text:
Say what you mean, and mean what you say
I said you need to learn clarity in writing
Marcus, do you remember writing this:
However I would like to comment about Jeffrey's discomfort with the expression 'primitive culture'.
It is rife in Western Universities today where anybody who would dare use such an expression 'primitive' culture, religion or society would be labelled a racist imperialist fascist. Using the word 'savages' would probably get you expelled!
You referred to primitive culture.
I was stating the implications of the paragraphs above: you deem technologically inferior cultures to be aesthetically (and possibly morally) inferior.
Did you not mean that? Possibly. If so, you need to learn how to write better. Think out the implications of your words before you publish them. Or otherwise, you will end up like Perigo, saying things that mean the opposite of what you say they mean, if they have any meaning at all.
Jeffrey...
"Which shows only that you need to learn clarity in writing."
Let me clear. I never mentioned technology.
So why did you go to such lengths to prove to me that there is no link between technology and culture?
It's the premise behind 'cultural relativism' that's important, not all the baggage that you have attached to it.
Rand and esthetics
Submitted by wngreen on Tue, 2009-03-24 01:37.
Which of Rand's statements are overstated opinions from the Romantic Manifesto? I'd invite you to comment here or in the threads we did on the chapters of the Romantic Manifesto a little over a year ago
keeps on doing so even after one points out what one actually did say.
In that particular case, at least, it's because you don't say what you think you are saying.
Half the time you don't even say something coherent, so one has to guess.
Your manifesto here is a good example. You claim you are making an objective argument identifying objective factors that allow one to decide whether a piece of music is good or bad.
Well, you don't do that. It's a piece of utter FAIL. The only thing you do seem to specify is value swooning. I don't need to learn how to do that from you. That's simply something straight out of the Neoplatonic Hermetic tradition--the devotee uniting with the deity to which he is devoted. It's nothing more than the Hare Krishnas shouting Hare Hare Ram: Bhakti yoga and Tantra in the Indian tradition. Sex magick in the modern west. Only difference is you use Romantic symphonic music and opera to reach the state of trance. I don't need you for that, even if you didn't do a particularly poor job of it. If you want to do a proper job of it, then do yourself a favor and go read Magick in Theory and Practice, where you'll find it all explained by a man who thought better and wrote better on his worst days then you've done on your best days.
And he used actual sex to do it, too. No fake orgasms for him.
I came here thinking that I would find objectivists. Instead I get a man propounding stuff I learned, from better sources, twenty and twenty five years ago....
I was going to write a lengthy critique of your article but on a second read, I changed my mind. There's no point to. It's akin to writing a negative article about the Spice Girls in Rolling Stone. There's nothing wrong writing a negative review about the Spice Girls, per se…but why? Least of all in Rolling Stone. Suffice to say this about "Music of the Gods": The article is hardly philosophically rigorous—which is what it would have to be to push it as a scientific (or objective) principle when it comes to art. Rand had this penchant to do the same. Her work in epistemology is rigorous, but her esthetic theory suffered from overstated opinions being pushed as a philosophical universal truism. "Music of the Gods" (even the title is inflated hyperbole) might work as a polemic rhetoric device, a hyperbole prose to stress a strong opinion. The main problem, though, this was not your intention, which makes it even harder to take serious: you are pushing the objective fact card, which you failed at miserably. Such an essay may be written, or a book. But it won't be yours.
That's not my formulation of
That's not my formulation of the argument, it's yours.
It's the argument that you seemed to be making.
Besides that, you have completely missed the point I was making.
Obviously. Which shows only that you need to learn clarity in writing.
Sharon's brain shut-down and now Jeffrey is having an argument with himself!
And you also need to learn that inept mockery gains you nothing.
You're young, so let me give you a hint based on experience:
Disciples of fools learn only to become fools in their turn.
And Perigo is a fool.
You to Mr. Smith:
"...that a culture that is technologically superior is also culturally and intellectually superior."
Linz. I'm sorry, I can't do anything with these people.
I learned a few weeks back that Mr. Smith doesn't argue with what one says but what he says one seems to say, and keeps on doing so even after one points out what one actually did say. If you trawl back through this thread (or it might be the Catholicism one) you'll see what I mean. And Sharon doesn't even know what an adverb is. Hopeless, I agree - but I was enjoying the pomowank self-revelations you were eliciting from them.
"Linz. I'm sorry, I can't do
"Linz. I'm sorry, I can't do anything with these people.
You can't do anything with 'these people' because we can't take Mr. Perigo's hand-puppet serious.
OK U GUYS
Submitted by Brant Gaede on Mon, 2009-03-23 15:31.
I was hamming it up a little on my previous post. But FYI a few cases of whiskey will make for good bartering come Armageddon.
One for me too!
I've absolutely no idea what Brant is on about when he's drinking this stuff, but at least I now know what he's on. I figure if I go on it and reduce myself to such gibberish in future it'll at least keep me out of trouble for a change. Who can be offended by the unintelligible?
Brant, does Babs know you're "befuddled by alcohol"?
Classical music is the highest music art form with opera being a category of that. Nothing else is within a country mile. Arguing that it isn't is a queer way of objectifying musical esthetics while ostensibly saying it's all subjective. I'm afraid this thread is more about mixing up all musical categories which makes the triumph of the subjective, in this context, possible. But if you simply maintain the categories you'll get objective clarity unless you've never learned how to listen to classical, which takes work. As much as I like other types of music, I can only listen to a relatively small amount of it. The brain doesn't process these other types very well. It has to do with how the brain works. If you like certain classical music you can listen to it for hours and it does not wear you out. It is mentally energizing. It helps enormously with creative thinking. This is akin to reading a good book as opposed to magazine and newspaper articles or Internet postings. It's the rare classical rock song, for instance, that is longer than 3-4 minutes. If you like it a lot you might play it again, but that's generally that. The best popular music is not generally heard on the radio any more. Got Cole Porter?
A model of clarity and rationality. And I can forgive Brant anything after his cheerleading for Cole Porter.
Not the cheapest but not good sippin'. The good stuff makes you drink more but the rot-gut makes you drink less but at the expense of ure self-esteem. If you have some you avoid crap. So mine's not so good and not so bad, the golden mean. If it costs more than 25 American dollars for 1.75 liters (or is that litters?) you're payin' too much for benefits to self-esteem and whiskey efficacy. This is an example of why I have so much self-regard, if not self-respected respect.
That's some befuddlement! Yup, I want some!
I see it has a lasting effect
Submitted by HWH on Mon, 2009-03-23 07:17.
Please dispatch a crate of this stuff to me at your earliest convenience Brant
Hilton, I deserved that.
Submitted by jeffrey smith on Mon, 2009-03-23 01:34.
Brant, actually, in some ways, that particular post was the most intelligent comment in this whole thread.
And it left me curious to know which particularly fine potation was responsible for it
However I would like to
I have no problem with the idea that some cultures can be labelled primitive. But I do not agree with your apparent proposition--that a culture that is technologically superior is also culturally and intellectually superior. That idea can be justified only two ways--by subscribing to the belief that technological superiority is the only criterion that counts; or by subscribing to the belief that some humans are inferior to others solely by reason of the time and place that they live in. If it's the first, then I suggest you have nothing to contribute to a discussion of aesthetics. If it's the second, then I suggest that you have nothing to contribute to a discussion of morals--you have no more standing to speak of morality than someone who rejoices over the death of a musician solely because they disapproved of the music he produced (Yes, Mr. Perigo, that's you.)
Some art produced by technologically advanced societies is of little aesthetic value, and some art produced by technologically backward societies is of the highest aesthetic value. Compare if you will Jackson Pollack to the art produced in ancient Egypt or primitive West Africa, and tell me which is the greater.
And also consider this: whose invention produced the greatest value for mankind:
The person who invented the wheel
The person who invented the automobile
The person who invented the means of producing fire at will
The person who invented the means of transmitting electrical power from one place to another
and even then, don't
and even then, don't speak
Obviously, Marcus has never learned the Four Virtues:
To Will
To Dare
To Be Silent
Or even worse
Go to school, Marcus, and take philosophy.
I wouldn't do that if I were you, Marcus. You might end up like Sharon.
Or even worse, like Lindsay Perigo.
Submitted by sharon (not verified) on Sun, 2009-03-22 22:45.
"...but once I named the Elephant in the room, Sharon's brain shut down."
No, Marcus, I sat frozen before my screen dumbfounded by your philosophical ineptness. And your cherry pick of what to critique in Jeffery's post (some side issue, not the main thrust of his post) shows that you hardly know how to refute his point regarding the subjectivity of music tastes and cultural relativism. I get the impression that you ran with an objectivist catechism (it's rampage against what is called "cultural relativism") and you tossed it against the wall of this subject to see if it sticks. Win the argument—at all costs. Even if it means bullshiting. Go to school, Marcus, and take philosophy--and even then, don't speak.
I admit
Submitted by Brant Gaede on Sun, 2009-03-22 22:27.
Silliest post of all time Brant
Submitted by HWH on Sun, 2009-03-22 22:10.
The alternative is I ignore you too do! Ah, whiskey! Late nite whiskey! You ain't so bad, Linz, because you can't be that so very good, no matter how hard you try and I do believe you do that too, sometimes for slanderous reasons or not but reasons nevertheless. Sorry, man, but you can't get to where I am, from where you are, since you placed yourself there, where you are, forever and ever.
I enjoyed Linz's thread...great entertainment value..but your post above elevated it to a whole new level.
It may
have more spiritual value--or just more fun. Depends. In fact listening to Mozart may have no spiritual value whatsoever. If anything could be labelled relativistic it'd have to be "spiritual value." Think of the spiritual value the Germans got at huge Nazi rallies in the 1930s. This has to be one of the absolutely silly threads of any length of all SOLO-time.
Thanks Linz...
...but once I named the Elephant in the room, Sharon's brain shut down.
Many people here have unwittingly bought into all that relativistic culture - PC rap crap. All art is subjective and equally valid. Rousseau and Kant's philosophy has poisoned everything.
"Hey man, dancing around a fire beating a drum and chanting has more spiritual value than listening to Mozart." They say.
Sickening!
Keep going! You are eliciting more from these freaks than I could!
Scratch a cultural relativist and you find ... a cultural relativist!
It's been fascinating. Confessions of humanity-diminution, anal warts fetishes, unabashed relativism/nihilism, suicide-worship (if only the mongrels would act on it), lovers of headbanging too cowardly to show their faces, the serious pretence that Slayer is on a par with Rachmaninoff, the claim that anti-value swooning is on a par with value-swooning, the claim that swooning and objectivity are mutually exclusive (that ol' reason/passion dichotomy again - don't folk read the Credo?), the militant self-righteous swinery of unrepentant ignorance, the constant distortion of what I wrote, and of course, the endless personal attacks on me for writing it by Brandroid boors who lack the breeding or impulse to behave with a modicum of decency in someone else's house.
Throughout it all, examples galore of the greatest of great music and the foulest of anti-musical excrement, just in case anyone was wanting for empirical instances thereof.
Wouldn't have missed any of it.
Heh. But it's good to know we agree on some things
Well, there you go, you spoke for me. I didn't think Marcus's post was worth responding to, as it was the most idiotic thing I have ever heard. Life is too damn short.
Therefore, it also follows
Therefore, it also follows - for example - western culture is no better nor worse than any other primitive culture.
If you judge it on the grounds of technological superiority, and take as your guiding idea that technological innovation is the main sign of cultural superiority, then in certain periods Western culture was superior to any other culture. But not all the time. In what we call the middle ages, the laurels would have probably gone to China.
But beyond that, you can't go. If you are comparing art between cultures, then you can only compare which produced the better result with what was available to them in terms of techniques and materials; but you can't rate the art of one culture as being inherently superior or inferior to another. And always you have to account for individual tastes. Chinese landscapes appeal to some people and not others; the same goes for 19th century EuroAmerican genre painting. Personally, I would take West African sculpture over most 19th century art because much of it was simply an attempt to imitate what had already been done before (Canova is a good example of this), whereas West African sculpture ,while it adhered to a genre with many conventions, generally achieved some individuality.
You can only escape 'cultural relativism' if you purposely pick factors which ensure one culture--obviously, the one you favor and are most comfortable with--comes out ahead--itself an inherently subjective act. Art is inherently subjective, and our reactions are only partially guided by what Rand referred to as "technical factors".
Submitted by sharon (not verified) on Thu, 2009-03-19 23:57.
Your philosophy skills are poor.
No nit-picking here Sharon...
"Only an anal uber-hyper nitpicking lefty-brain type would miss the point."
What you espouse here is cultural relativism. You've already said that if 'art' is good or bad is a subjective opinion.
Classic cultural relativism.
Sneaking suspicions, criminal metaphors, and warty shite
Submitted by William Scott Scherk on Thu, 2009-03-19 21:22.
Matty, Sharon may have used a metaphor, but the shit metaphor is restricted to describe non-romantic music. As anal warts is restricted to Nirvana, and as poomobonker is restricted to such soul-less creatures as lick Commie Obama butt and celebrate nihilism and wish to destroy Objectivism and everything good and sweet and noble and uplifting and fetching and uplifting and glorious and gawdlike and uplifting and crotch-swoony and spiritually orgasmatronic and so on . . .
Like you. According to the elders of Objective Esthetics. As the eldest of the eld declared, objectivishously, you are one of the "sick, slimy fucks, and lost causes."
So there. That is how Objectivishism advances, by putting the tokens in the correct slots. You sick, slimy fuck.
Incidentally, have you seen the symphonic version of Nirvana's anal-wart celebration of death, horror, Richard Goode, Slayer and Chavez-Obama?
As Lindsay might say, fashionably homogenised and rushed . . .
I have a sneaking suspicion
I have a sneaking suspicion that Sharon was using a metaphor.
Yes, most certainly I was. Only an anal uber-hyper nitpicking lefty-brain type would miss the point
Submitted by Matty Orchard on Thu, 2009-03-19 20:12.
"I've never heard of criminals looting sanitation plants for excrement."
"But I maintain one man's shit is another man's diamond."
Only a cultural relativist could come out with a statement as stupid as that one.
I've never heard of criminals looting sanitation plants for excrement.
I enjoyed your post very much.
I must confess that I take a much more "right brain" approach to music. I can be rigorously logical in other areas of my life (and that includes philosophy) but when it comes to art (music) I like to let my emotions take flight. Psycho-biologist Roger Sperry surmised that the "Right brain" approach is more intuitive and looks at the whole picture then the details. Reading your post, I can see you take a "left brain" approach, which is more analytical. And that is fine. For me, instead of focusing my attention on any one artist—which has been the entire modus opernadi here—I look at the larger picture: if diamonds (of whatever genre) are going to be turned out than the price to pay, in a free society, is putting up with the shit. (But I maintain one man's shit is another man's diamond).
edit: Jeffrey, I was listening to the Doors and Nirvana as I wrote this. ;]
Sharon, have you ever
Sharon, have you ever truly indulged in music from the Romantic nineteenth century period?
I'm a music junkie, and if you recall I am rather eclectic. But perhaps you are more well versed than I. Still, if you saw my CD collection you could go from A to Z, and almost find everything in between.
Let the primal urge burst forward unimpeded by being chained to the past.
My comment is not to be interpreted or extrapolated beyond anything other than what I said. The creative impulse must be left free from self-censure and external force that would seek to be the Van Guard of "enlightened taste" or what have you. Sure, conformity and ugliness will slip out, but the chirping bird of freedom sings the loveliest tune of all.
I don't think I'm saying anything that Howard Roark would disagree with.
But I'm telling you that there is no such thing as a superior genre of
music (or an epoch) that objectively trumps other periods comprising
those genres.
Not quite accurate. The music of today builds on the music of yesterday, which built on the music of the day before, and the music of tomorrow will build on the music of today.
If Leonin, Perotin and their anonymous colleagues at Notre Dame and other churches hadn't decided to try writing musical lines for two voices sung simultaneously back about 1200 CE; if other more or less anonymous clergy hadn't thought of developing that and throwing in the modes into the mix, our whole ideas of harmony might have developed in a completely different way, and both pop music and "serious" music would sound entirely different. The technical achievements of today were made possibly by the technical acheivements of the past. But it does mean that in at least one sense, music of our era should be objectively superior to music of earlier eras.
But there is also a sense in which contemporary pop music doesn't do that: it just remains in the same rut. Outside of the "symphonic rock" of the 70s/80s, I don't think any pop music has dared as much melodically and harmonically as Beethoven did in his late string quartets. And in fact, the popular genre that does tend stretch those limited limits the most and innovate the most musically is the heavy metal that Mr. Perigo despises. And that's one reason why I listen to classical music much more than I do to popular music: there is an intellectual engagement in classical music that is lacking in popular music.
But you are correct that it's not really possible to compare genres. You can't really even compare subgenres (for instance, chamber music for string ensembles and concertos for solo instrument and orchestra) in many cases. But there is no way to objectively claim that out of jazz, rock and classical music, one of them is objectively superior to the others: no more than you can say that of apples, oranges and cherries. There are too many differences in musical form to make anything comparison useful. Even when one genre influences another (as jazz influenced mid twentieth century "serious" music), you can point out the influences but you can't assign superiority to either one.
There's also one other thing that you don't comment on, but which I think should be addressed. Mr. Perigo at least (and I believe also Olivia) seem to judge music by its emotional expressiveness. I don't. I get my pleasure from listening to the interplay of the music with itself, how a composer develops the music. Does it suggest emotional content to me? Sometimes. But that's not the primary criterion in my book. For me it's beauty, both intellectual (how a composer develops his ideas musically) and aural (how well the music sounds to my ear). If it achieves beauty, then I will find it glorious. But it seeks to be glorious, usually it comes across as banal. And if you use emotional expression as a criterion, then you are inherently subscribing to a subjective aesthetics, because emotional beauty is a very subjective thing. Mr. Perigo loves Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony: I think it is overwrought. I think Beethoven's late quartets are one of the most awe-inspiring creations of the human mind. (There's a bunch of others on my list, but I'm mentioning the Beethoven quartets because that's what I have on my CD player even as I write this.) Other people find them to be arid and convoluted. Chacun a son gout, as Prince Orlovksy sings in Die Fledermaus.
With my sort of approach, there is an implied hierarchy in which classical music comes out "objectively" superior to popular music: but I think that's only superficial. For one thing, I don't pretend that my taste in music is the only one worth talking about. For another, I think it's important to judge music by the conventions of its genre: and you don't expect any sort of fugatos in popular music because that's not how its conventions run. (The only two I can think of off the top of my head are Bohemian Rhapsody, which is of course a take-off from opera, and Michael Mann's arrangement of Spirits in the Night, which has fugato episodes that weren't in Springsteen's original version.) So when I listen to pop music, I don't judge it according to standards of classical music; I judge it according it to the standards of pop music. (Unless it's pop music pretending to be classical music, like Il Divo or most of the other music you might see on a PBS pledge drive special. And then I generally dislike it because it's usually lousy when judged as classical music.) Which is why I have no guilt feelings, and more than a little pleasure, when I listen to the pop music that I do like.
here: Let the primal urge burst forward unimpeded by being chained to the past.
... is very telling. So thats how you see the Romantic period, the superior period, where primal urges burst forth unimpeded by ugliness, pessimism, conformity and monotony. Even though the past is behind us, it still offers us many lessons and treasures that relate to us today. One simply can't be "chained" to it - physical, mental and emotional impossibility. I don't even really know what that expression means, except for when people use it in a reactionary way when they feel thwarted by others who don't want to change.
"Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
So far the world has left us an amazing legacy of art. If you want to only experience the primitive expressions of it in music, that's your call Sharon, just don't try telling me there is no hierarchy of ability to combine beauty, melody, passion and skill within it all. That's just mind numbingly dumb.
I wouldn't think of telling you that. But I'm telling you that there is no such thing as a superior genre of music (or an epoch) that objectively trumps other periods comprising those genres. I have already said this, including many others. Let the primal urge burst forward unimpeded by being chained to the past.
Nope...
Primal urges to do things are one issue - how and what we do with them is another matter.
You certainly like to play the contrarian don't you.
Must be the anarchist in you.
Olivia: "...the vast majority of it is Jungle Bunny clap-trap, whether you find it uplifting or not. The sound is intended to be primal.
Me: "The need to create and/or experience art is primal."
Oivia: "I agree. So is our need for shelter, but imagine if architects contented themselves artistically with mud huts and thatched roofs?"
Oh come on now, Olivia, the nature of your post was to convey the word "primal" as a pejorative, and yet here you are now rescuing the word --but qualifying it. Your assertion of "superior music" remains only that—assertion. Neither you nor Mr. Perigo have met Jonathan's challenge.
My dear lady Olivia
Submitted by HWH on Tue, 2009-03-17 20:26.
Please spare me from the porter's lodge, and the taste of discipline there, and I shall give my foolery such license no more.
I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the starless night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.- - Robert Green Ingersoll
Sharon...
Submitted by Olivia on Tue, 2009-03-17 12:11.
The need to create and/or experience art is primal.
I agree. So is our need for shelter, but imagine if architects contented themselves artistically with mud huts and thatched roofs?
Jeffrey, my Dear:
Shostakovich found the devil dancing all around him so he composed music for the devil to dance to.
If I think about it my point is, and always has been, by all means dance with the devil if it suits, but save your worship for the gods.
Hilton:
that you have truly "seen attack-ships burn on the shores of Orion" ("From Tears in the rain..Bladerunner)
If you're going to quote one of my gods, I insist you do it word perfect: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe - attack ships on fire over the shoulder of Orion...."
The passion with which you defend your views about music suggests that compared to me (and many others) that you have truly "seen attack-ships burn on the shores of Orion" ("From Tears in the rain..Bladerunner)
As for me, I've been so preoccupied with different challenges throuhout my life, and even though I have a deep love of music (my dad was a musician) , I've only managed to appreciate it while on the run, and furthermore only from that which has surrounded me.
Thus my favourites consist of an eclectic mix chosen from among many genres, but I've never seriously ventured into any of the classical stuff.
Judging from your passion for it however, I wish there was a way I could simply download your vast experience and appreciation for what you love and I know I wouldn't be disappointed.
When it comes to identifying those who genuinely seek to discover new values, Newtons words speak volumes for that particular sense of life "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem
to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting
myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell
than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
before me."
Far be it from me to psychologise but I think your answer re those who have reacted so vindictively towards your assumptions may be found in this piece from "ARL Selfishness without a self" by Ayn Rand..or on the other hand they may actually truly love Slayer. I have personally witnessed this phenomena firsthand.
The amoralist's implicit pattern of self-appraisal (which he seldom identifies or admits) is: "I am good because it's me."
Beyond the age of about three to five (i.e., beyond the perceptual level of mental development), this is not an expression of pride or self-esteem, but of the opposite: of a vacuum—of a stagnant, arrested mentality confessing its impotence to achieve any personal value or virtue.
Do not confuse this pattern with psychological subjectivism. A psychological subjectivist is unable fully to identify his values or to prove their objective validity, but he may be profoundly consistent and loyal to them in practice (though with terrible psycho-epistemological difficulty). The amoralist does not hold subjective values; he does not hold any values. The implicit pattern of all his estimates is: "It's good because I like it"—"It's right because I did it"—"It's true because I want it to be true." What is the "I" in these statements? A physical hulk driven by chronic anxiety.
The frequently encountered examples of this pattern are: the writer who rehashes some ancient bromides and feels that his work is new, because he wrote it—the non-objective artist who feels that his smears are superior to those made by a monkey's tail, because he made them—the businessman who hires mediocrities because he likes them—the political "idealist" who claims that racism is good if practiced by a minority (of his choice), but evil if practiced by a majority—and any advocate of any sort of double standard.
But even such shoddy substitutes for morality are only a pretense: the amoralist does not believe that "I am good because it's me." That implicit policy is his protection against his deepest, never-to-be-identified conviction: "I am no good through and through."
YOU! LINDSAY!
Submitted by Brant Gaede on Tue, 2009-03-17 06:57.
You don't regret animadversion upon your remarks or even your soul or moral stature if not person (where I do believe you draw the line) as long as people, such as me, keep coming at you with fire and brimstone, if not tar and feathers; you revel in it, admit it. No! Don't do that! We need the illusion of something substantial to swing our bats at! I can't help it! I've gotta keep swingin' 'n you keep winnin'! J.H. Christ! U got me by the balls! Take that! And that! Let me hit you again and again! You love it more than I do. The alternative is I ignore you too do! Ah, whiskey! Late nite whiskey! You ain't so bad, Linz, because you can't be that so very good, no matter how hard you try and I do believe you do that too, sometimes for slanderous reasons or not but reasons nevertheless. Sorry, man, but you can't get to where I am, from where you are, since you placed yourself there, where you are, forever and ever.
Hilton (not Paris)
I reread it last night and have to concede that I've come around to your main point that there's a huge difference between a catchy tune and something that brings tears to your eyes.
Surely. But understand I'm not dissing catchy tunes. Au contraire. I do not argue that Romantic music is the only; simply that it's the best. And that there's anti-music like rap and contemporary classical that dispenses with "tune" altogether: faeces rather than food.
I also concede that true romantic music is probably exceedingly more likely to be found in the classical and operatic genres..and not in the pop and contemporary infused world most of us inhabit..but implore you not to summarily trash the tiny bit of exalted stuff that does make its way precariously into the mainstream, even if not from your favourite genres.
And I don't, if such "exalted stuff" exists. I've yet to hear it on the streets, where all I get is assault and battery from unabashedly malevolent headbanging caterwauling. But an occasional exalted nugget would scarcely undermine my thesis.
One issue I have with judgement is the challenge to seperate the core visceral experience the music envokes from the associated emotions a piece of music gathers and assimilates as one listens to it over time? Could this be the achilles heel in trying to establish an objective vocab for music?
Nah. And if it were it's not what Rand said it was. But there's nothing wrong with nostalgia spasms for that which one has outgrown - though you wouldn't want to go back to it fulltime and shrink your brain and taste to the size of Paris's (her brain and taste, I mean), now would you, Hilton?
And Hilton, don't you think there's a telling significance to the venomous ferocity that has been directed at me over this, and by whom it's been directed?
Yes..I did get Lanza then..but not your argument. I reread it last night and have to concede that I've come around to your main point that there's a huge difference between a catchy tune and something that brings tears to your eyes.
I agree with your take that it's the melody that makes it great, and that arrangement, rhythm, artist, style, lyrics and accompanyment are secondary, yet crucial aspects of the total experience.
My dear Olivia
I would offer you up the Shostakovich below (on Jeffrey's post) as an
excellent example of unmelodious clap-trap on a violin as opposed to
Beethoven's Romance for Violin and Orchestra.
Unmelodious clap-trap! If I weren't a gentleman speaking with a lady, I'd be outraged. It's got quite as much melody as the Beethoven. It just has an edge to it that's lacking in the Romance. And given the circumstances in which it was composed, in the wake of Stalin's second ban on his music, it should have had an edge: Shostakovich found the devil dancing all around him so he composed music for the devil to dance to.
Hilton?
I found it and more, and for those as ignorant of this dazzling creature as I was, may I present Jaqueline Du Pre. Must admit I'm slowly starting to get what Linz is on about.
Last I heard you were value-swooning to Lanza and had already got it.
Did you backslide? Must I have you shot?
Jaqueline Du Pre - OMFG!
After overseeing a rather listless Cello practise session from my daughter this morning, I trawled youtube in the hope of finding her some inspiration.
"...the vast majority of it is Jungle Bunny clap-trap, whether you find it uplifting or not. The sound is intended to be primal."
the vast majority of it is Jungle Bunny clap-trap, whether you find it uplifting or not. The sound is intended to be primal.
Classical music has a much greater variance - I would offer you up the Shostakovich below (on Jeffrey's post) as an excellent example of unmelodious clap-trap on a violin as opposed to Beethoven's Romance for Violin and Orchestra. One makes me wince, the other makes me go ahhhh. I'm sure Jeremy, even you would notice the difference between these two composers.
Submitted by Matty Orchard on Mon, 2009-03-16 08:32.
Sugarhill represent! Here's Stevie Wonder:
Music of the Fop
Jeffrey, I can in fact barely distinguish between the composers I mentioned, as I said. And there's been plenty of creativity in classical music in 300 years. And the uninitiated ear would judge Mozart and Beethoven to be the same thing, just as people that simply refuse to accept that non-classical music can indeed be inspiring, or just plain fun (i.e. good) would say that all music made with rapid beats and rhyme schemes is all 'jungle bunny' claptrap.
We agree, I suppose, but sometimes I think the best way to present an argument is with a mirror.
Well, that's just silly.
Well, that's just silly. You're telling me Cop Killer sounds the same as Rapper's Delight?
Of course they do, if someone doesn't listen to much rap. At least I suppose they do, since I've never actually bothered to listen to either one :) Just like there are important similarities between Mozart and Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov--for both pairs, time and place overlapped, for one thing--but also important differences, and the more you listen to them the more obvious the differences are. But in a sense early Beethoven picked up where Mozart left off, and developed from there. Same with T. and R. But I bet you can tell the difference between Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.
When's the last time anyone came up with a different sound that a
violin can make? Been the same damn sound for 300 years, I don't think
I'm missing anything by not listening to it.
If it interests you, search Youtube for Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1, and you'll hear the complete thing scattered over various clips.
And then this, which was in fact composed a little over three hundred years before the Shostakovich--the Bach Chaconne
Mo' science rapping -- Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris . . .
Submitted by William Scott Scherk on Mon, 2009-03-16 02:29.
Here's a hilarious rap video starring the Four Horsemen (and a bikinied Eugenie Scott of the NCSE).
Rap from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN - MC Hawking
Submitted by William Scott Scherk on Sun, 2009-03-15 20:34.
In the 'RACH' (Revolt Against Caterwauling Headbanging) thread, referenced above in the introduction to Music of the Gods, SOLO Principal Lindsay Perigo declares rap music to be the apogee of awfulness:
In its most blatant, obnoxious and honest form—rap—this
depravity doesn't conceal its life- and man-hatred, replete
as it is with murderous agendas and gratuitous profanity.
Those who perpetrate, perform and enjoy headbanging
caterwauling are sub-human. They are in rebellion against
life, against grandeur, against heroism, against beauty ...
they are at war with that which is the crowning glory of man:
his mind. They are mindless worshippers of mindlessness.
Here is an example of the sub-humans in rebellion against life, grandeur, heroism and beauty. The rap video was the child of CERN's then press officer, Katy McAlpine. The genesis of this depraved man-hatred is explained in a Telegraph story from last September, "Rap about world's largest science experiment becomes YouTube hit." See a short explanation of how the depravity was accomplished, below.
This is of course not the only example of depraved life-hating jungle boogie being used to promote science's murderous agenda. Livescience.com features a story on urban youth, science enthusiams and rap -- and a host of other intriguing explications of the power of music: highly recommended -- even for those Randians who know evul when they hear it. Livescience.com's music links contain material that both supports and amplifies The Principal's general theses about music** -- it also offers data that undermine his conclusions.
(See also this evul jungle boogie low black culture rap on 'Astrobiology.' This bit of jungle boogie was commissioned by NASA, featured in Astrobiology Magazine European Edition, and performed last August at London's Science Museum. See the story "Astrobiology Rap" for more on this performer/death-worshipper, Jonathan Chase.)
Will Barras explains how they created the
soundtrack: "Katie McAlpine wrote the lyrics and
recorded it 'acapella' into her laptop computer
while she was working at CERN.
"I received an MP3 of that vocal recording by
email with a request to put some music to it, and
I put the track together around the vocal (which
is really the reverse of how songs are usually
recorded, but was quite an enjoyable challenge).
"Thinking of programmes like Sesame Street, which
often had educational songs, I deliberately
created a sort of 1980s-retro-hiphop style for the
track. I used the distinctive "woo-yeah" sample of
James Brown, which was frequently used in 80s
hiphop.
"I added the computer voice as an irreverent nod
to MC Hawking."
** by general theses, I mean that music has great effects on the emotions, motivation and physiology, not that Richard Goode is soulless and Matty is a Poomobonker). See especially the story "Babies Know Happy from Sad Songs," and "Amazing Power of Music Revealed," which highlights the science that went into choosing death-worship music for the London half-marathon Run to the Beat (see also the associated story here).
The stories surrounding the Run to the Beat events are encouraging, in that Rand's hope for a conceptual vocabulary may yet be achieved. The work has something to say about the 'spiritual orgasm' or 'value-swoon' enjoyed by The Principal.
From Livescience's take on music's power, via findings of scientists at Germany's Institute for Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine:
Listening to your favorite hits can shift your breathing
pattern and speed up your heart rate.
Shivers down the spine even show up in brain scans,
according to research at McGill University. As chills
grow in intensity, bloodflow increases between areas of
the brain associated with euphoria-inducing vices like
food, sex, and drugs.
Could this be a "capacity for rapture"?
This follows on Joe Maurone's notes regarding theories of musical perception, "Beyond Emotion: The Cognitive Theory of Music" -- which attracted positive attention from The Principal and The Prince.
Of note also are the headline essay's critiques by SOLO's Grace, on preceeding pages of this thread, here (comment 51915) and here (comment 51916). Here (comment 51928). It appears that response to the meats of her matters is/was 'coming' (comment 51927).
Tap, tap, tap.
I didn't like what little I heard of it. I've never liked rap and hardly even consider it music. Since there's no singing, just jerky loud talking over a soundtrack, everything gets jumbled up in your brain. My brain, at least, cannot process this crap.
Sorry Bro, didn't work
Submitted by Jeremy on Sun, 2009-03-15 15:23.
Sorry Bro, didn't work for me. Just sounds like more Jungle Bunny black-boy-boogie. It honestly all sounds the same!
Okay, just to make things even, I can barely tell the difference between Mozart and Beethoven. I am dead serious. It all sounds the same. Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky? Might as well be the same guy.
When's the last time anyone came up with a different sound that a violin can make? Been the same damn sound for 300 years, I don't think I'm missing anything by not listening to it.
Is jungle bunny an acceptable thing to call black people where you're from? Why not just say nigger? Only wondering.
The ABBA of rap
Pure benevolence..unlike the millitant toxic crap of today.
I was 16 when this came out and I love it mostly for the memories that accompany it, and imho the fact that music is experienced as an emotional package deal (memories and all) is what makes it impossible to judge objectively
Aside from the proposed standards of judgement in Linz's argument, there are some technically brilliant pieces that trigger my gag reflex due to the embedded memories, and then there are bubblegum pop examples like this that I absolutely love for the same reason.
How can one then judge music objectively..your experience of it is going to be subjectively biased by your current mood, your immediate ecology, the memories it envokes etc etc.
Dear Jeremy...
Before I go to work, I'll
Before I go to work, I'll post an example of life-affirming rap.
(I'm no fan of today's glam-thug rhyme-chumps.)
I defy anyone on Earth not to get into the groove of THIS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diiL9bqvalo&feature=related
I've read it several times
Please read the sections, Romanticism vs. Headbanging, and Romanticism and sense of life, in my essay.
Please read the whole essay at some point.
I've read it several times, and I still don't get anything approaching a statement of objective factors that make music good or bad. You seem to be judging music by the emotional states it raises. That is inherent subjectivism. (If you doubt it, just refer to the completely different reactions that you and I have on the subject of Tchaikovsky's Fifth. You think it's the acme; I think it's overblown.) The only thing I get out of your various statements is that you like to indulge in spiritual wankery with Van Cliburn and Tchaikovsky, and a helping throat from Mario Lanza.
Nor do you even come close to explaining why rap and heavy metal are of necessity genres which can not produce good music. You simply rhetoricize agains them.
Mr. Smith ...
I enjoyed the Tallis; thank you. Not my ultimate value-swoon—a tad anal by Romantic standards, as, historically, it had to be—but glorious, and infinitely better than headbanging, for sure. Food, not poo.
Why eat eat poo when you can have food?
Ipse dixit:
I'll try the ostensive route again.
Giving examples is not defining your terms or giving a detailed analysis. In fact, not only have you not defined your terms, you haven't even begun to define them. After all this, the only determining factor I can see is whether or not you like a piece of music.
Why is example 1 poo? Why is example 2 Romantic music? What objective factors make example 1 poo and example 2 Romantic music?
And meanwhile, I'll give you some music to value swoon by in place of the technical brilliance (which is all example 2 actually is) you offer as your example.
You mean my contra-poo? Works fine for me. If you can't get it here, google van Cliburn and Tchaikovsky #1, 3rd movement.
The (romantic) Video
is no longer available, but I'm pretty sure I'd like it.
is a hoot. Those guys are a bunch of pussies. I really was once napalm death and high explosive death and bullet death.
Finding garbage to illustrate a thesis doesn't prove it.
on to the next video
I'll take that classical piece over NAPALM DEATH anyday of the week.
Excrement vs Exaltation
Personally, I think value swooning is at best only one possible aim of music, and a fairly inferior aim at that. It's a form of sentimentality (that is to say, artificially induced, and therefore false, emotion) and I try to root out sentimentality from myself whenever I find myself falling into it.
I don't doubt that you try to root it out, Mr. Smith, and that you succeed.
I note the poo-eating swine, in their ongoing panic, are oinking away that I haven't adequately defined my terms, blah, blah, blah.
Here's some poo:
Here's some Romantic music:
Poo-eating swine value-swoon to the former, evolved human beings to the latter.
Nuff said.
Perigo on a spit. It's all really too much. This isn't so much about objectifying esthetics, yes or no, as getting Lindsay. That's a fact. I'm not here to get him, but I'll stand up to him. I wouldn't have come back except the genocidalists are gone or are at least quiet. Also, SOLOP is much more than LP and I'm willing to defend it if not him, as long as the genocidalists don't come back talking their genocidal yik and yak.
Another reason I'm back is that I no longer care if LP calls me names. That has nothing any longer to do with me. It's all on the name-caller.
"O-Liar" and all that (and I don't like LP)
Preferring Victimhood Over Saving The World?
Submitted by Jonathan (not verified) on Mon, 2009-03-09 05:05.
What strange "values" and priorities Pigero must have. He has said that Objectivism and the world are being held back by Rand's views on music (that there are no objective criteria for judging music as art and that we must treat our musical tastes as a subjective matter), yet he refuses to define his terms and identify any objective criteria that would correct Rand's alleged errors. You have to wonder why. I mean, if the issue is as vitally important as Pigero has been frantically claiming it to be over the past decade in rant after tirade after rant on the subject, and if he truly does have some "flesh" to put on the "skeleton" as he keeps claiming -- if he has an actual argument to back up his assertions contra Rand that certain pieces of music are objectively superior -- what is he waiting for? Is he going to let Objectivism and the world perish out of spite because you and a few others opposed his speaking at a TAS function? Is maintaining his victimhood more important to him than rescuing Objectivism and the world?
Or maybe what I've been saying all along is the truth: Pigero is a windbag who has no substance to back up his vicious attacks on Rand and her Objectivist Esthetics.
It's possible to value-swoon to the music of Tchaikovsky.
It's possible to value-swoon to the products of Eminem's pen. (For reasons outline in the Catholicism thread, I hesitate to call them "songs".)
It's possible to value-swoon to songs by Slayer.
Yet according to you, value swooning to the second and third is bad, and only (among the three examples) value swooning to the first is good.
At first blush, it might be the texts. But there are two objections to that:
First, you seem to approve value swooning to Ave Maria and Kol Nidrei, and (I'm inferring this from your failure to object when Olivia provided it as an example) Rachmaninov's setting of the Orthodox Eucharist service--or at least you think value swooning to those is not nearly as bad as value swooning to Eminem or Slayer.
Second, you categorically deny the possibility that anyone could produce rap or heavy metal which is life affirming and therefore could be acceptably valued swooned to. This means that even if lyrics were provided for rap and heavy metal which were life affirming, the entire song would still be objectionable.
Therefore, it must be in the music itself that you find the objectionable part. But you give no real indication of what the objectionable features are. You simply condemn it in toto, and leave everyone in the dark as to what is actually wrong about it.
But I am amused at the picture you give of the ideal of aesthetics being a spiritual menage a trois, bhakti yoga straight of the playbook of the Hermetica and Neoplatonic mysticism. But considering that Rand ends Atlas Shrugged with a magical ceremony--the invocation of Hermes (of whose staff the dollar sign is one form)....
Be generouos of spirit. Provide edification for non-headbanging caterwaulers for whom your essay seeks to address, or at least those who may be converted who are currently headbangers. Speak for their sake. :}
Prof. Campbell
It seems both you and that other ignoble-souled O-Lying cheerleader for headbanging caterwauling on whose behalf you post think I exist for your edification, to do your bidding.
If Music of the Gods is unsatisfactory to you, I'd recommend attending my TAS presentation putting flesh on the skeleton.
Oh wait, you got that one banned ...
The Turandot Challenge, one more time
Submitted by Robert Campbell on Mon, 2009-03-09 00:04.
Mr. Perigo,
Here is Jonathan's challenge, one more time.
It contains no distortions of your name.
Can you answer it? Or are you going to keep stalling?
Robert Campbell
1) Define the concepts "romantic music" and "headbanging caterwauling." Follow the Objectivist tradition of identifying each concept's genus and differentia. Identify which essential characteristics are necessary and which are sufficient for a piece of music to be categorized as either "romantic" or "headbanging caterwauling."
2) Here are Rand's comments on making objective aesthetic judgments:
http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/...
Do you agree with her? If not, explain your differences of opinion, give your own definition of "objective aesthetic judgments," and clearly identify objective standards that would apply equally to all art forms, including music.
3) Give detailed examples of objective aesthetic judgments of music. Choose at least three pieces of music, one which is "romantic" by your definition, one which is "headbanging caterwauling" by your definition, and one which is neither "romantic" nor "headbanging caterwauling" by your definitions. Identify the "artist's theme, the abstract meaning of his work" of each piece, per Rand's requirements, and demonstrate that you've done so objectively, or, if you disagree with Rand's requirements, apply the objective standards which you've carefully identified in part 2. Analyze the music and its meaning, not any lyrics that might accompany the music. Objectively show how the music means what you've concluded it to mean while making no reference to "outside considerations."
If you're not familiar with much music outside of your preferred genres, here are a few samples from which you might choose to make your objective analyses:
(Van Halen's Dreams)
(Metallica's Nothing Else Matters - performed with with San Francisco Orchestra)
(Eric Johnson's S.R.V.)
Submitted by seddon on Mon, 2009-03-02 00:00.
"the case for or against including the likes of Mahler among the Great Romantics will have to wait ... except to say, paraphrasing Shakespeare: 'Brevity is the soul of beauty.'"
Brevity. Bervity. Do you think that when reading ATLAS?
The kid seems sad
Go elsewhere for your validation Master Jonathan.
I believe you've a few points but they're obscured by your initial and continual misrepresentations.
You're just boring. And a cock.
Submitted by Matty Orchard on Sun, 2009-03-01 08:52.
Far as I can tell Linz's stance is that he doesn't need to pay attention to any rebuttal which refuses to call him by his real name. Fair call. Would it hurt to cut out the insults and repost it? I happen to think it makes a pretty compelling case I and would like to hear what Linz has to say to your arguments.
Wishing SOLOPsists
So, SOLOP is now about wishing things out of existence? Does my reply to Pigero's Music of the Gawdz tirade technically not exist if SOLOPsists don't want it to exist, or if I post a link to it instead of posting it here directly, or if someone else posts it for me? Is it not really real if it doesn't include the phrase "Simon says" in certain key locations, or if SOLOPsists cross their fingers while reading it, or if they just believe really hard that it doesn't exist?
WSS posted it below.
Do me a favour
Submitted by Kasper on Sun, 2009-03-01 01:56.
You are blaming the "glitch" for not posting your response because Solo can't handle a post that big. Simply break it up into three parts or so and put them up.
Stop making excuses Johnathan. Either take up the challenge or don't. If you don't then don't expect to be engaged in a discussion about this any further.
Or email Lindsay the post and ask him to put it up.
I am interested in what you have to say and if you really put effort into a big post -I find it odd that you would so easily give up trying to put it up.
SOLOPsist logic at its best
Kasper incoherently blathered:
"You have some bullshit about not posting because of the size. Then proceed to challenge. Are you going to take Lindsay up on this or not? Post your god damn post."
So, your advice is that I should post a message that the SOLOP system, for whatever glitchy reason, has rejected every time that I've tried to post it?
Nice try, Mr. Scherk. But in spite of your editorial interpolations, I'm aware that the faceless one's apologetics for headbanging caterwauling were directed at someone called Pigero and repeatedly quoted someone of that name. Nothing to do with me.
Whisky Tango Foxtrot -- god damn post
Originally posted by the faceless Brandroid spawn of evul at the sister-list, on December 7, 2008.
Over on SOLOP, [Perigo] responded to Matty's statement that there is no objective standard in music:
QUOTE([Perigo])
You'll get no debate, Matty, because just about everyone
here agrees with you. I already laid out the objective basis
for judging music in Music of the Gods. Why don't you go
through that and answer it, point by point? It'll be a first
if you do. The reason folk shy away from the topic is their
emotional investment in crap music—and they're too lazy to
lift themselves out of the gutter. Ooooo, that should induce
a few flouncings. But I do wish that, for once, folk would
debate this stuff. It's important!!
[Perigo] wants a point-by-point response? Okay:
[Perigo]'s "Music of the Gods" (WARNING before you click that link: The SOLOPers have bogged down the "Music of the Gods" thread with embedded youtube clips.):
"The emotion involved in art is not an emotion
in the ordinary meaning of the term. It is experienced more
as a 'sense' or a 'feel,' but it has two characteristics
pertaining to emotions: it is automatically immediate and it
has an intense, profoundly personal (yet undefined) value-
meaning to the individual experiencing it. The value
involved is life, and the words naming the emotion are:
'This is what life means to me.' Regardless of the nature or
content of an artist's metaphysical views, what an art work
expresses, fundamentally, under all of its lesser aspects
is: 'This is life as I see it.' The essential meaning of a
viewer's or reader's response, under all of its lesser
elements is, 'This is (or is not) life as I see it.'" —Ayn
Rand, The Romantic Manifesto
As often happens, I am in hot water—this time on the "RACH"
thread—for fulminating against "headbanging caterwauling"
and touting the superiority of Romantic music. I am in hot
water with the fans of caterwauling for daring to diss their
favoured offal, and with a serious music aficionado who
insists "Romanticism" should include sundry post-Romantic
meanderers and blowhards. He has ranked some thirty Romantic
and post-Romantic works according to merit (according to
him) in what looks suspiciously like a J. Evans Pritchard
modus operandi.
Here I propose to deal only with the "arguments" of the
caterwaulers; the case for or against including the likes of
Mahler among the Great Romantics will have to wait ...
except to say, paraphrasing Shakespeare: "Brevity is the
soul of beauty."
First, a preliminary question: why does this matter matter?
Why do I get so exercised about it? Why can't I just "live
and let live" and leave empty heads and deformed souls alone
to wallow in their frightful cacophonies?
My answer: I am perfectly prepared to do that—but they're
not prepared to leave me or any other decent, innocent human
being alone. They shove their filth at us at every turn, and
I am beyond fed up with it. As Rand might say, "These are
the commandos of the haters' army, who crawl out of the
sewer of centuries and shake themselves in public,
splattering muck over the passers-by. ... The passers-by are
the rest of us, who have to live, breathe and work in this
atmosphere."
"They do not rule the world officially but they have taken
it over. They have taken over the shopping malls, the shops,
the bars and restaurants, the gyms and rugby fields, the
interludes between television programmes and even the
programmes themselves. Nothing is uncorrupted by these
aliens—even opera singers perform with them.
So far, [Perigo] has done nothing but express his typical rage and contempt. I'd think that a person attempting to demonstrate the objective superiority of a certain type of music would begin by defining his terms. What does he mean by "romantic music"? Does he have a definition and clear criteria by which we can objectively determine which works of music qualify as "romantic" and which do not? Is he using the same definition of "romantic" that Rand used? Who knows?
[Perigo] continues:
It's time to shame these aesthetic thugs into oblivion.
Musical masochism is for consenting adults in private; it
shouldn't be sadistically imposed on unconsenting adults in
public. Ideally its perpetrators should follow the logic of
one of their number, the Slipknot drummer who, when told his
was music to commit suicide by, said, 'We must be doing
something right.' I would certainly encourage that alien and
all its fellows to top themselves and leave the earth to
human beings.
Slipknot's drummer was responding to a recording studio production technician who had been publicly critical of the band's music. The technician had said that if Slipknot was the future of music, then he didn't want to live (the technician would not agree with [Perigo]'s angry evaluations of other, similar heavy metal bands). Slipknot's drummer responded by saying that his band must be doing something right to elicit that response from such an asshole. It's kind of like Churchill being told by Lady Astor that if he were her husband, she would poison his tea, and Churchill responding that if she were his wife, he'd drink it. Only not as clever. [Perigo] likes to leave out the context in order to give the impression that Slipknot writes music for the purpose of encouraging suicide.
Since it's unlikely that they'll opt for suicide,
unfortunately, it is they who need to be admonished to "live
and let live" (if you can call what they do living). They
should not be averse to a campaign for the voluntary
clearing away of their pollution from places where it's
unsolicited.
I'd agree with [Perigo] that he shouldn't have to listen to music that he doesn't want to hear on his own property. But that's an issue of property rights and intrusive volume levels of sound, and has nothing to do with one type of music being objectively superior to others.
Rand said: "I am not willing to surrender the world to the
jerky contortions of self-inducedly brainless bodies with
empty eye sockets who perform in stinking basements the
immemorial rituals of staving off terror, which are a dime a
dozen in any jungle—and to the quavering witch doctors who
call it 'art.'"
Well dears, neither am I. When some skunk squirts its filth
in my face without my consent, I will punch its snout. And I
shall campaign against skunkery in general.
Okay, so [Perigo] has made it very clear that he hates certain types of music. He has outlined his emotional motives for writing his little tirade on the subject. Will he ever get around to moving beyond his emotions and to objectively defining his terms and standards of aesthetic judgement? Does he agree with Rand's comments on objective aesthetic judgments -- that one need not like a work of art, that one must identify the "artist's meaning," and that one must evaluate how well the artist has expressed his vision, regardless of whether or not one agrees with it?
I should say that the reason this essay has taken a while is
that it was becoming an academic-style treatise on
Romanticism in music.
I doubt that. I've never seen anything from [Perigo] that has even come close to hinting at being an academic-style treatise.
Does the clown not realize that if he wishes to demonstrate that one type of music is objectively superior to another, then he must do some actual intellectual work, and not just throw tantrums, poop his diapers, and tell us what he hates?
Well, the Internet is replete with such treatises, by people
better qualified than I. All I ever intended was an informed
layman's polemic against The Age of Crap as manifest in
music, and against the idea that music is somehow exempt
from the standard, healthy Objectivist strictures against
cultural relativism. Realising I had departed from my brief,
I had to start over to get back on course.
[Perigo]'s lame-ass "layman's polemic" against the music that he doesn't like was originally billed as a treatise on the "objective superiority" of his favorite music. In other words, as usual, [Perigo] lied. He hyped. He carnival barked. And he didn't deliver. Fizzle. No substance.
I have used Dr. Richard Goode as my foil in this essay
because, like Everest, he's there, and because, in this
debate, he is perfect in his immorality (I say this in a
caring kind of way). He is delectably quintessential!
So why do I feel entitled to pile on value-judgments such as
"sub-human," "skunks," "filth" and so on in the realm of
Didn't Rand herself say:
"Until a conceptual vocabulary is discovered and defined, no
objectively valid criterion of esthetic judgment is possible
in the field of music … No one, therefore, can claim the
objective superiority of his choices over the choices of
others. Where no objective proof is available, it's every
man for himself—and only for himself"?
Note the practical implication of her dictum: that no one
can claim the objective superiority of the Tchaikovsky and
Beethoven posted on the Van Cliburn thread over the Slayer
posted on the RACH thread. This is absurd on its face—but of
course, "on its face" won't do for those who seize on Rand's
statement as an excuse to remain in the sewer. So let's keep
going.
She tells us. Such a vocabulary would explain how a work
evokes the emotions it does. "Why does a succession of
sounds produce an emotional reaction? Why does it involve
man's deepest emotions and his crucial, metaphysical values?
How can sounds reach man's emotions directly, in a manner
that seems to bypass his intellect? What does a certain
combination of sounds do to man's consciousness to make him
identify it as gay or sad?"
Why need we know these things in order to pass objective
judgment? What difference would it make? That she doesn't
tell us. But she does reiterate:
"The formulation of a common vocabulary of music would
require these answers. It would require: a translation of
the musical experience, the inner experience, into
conceptual terms; an explanation of why certain sounds
strike us a certain way; a definition of the axioms of
musical perception, from which the appropriate esthetic
principles could be derived, which would serve as a base for
the objective validation of esthetic judgments." Phew!
This, Rand goes on, means we need to do what we currently
cannot do in musical perception: separate subject and
"In listening to music, a man cannot tell clearly, neither
to himself nor to others—and therefore, cannot prove—which
aspects of his experience are inherent in the music and
which are contributed by his own consciousness. He
experiences it as an indivisible whole, he feels as if the
magnificent exaltation were there in the music—and he is
helplessly bewildered when he discovers that some men do
experience it and some do not. In regard to the nature of
music, mankind is still on the perceptual level of
awareness."
Now, it is my contention that Rand has set the bar way too
high here—we don't need to know all that in order to judge –
We wouldn't need a conceptual language in order to merely subjectively judge music. But Rand's position was that we would need it in order to objectively judge music. [Perigo] doesn't seem to grasp the difference.
and that furthermore, my contention has her imprimatur: "The
deadly monotony of primitive music—the endless repetition of
a few notes and of a rhythmic pattern that beats against the
brain with the regularity of the ancient torture of water
drops falling on a man's skull—paralyses cognitive
processes, obliterates awareness and disintegrates the mind.
... Primitive music becomes his narcotic [that of a modern
man brought up as a "mentally helpless savage"]: it wipes
out the groping, it reassures him and reinforces his
lethargy, it offers him temporarily the sense of a reality
to which his stagnant torpor is appropriate." (Note,
incidentally, what she is describing as primitive music is
still a slight advance on rap, which was embryonic in her
time: rap has no notes!)
If that's not passing judgment I don't know what is!
Yes, that's an example of Rand passing judgment. The problem is that it is not an objective judgment. In fact, it is one of the most subjective, irrational, baseless and foolish judgments that she ever made. Like [Perigo], Rand was pretending to know the mindsets, emotional responses and aesthetic interpretations of others based on her own. And like [Perigo], she didn't approach the subject with academic seriousness, but simply bloviated. Is [Perigo] so stupid that he thinks that any silly judgment that Rand made about music was "objective"?
And, btw, [Perigo] is not correct that "rap has no notes."
So, is Rand seriously arguing that she would then baulk at
the final hurdle and decline to pronounce primitive music
inferior to Romantic? She already has so pronounced it!
Again, Rand didn't make an objective pronouncement. She simply threw a subjective fit. Unlike [Perigo], though, she seems to have at least recognized that some of her subjective judgments were subjective.
See, "the endless repetition of a few notes and of a
rhythmic pattern that beats against the brain with the
regularity of the ancient torture of water drops falling on
a man's skull" is a near-perfect description of, to cite a
convenient example, the track, "Rain of Blood" by "thrash
metal" band Slayer, linked to on RACH. (Apparently "thrash
metal" is a sibling of "death metal.") The piece is
certainly melodically challenged. The rhythm is faster than
water drops, to be sure, but the way it beats against the
brain is definitely torture (which some clearly enjoy, but
I'll come to that).
Torture to whom? To [Perigo], and, since [Perigo] has "objectively" identified himself as the epitome of virtue and psychological health, the possessor of the perfect "sense of life," and as the ideally sensitive and knowledgeable critic of all forms of music, then the music that he dislikes should also be torture to anyone else who is as fine a specimen of humanity as he is?
The description omits, since it wasn't specifically what
Rand had in mind, lyrics that are inaudible (and, on further
investigation, unintelligible) rendered by a voice that is
unlistenable, the voice of someone being tortured.
So, one rock song had lyrics that were inaudible to [Perigo] (who hated the song before he had heard it anyway), it was unintelligible and unlistenable to [Perigo], therefore all rock music is unlistenable and unintelligible to everyone? And this allegedly "objectively" demonstrates that all romantic music is superior to all non-romantic music?
It omits the seemingly deliberate over-amping of the guitars
to effect distortion.
Is there some objective reason that distortion in music, or any other art form, is unacceptable or inherently bad?
It says nothing about harmony—but then, there's not much to
say anyway. Overall, the description could easily be of
"Rain of Blood."
By way of cleansing contrast, let us remind ourselves what
makes Romantic music Romantic music, and what we know about
music itself that permits us to judge.
We know that the primary components of music are melody,
harmony and rhythm—and the greatest of these is melody, the
ordering of tones. Melody is fundamental. As plot is to
literature, so melody is to music. Whistle a tune,
unaccompanied (no harmonies), each note equal in length (no
rhythm)—it's still music. No melody—no music. "It's the
toon, stoopid!"
We know that certain simultaneous combinations of tones
(harmony), because of the mathematical relationship of their
frequencies, are, as a matter of metaphysical fact,
integratable by the human brain (consonant) and others are
not (dissonant); that this is true for all human beings
apart from the tone-deaf; that the resolution of dissonance
into consonance helps give a piece suspense, sophistication
and satisfaction, a sense of home-coming; and so we may
rightly judge the deliberate refusal to resolve for the sake
of refusal to resolve to be an act of sabotage and
assassination.
That seems to be the real issue here: [Perigo] can't hear melody and harmony in the musical styles that he dislikes, and he assumes that others can't either. Heavy rock music relies on the same mathematical relationships of frequencies as the music that [Perigo] likes, but apparently the electronic distortion of guitars and voices results in timbres to which he doesn't emotionally respond, and he refuses to recognize that these aural effects are "integratable" by people other than him. It seems to be yet another case of an arrogant Objectivist mediocrity trying to define universal aesthetic standards by his own limitations.
We know that in the Romantic period (nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries) composers and performers pushed the
boundaries of every musical element, primary and secondary,
achieving an unprecedented emotional expressiveness while
avoiding the descent into the atonal anarchy that followed.
Is "unprecedented emotional expressiveness" an objective term? Is there any chance that [Perigo] will be defining and identifying objective standards by which to judge the emotional expressiveness of music, or will he continue to do nothing but give his subjective opinions and hope that no one will notice that they're not objective?
New instruments, bigger orchestras; new forms, and the
expansion of old forms; the coming of age of opera and
ballet; virtuoso stars, like our modern-day "celebs" only
with talent; the cult of the conductor; more inventive
melodies using bigger intervals between notes; greater
dynamic range—fff (fortississimo: very, very loud) to ppp
(pianississimo: very, very soft); more daring harmonies
(chromatic and dissonant, without recourse to the sabotage
or assassination that became de rigueur later) modulating
more frequently into other keys; more rhthmic variety,
including greater use of syncopation, rubato (bending of the
rhythm), accelerando (speeding up) and ritardando (slowing
down), changing of the time signature within movements, etc.
They honored but were not straitjacketed by the formalism of
classicism, stretching but not eschewing the rules that make
music cohere. They knew with their predecessors that
coherence was integral to integration, and integration to
harmoniousness, and harmoniousness to beauty. They exercised
freedom within the rule of law—the perfect mirror of what
was going on politically.
Thus did they bring individualism to music—they were each
distinguishable from the other; each imposed his distinctive
stamp upon the form without going out of it (at least not to
the point of disintegration). They united the idiomatic with
the idiosyncratic, reason with emotion, Apollo with Dionysus
(albeit with a leaning towards the latter, via, it must be
admitted, that villain Rousseau). They transformed the
"universal language" into an individual language. As one
commentary puts it:
"Romantic-era composers kept the forms of Classical music.
But the Romantic composer did not feel constrained by form.
Breaking through boundaries was now an honorable goal shared
by the scientist, the inventor, and the political liberator.
Music was no longer universal; it was deeply personal and
sometimes nationalistic. The personal sufferings and
triumphs of the composer could be reflected in stormy music
that might even place a higher value on emotion than on
beauty. Music was not just happy or sad; it could be wildly
joyous, terrified, despairing, or filled with deep
longings."
We know that, in Objectivist terms, they projected as never
before, if not for the first time, man the passionate
valuer—their symphonies and concerti were "to strive, to
seek, to find, and not to yield" set to music and writ
large. We know that Rand's description of Richard Halley's
Concerto of Deliverance could only have been of a Romantic
"It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up. They
spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were
the essence and form of upward motion, they seemed to embody
every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive.
It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and
spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the
tension of purpose. It swept space clean and left nothing
but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo
within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had
escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery
that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had
to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance." (Rach 3,
anyone—how about the middle section of the second movement?)
In short, we know that in every important aspect of it one
can name, music—demonstrably, empirically, as a matter of
fact—reached its apogee in the Romantic era. Romanticism was
the culmination of what preceded it, and the transcending of
it; it was the high point of musical evolution to date; it
was the "total height"—and it remains so. (What came after
was disintegration into vagueness, gratuitous dissonance,
ostentation, random plinkety-plonk, silly silences and
traffic noise.) Not knowing the physiology of how music
evokes the responses that it does in us, not knowing how
many parts object and how many part subject are involved,
cannot gainsay this fact, the supreme stature of Romantic
music, and its superiority over any modern throwback to
"primitive music" such as that of Slayer, which it seems
ludicrous to mention in the same breath.
Not knowing "how many parts object and how many parts subject are involved" is precisely the reason that one type of music cannot be judged as objectively superior to others.
This superiority can also be ascribed, I should add, to the
myriad forms of what one might call "mini-Romanticism" such
as operetta, musical comedy, jazz (the intelligible kind),
pre-80s pop, movie scores, Ayn Rand's "tiddly-wink music"
and so on. The standard pop tune of my youth was a veritable
miniature sonata with a clear theme, stated, developed then
reiterated (A-B-A), value-orientated (usually about love!)
with meaningful if unchallenging lyrics, audibly
articulated. Any of the foregoing is superior to Slayer and
all other headbanging caterwauling.
All of it? Every romantic (a term yet to be objectively defined by [Perigo]) piece of music is superior to every piece of non-romantic music, based on [Perigo]'s disliking one Slayer song?
Isn't it possible that some rock songs might also qualify as "romantic" (if we were to ever hear [Perigo]'s definition)? What then?
If a romantic song includes use of instruments or effects that [Perigo] hates, is it "objectively" inferior to a non-romantic song played on instruments that [Perigo] loves?
What about a romantic song that was quickly thrown together by a novice, versus a non-romantic song carefully composed by a very experienced and successful professional composer? Wouldn't we have to conclude that, by [Perigo]'s undefined yet allegedly objective standards, the novice's work would necessarily be aesthetically superior to the professional's? We wouldn't even have to hear the two pieces of music before "objectively" concluding that the rookie romanticism was superior to the expert non-romanticism. Pretty idiotic.
Now at this point someone might object: "All this is very
well, but you're over-emphasizing the technical and
structural aspects of the compositions and glossing over the
business of one's emotional response to them. After all,
headbangers can be complex and clever too. And the fact is,
whether you approve or not, Slayer hits my emotional spot
and Rach doesn't. End of story."
And of course, it is the end of the story if you want it to
be, if you're content with that. Let's just not continue to
tout the relativist fiction that all music is created equal.
And let's see what can be observed about the emotional
response, since the objector is quite right: that is the
whole point of the exercise, and music, like no other art
form, gets to the point straight away.
I assume that what the objector and I seek from music is the
same thing: what I call value-swoon: "This is life as I see
it"—in my case, in the form of a spiritual orgasm born of
orgiastic love-making between me, the artist, the composer
and life itself. Value-swoon consummated by tears. If there
are no tears, I haven't fully value-swooned. Tears of joy,
poignance, worship, "unclouded exaltation" in the presence
of gods and the godly, of beauty inexpressible in words. The
solemn gaze on Van Cliburn's face as he looks up at his
conductor at the conclusion of the aforementioned
Tchaikovsky (Piano Concert #1, Movement Three), having
thundered spectacularly up and down the length and breadth
of the piano and pressed down the final home-coming tonic
chord, says it all. Breathes there the man with soul so dead
he cannot behold this and exult: "What a piece of work is
man!"? This response, of course, is life-affirming, and so,
by Objectivist standards, good.
Including the music that was inspired by and intended to inspire further mindless devotion to God?
Moreover, it is the response the work and the performance
are intended to evoke, so the subject's reaction is
consistent with the content of the object. Now, it's true
that one needn't seek the full monty every time, which would
be rather exhausting, and there are less weighty but
perfectly legitimate reasons one might listen to some types
of music. "Objectively superior," after all, implies an
answer to the questions, "Superior to what, in what respect
and for what purpose?" Country is best for a good laugh (who
can resist the hilarity of some retard yodelling about his
wife leaving him for the horse?),
Not all country music is about the same subject. Some of it is intended to project values that are quite consistent with Objectivism, and are even reminiscent of some of [Perigo]'s views, with their religious-like zeal and lack of intellectual sophistication.
for instance, and The Carpenters are great for getting to
sleep. But it turns out metal fans do actually seek the full
monty. Or at least, at first glance, they claim to. Dr. (PhD
in philosophy) Richard Goode, Slayer's cheerleader on the
RACH thread, said there:
"Honestly, if you don't feel glad to be alive after a good
pounding by Slayer, the Queens of the Stone Age or even
Hayseed Dixie, then there's something wrong with you."
(Note, there's something wrong with you. Evidently it's OK
to say there's something wrong with you if you don't like
Slayer but not OK to say there's something wrong with you if
you do!)
But hang on a minute! Pressed by me to explain just how a
"good pounding by Slayer" made him "glad to be alive," Dr.
Goode responded as follows:
"Anger. Energy. Passion. Defiance. Catharsis. Slayer are
musical genius."
So, is it anger, etc., that makes Dr. Goode feel glad to be
alive, that gives him his value-swoons? I tried to find out:
"Anger about what? Passion for what? Defiance of what? Given
that 'catharthis' is the release of pent-up emotions, why
are your emotions pent up (I did warn you that pomowanking
makes one passionless)? Wherein lies Slayer's 'musical
genius'?" Alas, my inquiries elicited no further response.
So, Goode answers [Perigo]'s questions, and [Perigo] then mischaracterizes the answers while going on the attack and pretending to know others' thoughts, and he wonders why he received no further responses? Would it matter if anyone went into greater detail for [Perigo]? It hasn't mattered in the past. Any time that anyone explains to him what they feel and why they enjoy their favorite music, [Perigo] ignores what they've said or twists their words around. Clearly he's anything but objective.
Which entitles us to assume, I think, that the anger is not
a justified, discrete anger about some particular injustice
or other, else Dr. Goode would have mentioned it; it is a
generalised, metaphysical anger at life itself that makes
Goode feel good!
Goode mentions responding to one song with anger, as well as with energy, passion and defiance, yet [Perigo] focuses only on the anger, arbitrarily decides that it's not specific enough of a type of anger, and then jumps to the conclusion that it is an unjustified anger at life in general. What an asshole.
"Psycho-epistemologically, the pattern of the response to
music seems to be as follows: one perceives the music, one
grasps the suggestion of a certain emotional state and, with
one's sense of life serving as the criterion, one appraises
this state as enjoyable or painful, desirable or
undesirable, significant or negligible, according to whether
it corresponds to or contradicts one's fundamental feeling
about life."
In the case of Dr. Goode and Slayer, he perceives their
music, grasps the suggestion of anger and defiance and
appraises it as enjoyable, desirable and significant, since
it corresponds to his fundamental feeling about life. He
says, "This is life as I see it." Which, I respectfully
submit, taking it at its own word, is anti-life—and the
anti-life, need I point out, is, according to Objectivism,
bad! Calling it and what evoked it "inferior" is letting it
off lightly!
Again, what an asshole. Someone else's feelings of anger, energy, passion and defiance are not anti-life just because [Perigo] wants them to be. And even if we could somehow objectively establish that Goode's response to a single song was indeed unjustifiably angry and representative of his general view of existence, and that it was also representative of the "sense of life" of the band who created the music, it wouldn't follow that all fans of the song respond to it for the same reasons (just as it doesn't follow that [Perigo] loves certain songs about loving God because he loves God).
None of this occurs in a vacuum. It's no coincidence, but
rather entirely congruent, that among Dr. Goode's other pin-
up boys is the philosopher David Hume, who taught that
concepts, the means by which human beings make sense of
reality, have no basis in reality; there are just brute
facts, and the act of integrating them into concepts is
entirely arbitrary.
"When Hume declared that he saw objects moving about, but
never saw such a thing as 'causality'—it was the voice of
Attila that men were hearing. It was Attila's soul that
spoke when Hume declared that he experienced a flow of
fleeting states inside his skull, such as sensations,
feelings or memories, but had never caught the experience of
such a thing as consciousness or self. When Hume declared
that the apparent existence of an object did not guarantee
that it would not vanish spontaneously next moment, and the
sunrise of today did not prove that the sun would rise
tomorrow; when he declared that philosophical speculation
was like a game, like chess or hunting, of no significance
whatever to the practical course of human existence, since
reason proved that existence was unintelligible, and only
the ignorant maintained the illusion of knowledge—all of
this accompanied by vehement opposition to the mysticism of
the Witch Doctor and by protestations of loyalty to reason
and science—what men were hearing was the manifesto of a
philosophical movement that can be designated only as
Attila-ism."
Here's Goode on the significance or otherwise of philosophy,
in a SOLO exchange with James Valliant:
Valliant: As a philosopher, can you tell me what the
practical upshot of your work is, i.e., its implications to
human life?
Hume was a destroyer. Slayer, whose headbanging has included
"songs" sympathetic to the 9/11 terrorists and Joseph
Mengele, are destroyers. And all other headbangers. They are
Hume's chickens come home to roost. Richard, who claims
there is no basis in reason for freedom, is an enabler of
the destroyers (I grant he'd be horrified to think so). All
three are archetypes. Hume, the clever/stupid philosopher,
for whom logic and facts ne'er will meet; Goode, the modern
"cool" sophisticat, monotoned and sardonic, getting his
kicks from clever-dick nitpicking and word games; Slayer,
the ugly reality behind the philosophers' pseudo-civilized
veneer, like so many "metal" bands of whichever variety—
"thrash," "death" or otherwise. It's useful and instructive
to see them all appropriately aligned—all nihilists together
in this post-modern Age of Nihilism.
Nihilism is as objectively bad in esthetics as it is in any
other realm—and in music as in any other part of esthetics,
Rand notwithstanding. Appraising a positive response to
musical nihilists as good, as Goode does, is bad. These
animals intend to purvey ugliness and mindless rage and like
nothing better in response than the perverted value-swoon of
the nihilist, the pomowanker's snicker of approval, perhaps
more accurately called the "anti-value swoon." Again, the
subject's response is congruent with the object's content.
We all hear the same thing. We all recognise deliberate
ugliness and rage for ugliness's and rage's sake, just as
surely as we all hear a minor chord as somber and a major
chord as cheerful. It's our responses to the ugliness and
rage that differ, and the issue here is: evaluating the
Wow. We all hear music exactly as [Perigo] does. If you like something that he thinks is ugly, then you must like ugliness. It doesn't matter if you think it's beautiful or in some other way positive.
It's a question of values, not physiology. Life-affirming
values = good; life-negating values (anti-values) = bad.
Here [Perigo] is making moral judgments when the subject at hand is aesthetic judgments. Did he think that no one would notice? Or does he not grasp the difference?
So, if you respond with approval to deliberate ugliness and
gratuitous rage, if you seek out and wallow in the anti-
value swoon, then, in Dr. Goode's immortal words, "There's
something wrong with you." And that's a fact.
I'm reminded of a painter friend from years ago who read The
Fountainhead. He got it. He understood it as well as I. But
he chose to blank it out, because, "If I take it seriously
it'll turn my life upside down" (his life being in thrall to
axe-through-head tutors).
In his exceptional SOLO essay, "Something Better than Rage,
Pain, Anger and Hurt," Peter Cresswell exhorts: "Music is
our food of the spirit. So do try to be careful what you
(This admonition, by the way, doesn't mean we all have to
like the same music any more than we have to like the same
food. It means we should eat food rather than feces.)
Musically speaking, we have whole generations eating poo and
militantly relishing it. It ill-behoves Objectivists to tell
them there's no objective reason not to do so. Objectivism
is nothing if not a command to rise. To those addicted to
feces but wanting to rise from the sewer, I commend Mr.
Cresswell's essay. He knows whereof he speaks. He has
himself risen!
[Perigo] is referring here to the same Mr. Cresswell whose essay "objectively" identified AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long as being about rage.
Just these last few days on SOLO, artist Michael Newberry
has recounted the story of someone who presented plastic-
wrapped blood from her miscarriages as an artwork, and
asked:
"Many of you here are freaked out about the possibility of
radical Muslims taking over the world. But what is it that
could weaken the West so much that it could fall victim to a
primitive anti-modern society? When I see America, I see and
experience many great things, lots of freedoms. It's much
easier to do what you like here than in the other countries
I have lived in. But, I also see the postmodern art world
everywhere, with its cynical, disintegrated, anti-conceptual
mind-set, and pathetic sense of life. That is America too.
What if art plays a major role in the health, flourishing,
and spirit of country or a culture? If that is so, aren't we
more in trouble from the inside than the outside?"
Michael Newberry isn't a very reliable source of aesthetic criticism. He thinks he's being fair, reasonable and "objective" when writing a review of a work of art after seeing only one fifth of it. He often knows little about what he's talking about, and can be rather intellectually careless in presenting his opinions.
We're certainly in trouble from the inside. I quote finally
from my inaugural speech at SOLOC 1 in 2001. The "jungle
cacophony" alluded to is Eminem—I had just compared Johann
Strauss and Eminem as exemplars of two contrasting cultures,
antipodal pop icons, one danced to by human beings, the
other jerked to by the eyeless-socketed ones:
" ... get out there in the marketplace and promote good art
as zealously as you promote good philosophy, both being
necessary for the preservation of freedom. The tide is
against us at the moment—wherever we turn our ears are
assaulted by jungle cacophony of the kind we've just heard.
In the visual realm … well, we've just been reading on the
SOLO Forum about the Canadian artist I alluded to earlier
who won a prestigious award for ejaculating into vials;
there was the Turner Award in Britain, recently bestowed on
someone whose 'artwork' was a room with an electric light in
it. These abominations are a dime a dozen right now; it is,
as I often say, the Age of Crap. I want SOLO to wage an
intellectual war on it every bit as relentless as the
physical War on Terrorism."
That war should include the unabashed proclamation of
Romantic music's objective superiority.
I see, The idea isn't to actually demonstrate the objective superiority of romantic music with a solid, intelligent argument, but to simply proclaim its superiority.
Romantic music is composed and performed by the heroes in
our midst. It speaks and appeals to the best within us. It
awakens our capacity for rapture. It is appreciated and
adored by the passionately enlightened. It is inspired by
and inspires the most intensely life-affirming value-swoons
possible to man. If the expression, "total passion for the
total height" means anything, it finds that meaning in
Romantic music. In terms of what went into it and what can
be taken out of it, Romantic music is simply the best. And
thats a fact.
Again, nothing objective here. [Perigo] has droned on and on about his personal subjective responses to music and asserted that "we" respond exactly as he does. He offers no objective definition of "romantic music," and he proposes no standards, other than his own personal emotions, by which to judge which works qualify as romantic, or as good or bad. And he also seems to confuse aesthetic judgments with moral ones. He offers nothing of substance to back up his subjective opinions.
Next?
Submitted by Brant Gaede on Thu, 2009-02-26 08:21.
Why would anybody post a "god damn post"? Not me. Who--him? Jesus Christ in the Mountain!
WTF You have some bullshit
Submitted by Kasper on Thu, 2009-02-26 07:37.
You have some bullshit about not posting because of the size. Then proceed to challenge.
Are you going to take Lindsay up on this or not? Post your god damn post.
Still Waiting...
I tried to directly post my response here a few times to your little Music of the Gods tirade, but your site's software was apparently too glitchy to accept such a large post. I'm not interested in wasting my time trying to post it again, especially considering the fact that you're not going to address its substance anyway. No matter how directly I address you, and no matter which user-photo I would use when doing so, you're still going to cowardly refuse to define your terms or identify any objective criteria for judging music as art.
Speaking of which, here's my unanswered Turandot Challenge once again:
http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/estheticjudgment.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjPEBunlstQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziThYl6B2vw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKYKxXc2D4I


ANNAPOLIS, MD (December 1, 2006) – As its name implies, Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) is native to Japan. It was introduced to the U.S. and New England as an ornamental plant in 1875 in the form of seeds sent from Russia to the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1896, Japanese barberry shrubs grown from these seeds were planted at the New York Botanic Garden. Many cultivars of Japanese barberry have been developed, all of which are considered to have invasive potential unless proven otherwise. There are two native species – American or Allegheny barberry (B. canadensis) which occurs in the East and Midwest and is endangered or extirpated in many states, and Colorado barberry (B. fendleri), a native to several western states. Because Japanese barberry fruit is highly visible in the woods during this season, MISC has chosen it as the December Invader of the Month.
Japanese barberry is a deciduous, spiny shrub that grows to about 8 feet. Its branches are brown, deeply grooved, somewhat zig-zag, and bear a single very sharp spine at each node, where the leaves meet the stems. The leaves are small (½ to 1 ½ inches long), oval to spatula-shaped and can be green, bluish-green, or dark reddish purple. Flowering occurs from mid-April to May in the northeastern U.S. Pale yellow flowers about ¼" across hang in clusters of 2-4 flowers each along the length of the stem. The fruits are 1/3" long bright red "pips" (juiceless fruits) borne on narrow stalks. They mature during late summer and fall and persist through the winter.
Japanese barberry poses a threat to our native flora and fauna because it can form dense stands in wild areas including mature forests, open woodlands, wetlands, pastures, and meadows. Once established, barberry displaces native plants and reduces wildlife habitat and forage. It is shade tolerant, drought resistant, and adaptable to a variety of open and wooded habitats, wetlands and disturbed areas. It grows well in full sun to part shade but will flower and fruit even in dense shade. Changes in pH, nitrogen levels, and biological activity have been documented in soils infested by Japanese barberry. White-tailed deer appear to avoid it and prefer to feed on native plants, giving Japanese barberry a competitive advantage.
Japanese barberry spreads vegetatively and by seed. It produces large numbers of seeds with germination rates estimated to be as high as 90%. Turkey, quail, rabbits and other wildlife eat the fruits of Japanese barberry and disperse the plant to new locations by passing the seed. Vegetative spread is through root creeping, resprouting of root fragments, and rooting of branch tips that touch soil.
Effective control strategies for Japanese barberry are available for homeowners, professional landscapers, and managers of parks and preserves. Small plants can be pulled by hand when the soil is damp and loose, using thick gloves to avoid injury from the spines. The root system is shallow, making it easy to pull plants from the ground. Young plants can be dug up individually using a hoe or shovel. It is important to get the entire root system because Japanese barberry can resprout from root fragments. Repeated severe cutting or mowing will eventually kill the plants. Clipping, bagging and disposing of fruits will prevent dispersal from gardens into natural areas. For large infestations, herbicides containing glyphosate or triclopyr can be applied in late summer either to the foliage or as basal bark or cut stump applications, to further reduce potential impacts to native plants.
Choose attractive native shrubs for ornamental plantings as substitutes for Japanese barberry. Some examples include bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica), inkberry (Ilex glabra), winterberry (Ilex verticillata), arrow-wood (Viburnum dentatum), mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) and hearts-a-bustin' (Euonymus americana). Check with the Maryland Native Plant Society, www.mdfloraorg for additional suggestions appropriate to our area.
For more information about other Invasive Species of Concern, visit the Maryland Invasive Species Council.


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