throne of God—whether he sit there or we affect an entirely one-sided coup—is this not the Trojan-horse-totalitarianism of Rousseau, the bacillus inherited by Marx and Nietzsche alike?—not just “If man will not be free, you must force him to be free” but ‘buy not the fantasies sold by civilization but those I sell you of a recursion to the natural order, of the Noble Savage’ (which finds its analog in Marx’s proletariat dictatorship as the reterritorialization of the bourgeois dictatorship and its metastasis in Nietzsche’s reterritorialization of Christian morality).
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Wed Apr 11, 2012 1:23 am Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
The problem with the abandonment of moral concerns in art I is that this scepter against ourselves continues to be wielded, despite a surrealist awakening of an anarchistic instinct in the individual. What I mean to point to is indeed a new form of imperial art, but not to glorify the noble savage or any Nietzschean ideal, but to make accessible the “machine” (capital) to human valuing capacity.
I am not sure that capitalism can or should be overthrown, as it is a much more direct manifestation of man-as-valuing than any communitarian models can be. It should rather be refined, at the same time as mans morality expands, becomes less cramped - so that morality and machine move towards a synthesis.
Surrealism is a liberation of the individual from the machine, but it does not thereby render the machine obsolete, does not contradict the machines hegemony. The new art I propose is a celebration of the machine, not by making it into something that it is not (God) but to allow for man to morally take part in the machine, and thereby refine/reform it into something (more) truly beautiful.
In short, art represents the power to make known and acceptable by making beautiful - to reveal the Real as accessible by masking it as recognizable. This stands in direct opposition to the power of science to “disclose as-is”, which is simply the invocation of formless force into the image of the world, brutalizing, making unaccessible to ethical being, “objectifying” - reducing all to function of a purposeless inevitability, negating the general ground of being in the finalizing of its most artificially isolated set of consequences. So far, man has only been able to discern aesthetics in the apprehension of phenomena disclosed by science - not to subject the approach to science (the capacity to objectify, brutalize) to aesthetics, which is to subject force to form, which is to create in the sense of living (re: building, dwelling, thinking).
To apply the ethicizing, perspective-enabling power of art to the economic-political status quo requires a furthering of capitalistic thinking, not an anarchistic will to be free of the capitalistic machine. So I am not speaking of the individual and his art (in this sense I might agree that art has already disclosed thinking) but of society and its art. We can not, as a society, be free from “evil” or tyranny. “Society” is precisely what it means to be tyrannized. But tyranny by what? Largely a matter of (re)defining the will to comfort, and the means we use to battle for this comfort.
In this sense it will be useful to look at the classical word - how it defined itself in its most conservative form - its rituals and institutions. It was at ease with its will to dominate all other life, and was at ease by virtue of its ritualized institutions, its state-art. Enlightening state art might mean a return of the colonial spirit under different, more refined terms. It must mean the institutionalization of the will (of the west) to persist. Institutionalizing means to cast into form, which means forging into an aesthetics.
" The strong do what they can do and the weak accept what they have to accept. "
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Thu Apr 12, 2012 3:32 am Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
Then you believe in an objective aesthetic or that if an intersubjective aesthetic cannot be agreed unanimously upon, we will be forced to accept your aesthetic? Luciferian aside, this seems awfully fascist—removing the possibility for outward subjective valuation by force. “True” beauty—what is this? Who defines what is “truly” beautiful and is this in fact “truly” beautiful or merely what Mrs. Rand dictates is suitably labeled beautiful? “If man will not be free, we must force him to be free.” In these cases, or even with Nietzsche’s morality, these authoritative objects (“true”, “free”, “moral”) lose their meaning; truth metamorphs to opinion, freedom to dog runs, morality to will, these words become denominations relative to the preference of the ruling power–Thrasymachus’ justice. Celebrating the uncomfortable nature of high art—as it is practiced even today—is one thing, and a totalitarian rule over something as precious to an individual nature as art is quite another. But maybe I’m missing your point here, as you bring up culture.
So this aesthetic is not of the individual but of the cultural order? (and further it is to “celebrate the machine” whose tyranny we currently enjoy? We celebrate our own oppression? Is this like the field mouse who scurries to the cat so as to expedite his death, an ironic resignation, or what?) Do you mean to have us enforce some quasi-eugenics of art, a nationalist aesthetic like the Big Five did for the Russian Symphony (except they didn’t insinuate this aesthetic upon others)…I don’t know, I’m afraid I’m not clear on what you’re implying we do—or at least I hope I’m not. Art has a much greater purpose than Heidegger purports; more than cultural, more than economico-political, more than allegorical representation of the world, it is personal expression, an attempt to reach out and connect, to—for just an evanescent moment—escape this terminally solipsistic condition—and in this way its purpose, its telos, is infinitely discursive. Art isn’t something you can constrain; it’s an unbreakable horse, an inexpugnable force of human nature that will have its way…and what you seem to be describing feels akin to the US Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi River. It’s better to let it run its course…in my opinion.
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Thu Apr 12, 2012 6:24 am Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
I realize this is a sensitive subject, (see OP) but that is no reason to misread me as you have. A few points: You conclude, not from what I write but in some other way, that I would want to ban any kind of art. Of course, I don’t. And you suggest that a culture or collective is objective, or warrants objectivity. It isn’t, and doesn’t - culture is always the product of vital expressions of a particular, context bound subjectivity, with which other subjects, sharing in part this context, can identify as subjects.
Quote :
So this aesthetic is not of the individual but of the cultural order?
As Mozarts music represented an Empire to itself (which means to the people of which it is constructed) much in the same way as Greek architecture did, the aesthetics I propose would be of a cultural order. But I don’t believe in a duality between culture and individual. Culture is the medium for individuality, and cultural order is the result of art. We probably use very different methods of reasoning, so this may not make sense to you at all - but be careful not to infer too much too easily.
Quote :
and further it is to “celebrate the machine” whose tyranny we currently enjoy? We celebrate our own oppression?
I am not actually tyrannized. I live in abundant comfort with a lot of possibilities for expression. These possibilities have increased over my lifetime.
Of course I can go along with all the objections against all social injustices. But part of the function of this art I propose is to liberate art from its role as “rebel”, something at which it never was any good. Art, as it liberates the individual from all kinds of isolation, within and without himself, always sustains order. It is the lifeblood of culture, without which the machine (the “monster” of will to power) is incapable of forming a social order.
So when I suggest that art celebrates the machine, I want the machine to become a space for a social order, so as for humans to claim responsibility for the machine. The machine exists as will to power, no matter that a mans conscience has him withdraw from cognitive acceptance of this fact. As soon as man feels himself morally superior to the system that supports his life in practical terms, he has several options, e.g. - to attempt to leave; to become a “rogue cell” out to create disorder and to disrupt or overthrow power; to become passive-aggressive towards his direct environment; to actively transform the system from within so as for it to become morally on the level of that individual.
For this latter option to be possible, some positive, if perhaps latent, qualities of the machine have to be recognized, as a ground to build on, to improve. These would logically be the qualities that lead the morally superior man to his moral superiority. I think that much of the moral opposition against the capitalist tyranny is groundless (the ground of the morality by which the order is judged to be tyrannical is not identified as part of the ground of this order), and therefore ineffective.
As the state is always built on representation (art, artifice, symbolics), the symbols attributed to it shape the states essence.
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Fri Apr 13, 2012 11:30 am Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
What are we actually against ?
Let’s explicate what is wrong with the machine.
Let’s not assume anything, no pre-given morality, no a priori categories of good and evil.
The expositions and arguments for condemnation of power-that-is range from the implausibly plausible to the absurd. What, in all of its mechanism, is invalid ?
I withdraw my suggestion that art should celebrate the machine - it should celebrate a machine. As we envision it.
For the meaning of “machine” I refer to without-musics post here.
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Sun Apr 15, 2012 3:20 am Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
I had started a reply to your previous post, but it feels largely irrelevant to me now. I still feel I should relate this snippet from it: “Regrettably, I misread two or three sentences leading to “removing the possibility for outward subjective valuation by force.”—this is not warranted by your text and I apologize. My main objection is of proposing an aesthetic rather than creating it, otherwise leaving the rivers and rivulets of art and aesthetic to run their course; if you wish to start a new movement, do so.”
Fixed Cross wrote:
What are we actually against ?
Let’s explicate what is wrong with the machine.
Let’s not assume anything, no pre-given morality, no a priori categories of good and evil.
The expositions and arguments for condemnation of power-that-is range from the implausibly plausible to the absurd. What, in all of its mechanism, is invalid ?
I withdraw my suggestion that art should celebrate the machine - it should celebrate a machine. As we envision it.
For the meaning of “machine” I refer to without-musics post here.
And I think at least one form of art—which for some absurd reason I’ve neglected to mention—already has achieved this end: jazz. (Capable’s culpable for my sudden application of this form; I’d recognized its relevance to the topic, but didn’t think of bringing it up until Capable suggested it.) I mean, jazz simultaneously obeys, contradicts, and transcends all musical precedents: you can describe it in terms of music theory, but it changes key more whimsically than Debussy or Ravel, uses tonalities as daring as Stravinsky, and is absolutely irreverent; contrast the technique of Chico Marx to someone performing Liszt.
Jazz is, to me, the apotheosis of these machinic multiplicities—likewise of rhizomatics—each machine connected to and reciprocally driving one another, infinitely interwoven double articulations; ear-brain informs thought-emotion informs thought-action informs appendage-instrument, etc.—and on so many strata I’m simply unable to list a significant fraction of. Observe the musical strata of the piano in a line by Peter Martin (or any great jazz pianist) where branching lines of flight lay before him, taking at his digression one or another: if this isn’t actual machines, actual rhizome-proliferation…I don’t know. Am I making any sense? I’m going to leave off here and go play.
I’ll leave you this video, perhaps it will illustrate what I mean.
There’s a single theme, a single point of departure from which this all proliferates.
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Sun Apr 15, 2012 12:09 pm Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
Aleatory wrote:
I had started a reply to your previous post, but it feels largely irrelevant to me now. I still feel I should relate this snippet from it: “Regrettably, I misread two or three sentences leading to “removing the possibility for outward subjective valuation by force.”—this is not warranted by your text and I apologize. My main objection is of proposing an aesthetic rather than creating it, otherwise leaving the rivers and rivulets of art and aesthetic to run their course; if you wish to start a new movement, do so.”
Yes! This is of course the only possible way to approach it, art. You can not pre-conceptualize art. Or - can you? Honest question. Did Pythagoras not pre-conceptualize art with his invention of our basic string-tuning mathematics? I want to know what you, a musician, think about this. You have already said a great deal, as Jazz does in a sense defeat the pre-conceptualized rules that the system imposes. This defeating the rules led to whole new forms of music, new rules - I want to know the most pro-active, self-defining music you can think of, and how this music can be pushed.
Can we push without preconceptualization?
Please give links.
Let this forum be flooded with art.
I know nothing of post-jazz “classical” music, which is how I’d interpret what you describe from the outside - I take Jazz to be improvisation on a set of chords - the stuff you mention - is that written reproduced?
I am fearful to post art as I am unspecialized to the extreme - there is no field in music where I am actually knowledgeable, surpass others in knowledge. Except maybe for filmmusic of the 80’s and 90’s. I could not find anything that isn’t obvious. I guess to a great extent, I only trust the obvious. But music makes obvious the previously unobvious.
Preomethean (I like better) Art is preconceptualized as lightenin our path, taking control of vision.
Beyond fire as God, toward filre as man.
Has not fire, as destruction-regeneration of carbon, always been elusive as long as death was respected as beyond?
Therefore: Art, music that introduces us to the death that is already here.
this is what I seek - not to end the cycle, but to include the end of the cycle into another cycle - a vaster, more European-Asian, Land-(not sea) based experiments toward self-recognition of a desolate world. How long has our history not been an accumulation of misery?
Where did this start?
My answer: since nature lacked music and became man.
Man and music have been separate. Jazz, it seems true, has re-integrated man into music.
Which jazz-piano piece would you name most Promethean?
Quote :
Fixed Cross wrote:
What are we actually against ?
Let’s explicate what is wrong with the machine.
Let’s not assume anything, no pre-given morality, no a priori categories of good and evil.
The expositions and arguments for condemnation of power-that-is range from the implausibly plausible to the absurd. What, in all of its mechanism, is invalid ?
I withdraw my suggestion that art should celebrate the machine - it should celebrate a machine. As we envision it.
For the meaning of “machine” I refer to without-musics post here.
And I think at least one form of art—which for some absurd reason I’ve neglected to mention—already has achieved this end: jazz. (Capable’s culpable for my sudden application of this form; I’d recognized its relevance to the topic, but didn’t think of bringing it up until Capable suggested it.) I mean, jazz simultaneously obeys, contradicts, and transcends all musical precedents: you can describe it in terms of music theory, but it changes key more whimsically than Debussy or Ravel, uses tonalities as daring as Stravinsky, and is absolutely irreverent; contrast the technique of Chico Marx to someone performing Liszt.
Jazz is, to me, the apotheosis of these machinic multiplicities—likewise of rhizomatics—each machine connected to and reciprocally driving one another, infinitely interwoven double articulations; ear-brain informs thought-emotion informs thought-action informs appendage-instrument, etc.—and on so many strata I’m simply unable to list a significant fraction of. Observe the musical strata of the piano in a line by Peter Martin (or any great jazz pianist) where branching lines of flight lay before him, taking at his digression one or another: if this isn’t actual machines, actual rhizome-proliferation…I don’t know. Am I making any sense? I’m going to leave off here and go play.
I’ll leave you this video, perhaps it will illustrate what I mean.
youtube.com/watch?v=i-GTsDFFckI]
Hmm, that link did not show up before.
Let’s press it…
" The strong do what they can do and the weak accept what they have to accept. "
- Thucydides
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:53 am Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
This will take a little bit to explain, and probably a few sittings. Jazz, firstly, is a word whose density is that of a neutron star; what is defined as jazz is a topic heatedly debated since its coining circa the 20th’s teens and has lost no steam. I consider it an Afro-Cuban art in origin (its current multitudinous sub-genres are the offspring of Hispanic and Afro-American progenitors), but it’s practiced by every culture (save probably some aborigines) on the planet. I mean, the variety is simply nuts. For instance, you’ve got the classics like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Armstrong, Calloway etc., who were just stepping out into the thing to come, still heavily preconceived but featuring the variation in solo. Now these cats didn’t disappear, but this field of art, this territory, evolved at breakneck speed, so you had these new free radicals popping up like, Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Ellington (he began with the earlier swing group and isn’t as daring as the rest of this group, but I felt obliged to include him). Then Coltrane began to stretch out, but Cecil Taylor said “not nearly enough,” Gillespie re-emerged with the Afro-Cuban movement while Miles Davis got fast, Buddy Rich screamed at his band (pushing the instrument rather than the music), Gets & Gilberto did Coltrane one further with the bossa nova, Jaco changed the bass then made a band (watch this too), Metheny got indescribable, Tortoise and Mercury Program said goodbye to rock, Europe had a break through and you begun to get bands like Jaga Jazzist. Elsewhere Screaming Headless Torsos made their own recipe, Hiromi met Corea, Fitzgerald said no to words, and pardon the abrupt ending, but I’ve already skipped over soooo much. All of this is interconnected, not a chain or hierarchy but a field of grassroots, chaotic, obfuscated. My list is horribly limited in scope, but I just wanted to illustrate the range this word “jazz” covers, and I’ve probably failed to do that even, so I’ll move along for now.
Who do I think is the most promethean? Cecil Taylor, by and far. Interestingly enough, though Wikipedia doesn’t mention a thing about it, you can find Taylor’s main influence in a few Debussy pieces: feux d’artifice, ce q’ua vu le vent d’ouest, le vent dans la plaine, les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir, la serenade interrompue, brouillards, la puerta del vino, etc. But I’m at my limit and must play now. I know Without-music plays piano (and guitar, if I’m not mistaken?), so perhaps he could fill some of the numerous gaps I’ve left?
Suis-je un homme, ou un omelette?
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PostSubject: Re: The Luciferian Wed May 30, 2012 7:33 am Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
The Universal Mind of Bill Evans
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