Cold and tired. In some pain. Work tomorrow, uncertain of the further future. Vague entities soon to call their in their debts. Resolute choices that lead to loneliness or marginalization. Makes for a certain mindset, might as well make something of it, however brief.
So, yes. Heavy Metal.
Since starting this blog, I have only thought about this art more, not less. I feel no closer to the identity of the allure. Oh, I think dialog has been produced. Words of varying function, certainly. But the core of it. Too deep. I'm pointing my finger in the darkness and it's getting colder.
I re-read some of the older texts on this website. I expected to feel embarrassment at how half-formed they'd be but to my surprise they stand, I'm proud of their clarity. I'm also entertained, privately, by how baffling it is for some readers to call anything written in this website clear, but so it is to me. What is bad is that my self from a year or so ago makes a convincing case for my current self. I must consider my next moves carefully. I have attempted to tackle the music by dissecting morphology, marrying the results to aesthetic theories, and from there to the inverse, turning abstract impressions into power through well, malice towards reality, really. The way is as dim as ever. It isn't a matter of being a better writer, about that I am certain. It is - I fear - a matter of having a better mind, or less distractions, less directions to be pulled towards/hoops through. Perhaps I need to be older.
I hope that the dialog - and ramblings, sure - produced here will contribute in some small way to when other people with similar interests attempt to explain them to themselves. I wonder if they'll ever find their way here or not. I found myself in many strange places on the internet, for one.
I'll keep writing I think. But first I have to rest.
I hope I never said your work was "clear." Ha ha ha. Dense. It's dense. And it should be, because, as you say, you're "dissecting morphology, marrying results to aesthetic theories..."
ReplyDeleteWish I could shitcan all the aesthetics and philosophy most of the time and go back to just holding War & Pain in my hands and listening and looking and saying Voivod was this or that. Pure impression through a damaged filter bent on cheap horror movies and pulp sci-fi novels.
Maybe the purest form of criticism stems not from reasoning but from the ability to regress to adolescence and to understand the music from that "green" mindset.
Keep writing, of course, and have an ouzo.
At ages up to three or four, children do no recognise rules when they tell you about their fantastic impressions. There's bears on the moon. Why are there bears on the moon, dear? Because they want to make ice-cream. Why do bears want to make ice-cream? Because they sell in on earth in exchange for honey. And so on. Never-ending narration.
ReplyDeleteAt about age five to six, children begin to play in a different way. They become obsessed with rules and the concept of 'fair' enters the picture. Freeze tag is played like this. Hey, no fair, you moved. Bears cannot live on the moon, because bears belong on the earth. The child has realized that the world is bigger than them, that they are part of something more extensive and to navigate it they need to understand it, not impress willpower over it.
At teenager years, the rule constructs the child has been believing in, its sense of 'fairness' and the express way the world works begin to feel unsteady. The teen realizes his parents are full of shit and that there's gaping holes in anyone's epistemology. That reality is vague again. That's very disconcerting, because they traded in that tyrannic impressionism of the child, which has great magical power, for rules and rulesets at an early age, but an age they remember. Every person remembers playacting whatever the hell at early age, they're just ashamed of it.
At that point, great art is potent. It destroys rules and replaces them with an ambiguous, amorphous but alluring space in which we can again be child-gods.
But then after listening to Voivod, we want to express to others our impressions. We want to impress upon them, our expression. We use their tools against them, their rules and logical constructs, to undeniably lock them in a different cage, our own cage. When we have locked enough people in there, we can feel a little rest for not being lonely in this strange, personal reality.
There you go again hitting head right on the nail. When ever I am reading art critic that goes for pure objectivity what strikes me most is how dull and uninspiring read it makes for. It might stem from the fact that there is no pure objectivity in subjective trips to the Voïvod-land and indeed the best critics are able to explain and express something about the fantasy behind it through their own subjective lense and in best case scenario show us how their own experiences and persona reflect the fantasy (or the idea... been reading Platos "forms") thus giving birth to something new along the context.
ReplyDeleteDo tell when you're done with Plato, what you gathered.
ReplyDeleteWell truth to be told, I actually watched a documentary on philosophy that managed to explain Platos theory of forms a little better than a wikipedia article I've read in the past but I will read the book after finnishing the one I am reading currently and speak to you after.
ReplyDeleteIs Helm's extending cold dark finger wearing the cat skin glove?
ReplyDeleteI just recognized i was born in the middle of the final orgy and now we're moving on into...?
Plato has appeared. I'm hardly enlightened but very curious. What cages can he unlock?